Cast in Gold
by shyft
Summary: What makes a hero? A Cause? Survival? Power? Maybe all of the above.  Evangelion/Exalted
1. Chosen

He no longer saw the walls of the entry plug, the crippling pain of his arm and eye fading to a distant memory. His mind grappled with impossibility. He sat, on a fluffy cloud, his legs folded beneath him like a Bodhisattva. More clouds filled the horizon, as far as the eye could see, and above was the clearest, crispest, pre-dawn sky imaginable. Uncountable miles away a great sphere of flame rose up from the mist, out of pure, roiling chaos. The sunrise lit the clouds with gold fire, but he did not need to shade his eyes from the glare.

_Am I dead?_

Faster than he thought possible, the ball of light and warmth climbed higher and higher, until it halted above his head. He knew, rationally, that it was billions, trillions of miles away, but it felt so close, he could almost reach up and touch it...

And then it exploded.

The clouds spanning the horizon fled to the four winds, and looking down, he realized he was sitting at the very tip of a mountain peak, extending down below him for hundreds of miles. Carved into the sides was a city the likes of which he'd never seen, streets paved in shades of white, green and gold. Looking above, he saw the stars, even through the glare of the noonday sun, and in a glimpse, another city, through the veil of sky and space beyond. And from the sun itself, He emerged.

For a moment He was vaguely Draconian, shimmering scales of the purest yellow gold. As He grew closer, he looked more like a man, tall, broad-shouldered, clad in armor like Greeks or Romans he saw in history books. In his four arms he held a Spear, Shield, Branch and Horn. The god-being looked at the teenager, looked into him, through him, and more. He cocked his head to one side.

_Are you just going to stand there and die? Roll over?_

_W-what?_

_I am Ignis Divine, the Unconquered Sun, and you are now my Chosen. Go forth in my name, Lawgiver. I will be watching._

Suddenly the mountain, sky and sun were gone, and Shinji had the distinct sense of falling, but not into a black void.

And then Ikari Shinji woke up.

* * *

><p>One of the bridge technicians shouted over to Ritsuko. "Syncrograph reversing, the flow is chaotic! The entry plug is being ejected!" The head of Project-E looked at the telemetry, the readings everything. Diagrams of neural activity, both the Evangelion's and pilots skewed wildly. Normally a sort of twisting helix, they spun and snarled. Ritsuko looked up at the Commander and Sub-Commander. Above, on one of the 'big board' holographic displays, hundreds of neuro-network connections split and went dark.<p>

The scientist swallowed thickly, ashes in her mouth. "We're losing them both."

Misato grabbed up the nearest microphone. "Shinji-kun!"

* * *

><p>His forehead <em>burned<em>, and all around him the walls of the entry plug were washed out to near absolute white. The butterfly controls cracked beneath his grip, the metal frame warping beneath his fingers. He couldn't see anything outside, couldn't feel it. That alien, doubled sensation had fled. So had the pain. In its place Shinji felt purpose, born of madness. Or maybe madness born of purpose. He couldn't think to define it.

He just had to make it happen.

Evangelion Unit-01 slumped forward, the armor shifting back to let the cylindrical entry plug emerge from the beast's spine. It all but exploded, a torrent of LCL spilling out, before the observers below ground could see what happened. A bare fist had punched clean through the alloy shell.

Tearing free of the plug, the pilot was a beacon of solar fire, bathing the city in an early dawn. Sachiel, completely unprepared for this, took a step back. Shinji slid down the shoulder, then the arm of the Evangelion, before striding up towards the Angel's near foot. The Angel was incapable of perceiving a mere human as a threat, having firmly established its opponents as those that flew and the slain Beast nearby.

The boy reared back, his strike telegraphed, relayed along a telephone, out on a secure land line straight to anyone watching.

His fist slammed into Sachiel's foot, and the appendage suffered catastrophic devastation. A great pillar of fire spiraling out from his head and back, a mandala of infinitely revolving circles spun out behind him, shifting and flowing into and through each other. Each etched in intricate details beyond that of any mortal craftsman. A thousand arms of glowing gold light waved like wings along the edges, hands folding into Buddhist and Hindu mudra and hand-signs. All of this cast in the brightest, purest gold Solar light, backed on the darkest, richest tones of night.

The Angel reared back, pulling its foot up to blink owlishly at the yard-wide crater in its toe. Blood and ichor slicked across the street before the wound scabbed over and began to regenerate.

Shinji, for his part, was unperturbed by the state of events. His fist remained extended, and his head never moved, but his eyes tracked the Angel as it took a step back.

Sachiel's response to the injury was to bring its healed foot down upon the child's head.

Fuyutsuki Kozou coughed politely. The old man for his part was playing the unflappable veteran to the hilt. Standing behind Ikari Gendo, he bypassed the obvious question. "You don't need to tell me. This is not part of the Scenario."

Gendo didn't bother confirming it. "Have we secured the video feeds, and scrubbed the main-access files?"

Fuyutsuki's response was reassuring. "As we speak. I have already initiated the Dawkins protocol. We'll need Akagi to assess how much processor footprint this will take up, but all simulations were within acceptable tolerances."

Gendo hrmmed. "Does Akagi have any ideas?"

The retired professor shook his head. "No. I believe she was mumbling to herself about Clarke's Law, and impossible possibilities."

"'Any sufficiently advanced technology?'" The Commander intoned.

"That's the one."

The two men looked at the monitors. As the battle progressed, they departed. It was a foregone conclusion. All according to the Scenario.

* * *

><p>Ten stories down, beneath the concrete and asphalt of the Tokyo-3 city street, past utility conduit, maintenance tunnels, soil and rock, Shinji bowed against the First Armored Layer of the Geofront. Above him, Sachiel's foot pressed into his back with force capable of crushing a building flat. It would take more than that to break Shinji's iron skin. Dust and grit swirled in the tiny cavity around the boy's face, fumes that would've sent him choking were ignored. His chest expanded, and he pushed.<p>

Sachiel's foot inched upward, slowly, inexorably. Even as the alien titan bore down upon the child, that unrelenting force could not be stopped. But for all of that, Shinji could only push so hard.

A great roar shook the city, more terrifying than any alien sound the Angel could have made. That roar punched a man in the gut, and long set-aside instincts of fear and magic sang out once more.

The Beast was here. The Beast was coming.

Sachiel stepped out of the pit, distorted double-mask blinking and shifting. It had heard the roar, but could not place it. Beneath him the glowing human was rising, against all odds... And the Beast was nowhere to be seen. Confronted by new and conflicting information, the creature's strange and alien biology worked to adapt. New neural tissue formed within, and as it gained further and further capacity for rational and abstract thought, it slowly began to understand its purpose, strategy and tactics.

This was its downfall. Sachiel was too busy thinking to remember the human was somehow a threat.

His bangs shifted in the breeze caused by the great Angel's own bulk, having forced his way out of the pit and onto fresh, strong ground, Shinji set his stance. Center of gravity low, hips cocked and arms at the ready. It was an honest art, a warrior's art, forged in a time forever lost. A gladiator's style, glorious and heroic. And the boy was a hero. He didn't know it that morning when he woke up, or when he first sat in the chair of that machine behind him.

But now, facing down this monster, he knew. Just as he knew the name of his action, his will and power given form and focus. Words flitted through his mind like sunbeams, symbols that baffled his education and teased his imagination.

Sachiel brought its massive foot down once more, to crush the impossible and continue on with its mission. Shinji only had one whispered response to that, in a language that never existed.

"Heaven. Thunder. Hammer."

* * *

><p>On what many would call the 'Bridge', holographic screens showed the impossible. Katsuragi Misato was pale, Ritsuko had long since taken leave of her consciousness. Ibuki Maya, Aoba Shigeru and Hyuga Makoto were standing at rapt attention. The Commander and Sub Commander were nowhere to be seen. All throughout NERV, employees and technicians were in awe of their saviors.<p>

Sachiel flew dozens of yards before slamming into something solid. That alien intelligence searched for threats, obstacles between it and its goals. The Third Child burned within a column of gold fire. The aura reached up into the air for miles, bathing the streets of Tokyo-3 in sunlight.

A strange, skin-crawling sensation prickled over its cthonic flesh, and it began to peel and boil, like a bad burn. A flickering orange hexagon appeared in mid-air, along with a snap-crackle of altered space and the smell of ozone. Twisting, even as its skin began to loose cohesion, Sachiel turned to look upon the face of death.

With one glowing eye, the reactivated Evangelion Unit-01 loomed over the Third Angel.

The carnage and explosion that followed sent Shinji flying into a building nearly half a mile away.


	2. Recovery

NERV was nothing if not efficient. The all-clear sounded less than seven seconds after Sachiel's confirmed demise. Armored elevators and recessed access points remained clear and proved the wisdom of their design as men and machinery rushed out into the night.

Termination Point One, as it had been officially declared by the MAGI, was impassible to most vehicles. Paramedics lifted bags and defibrillators over buckled streets and collapsed walls. Others carried gurneys by hand. Behind them, more than a half a mile away and still easily visible between the armory buildings was the hulk of Evangelion Unit-01. Its armor was carbon-scored, and in some places had melted and flowed like wax.

Retrieval and Recovery forces expected to find a bloody smear. They instead found a Third Child who was in fact rather bloodied, but decidedly not smeared. The load-bearing wall behind him seemed to have taken the worst of it. When they pulled him out of the crater, the lattice of steel rebar within the structural concrete had been bent inward from the impact.

* * *

><p>Two hours, thirty six minutes and seven seconds; that is how long the Dawkins protocol had been in effect. Gendo Ikari needed no clock or countdown to tell him this. The System Sephiroth etched into the ceiling gleamed in a manner most revealing. It was an interesting decor choice, if nothing else. Yui would've liked it. Fuyutsuki stood behind the Commander, as was his custom. The older man cleared his throat, and the younger gave a minute nod. "Ikari-kun."<p>

Gendo had already prepared for the unasked question. "The Scenario remains unchanged, for now."

If Fuyutsuki was offended, he didn't let it show. But his skepticism was palpable. "I fail to see how it holds."

The Commander of NERV made no motion other than to speak from behind his folded hands. "There have been no references to anything that has happened to the Third Child, this golden power. All of it something entirely tangential to the proper Scenario. The Third Angel arrived as promised. The Fourth is incoming."

"And if the Fourth is not as you expect?"

This time Gendo did move, relaxing his hands and leaning back to look up at his second in command, sidelong. "Then we shall adapt."

Fuyutsuki took a seat at another desk, one that tended to blend into the strange lighting inside the Commander's office. The two men fell into silence, aside from the intermittent shuffle of papers, or the deliberate 'thump' of the Sub-Commander's seal. Gendo preferred pens.

"Fuyutsuki."

The professor needed no further prompting. "Contingencies are in place, known SEELE agents are being fed counterintelligence information. Suspected agents are experiencing a sudden run of bad luck as we vet them more thoroughly. I expect the Committee will want to meet with either you or myself once they realize what measures we have taken." He flipped through a small stack of papers before continuing. "The Committee will not stand for the Dawkins Protocol to remain in effect for much longer."

"No. I expect they won't."

"I'll prepare for the reprisals then."

"The old men will only expend the least amount of effort required."

"And The Third Child?"

"A concern, but a minor one. See that he is kept busy. Akagi is already laying the groundwork."

"A minor concern? Ikari-kun you saw what he did to the Third Angel-"

"The first event, possibly of many, but we have no proof such things can be repeated. I agree that we should remain cautious. The boy and I will have the minimum required amount of contact allowed for my Scenario to progress."

"Intermediaries will not satisfy the boy forever, Ikari-kun."

"They only need to last long enough. Handle it, Fuyutsuki."

* * *

><p>Ritsuko was fortified with coffee, and had normalized her state of mind with a thought exercise. It was the metaphorical equivalent of breathing repeatedly into a paper bag, though arguably more effective and scientifically proven.<p>

The Geofront spared no expense with its core facilities, though the outlying testing grounds and other parts of the campus were definitely under-built. Most notably the Prinbow Box... Akagi shook her head and sighed. Looking down below through windows set into an angle at the floor, medical professionals sought to restore order to the Third Child's broken body.

Akagi glanced at photographs taken at the recovery scene. Initial estimates for Evangelion recovery were promising. Tokyo-3 itself had only sustained minor damage. Most of that was outside of her responsibility, but it paid to stay on top of things. Other photos showed Shinji's injuries. Whatever that power was, the glowing column of light-fire had faded between Sachiel's self-destruct and the paramedics finding him. Blood dripped down from somewhere in his scalp, covering one side of his face, as well as a visibly broken arm. Probably a few broken ribs. Very little bruising, however.

The intercom crackled, and the photos were tossed on one table. "Doctor Akagi, we have a small... issue." Turning to look down, she blinked. The Third had been stripped down to his tattered pants. his back was visibly injured, the lines of his muscles showing odd dips and bulges where his ribs had cracked.

Ritsuko raised an eyebrow, as if to say 'What?'

One of the nurses held a finger up, temporizing. He leaned over and barely touched what looked like a compound fracture. It wasn't hard to tell the man barely touched the broken bone before it snapped loudly back into place. Ritsuko watched as they pushed more bones back into alignment. The senior medical officer rubbed the back of his head. "I've never seen anything like it. His bones want to snap together like a pair of magnets."

* * *

><p>EKG and other monitoring equipment kept NERV appraised of the Third's condition. They quickly had to adjust the amount of sedatives being pumped into his IV; for the first few hours he was only half asleep and drugged out of his mind. Once dialed in, the only sound that filled the cellpatient room was that of equipment, and a teenager's breathing.

Shinji slept for nearly two days.

Shinji woke up on the third day, alone in an empty room with no lights, no windows, and only a door with two tiny slits for food and observation. He had been redressed. Rather badly at that. NERV must have raided his luggage; his button down shirt was fastened all wrong. His mind seized on the simple action of fixing it, refusing to contemplate what had happened. His father, the robot, the battle...

All things considered, he was strangely calm. It was surprising really. His hands fell to his sides, and he slumped down on a bench he could somehow barely see. Everything felt very tranquil, almost dreamlike really. He wondered how long he'd been in that cell... And the answer came to him. Well not really. He knew it was nearly three o'clock... But he had no watch. He just knew it.

He'd been in that dark prison cell for nearly two hours before something occurred to him A few seconds later, his cell was as bright as noon on a summer's day, and everything felt that much nicer.

* * *

><p>Ikari Gendo, in his office, looked on through hidden cameras, and he was not smiling.<p>

Misato was thinking she would have to slap her best friend since way back in college. Ritsuko was not in a happy place, to say the least. Whatever calm she had managed to regain during Shinji's treatment had been lost. She kept rewinding the combat footage: Shinji punching the Angel's foot, the Angel flying several dozen yards through the air. A modest distance traveled, in comparison to the height of the creature, but no less impressive. The bottle-blonde woman was muttering to herself, over and over.

Misato touched her friend's shoulder, and Ritsuko whirled. She blinked rapidly, before her eyes regained focus. In less than a second, it was as if the strange mood had been completely forgotten. That suited Misato just fine. Ritsuko, though cleared up, wasn't really saying anything. The lieutenant was hesitant to perhaps lock the scientist's brain up once more, but she had to ask.

"Soooo..." She drew out. "How's Shinji?"

Ritsuko blinked again, then groaned. Misato just then noticed how frizzy and limp her friends hair was. Before the other woman answered, Misato cut in. "Have you been here all night?" glancing at the desk, empty cups of coffee littered the surface. Yep.

Slumping down in her chair, Ritsuko sighed before finally answering. "It does not make any sense. Every test we've run, he comes back one-hundred percent homo sapiens." She wheeled over to one monitor, pointing at the security feed of Shinji's cell. They had to turn the ambient-light filter off once he figured out his little trick. "Even the MAGI say he's as pattern red as red can get."

She waved at the picture. "As you can see, he's started glowing again."

Misato at this point had spun Ritsuko around and was now kneading the other woman's shoulders. Her head lolled obligingly as tension fled in fits and spurts. "Oh keep doing that forever." She slurred.

Misato grinned. "Keep talking."

* * *

><p>About twelve hours after waking up, Shinji started freaking out.<p>

The calm, dream-like quality of it all had faded, and with it came back his crippling neuroses and issues. Acquisition of overwhelming god-like power does not a strong person make. Well, a small rational corner of his mind surmised that such things did make strong people. But he wasn't strong. Not yet.

That same rational corner of his mind was noting with no small degree of amusement that he could leave any time he wanted. He could punch a hole in some giant monster's foot. A metal door was no contest. The greater part of himself that was freaking out, (Crying, laughing madly, crying some more). Guards and an orderly were stationed outside, with explicit instructions that they were to observe, and only interact with the prisoner in the case of an emergency.

Oddly enough, Shinji calmed down, mostly. He was still giggling rather madly, but he regained enough semblance of control to speak. He had no idea there was anyone outside the cell at that. For all intents and purposes, he was talking to the door. "E-Excuse me," He laughed a bit. "Could you let me out please?"

That the orderlies and Section 2 Agents responded surprised everyone.

"We haven't had a chance to actually run proper tests. Blood work and scans were a wash, but we have theories." Ritsuko waved at a pile of scribbled notes. "He acts stronger than he looks, setting aside the 'I punched a several thousand-ton giant monster into the air' part."

Misato for her part just nodded obligingly. Her attention was more focused on the security feed. "Persuasive too." She said.

Ritsuko looked up. "What?" Misato pointed at the screen. The orderly and guards were inside Shinji's cell, the teenager said a few words, wiped his nose on one arm and then bowed in thanks, before leaving.

Ritsuko groaned.

* * *

><p>Shinji never really gave it much thought, but he always had a very strong sense of direction. It never came up much because of how passive he was in his life, but roaming the catacombs of NERV, he was glad for it. He knew more or less the direction he had to go, up. The weird part, which was shoved into a box in his head of 'Stuff to freak out about later', was that he was somehow able to tell by the scratches in the floor or the shift of air currents if he was on the right track.<p>

It took him a few hours, and his progress was tracked throughout, but considering it was his first time really navigating the NERV complex, it was only fair that he focus on one part of the problem at a time.

So now his current problem were guards armed with sub-machine guns, and their commanding officer wielding a pistol. They stood off, the gate to the outside just past them. The captain kept his pistol steady. "We're sorry, Ikari-kun, but we are under orders to keep you in NERV facilities."

The Third Child didn't say anything right away,but he looked apologetic, understanding. "I just want to go find a place to stay for a while... That isn't a cell."

The commander nodded, as if this were a normal situation on a normal day. Cool as glacial ice. "I understand sir, if you would perhaps stop glowing, we could discuss it."

Shinji blinked, and looked at his arms. Then he craned his neck around to get a better look at the indistinct aura of power behind him. Flashes of mudra and mandala flickered. "I... Forgot I was doing that." He shrunk in on himself a bit, sheepish. "I'll try." He closed his eyes and concentrated.

Of course it wasn't so easy. His inner fire was not so easily restrained, just the opposite. The glowing mark on his brow grew brighter, enough to wash out the vision of anyone not wearing eye protection. The lambent fire changed, that spiraling mandala and unfurling wheel of arms, twisting infinitely. The air grew hot and dry as the solar corona flooded the corridor. Papers in the guard shack fluttered under the heat. Even after a few seconds exposure, ink and dye bleached as if under the desert sun for weeks.

One of the soldiers panicked, his hands jerking and squeezing off a three-round burst before he and his partners could gain control of his weapon. The bullets seemed to travel in slow motion, and Shinji's hand rose to meet them. Palm facing towards him, fingers fanned out. Three slugs appeared between his fingers, hot enough to burn, but he didn't let them go. He blinked rapidly, before letting out a weak laugh.

"What the _hell_ is going on here?" Misato bust out from one of the side corridors, Ritsuko in tow. Both women looked frazzled. She was about to tear into the guards when she saw they were already handling themselves, weapons at their sides and safeties engaged. One had a radio to his ear, listening intently while the captain waited.

Shinji glowed so bright, Misato had to pull out her sunglasses to look at him, but she gave him a warm smile regardless, which he shakily returned. He sniffed. "I just want to go." He paused for a moment. "I mean, I'll come back." He added, noting Ritsuko's look of abject terror followed by relief and scientific curiosity.

Misato thought quickly, and nodded to herself. "Then it's settled." She stepped up behind Shinji and wrapped her arms around him, not at all dismayed by how he squirmed in her embrace. "Orders are he must stay in a NERV facility? He can stay at my place."

The radio man whispered to the guard-captain, who then nodded. "The Commander agrees, Lieutenant Katsuragi. He expects the Third Child back here tomorrow for further testing."

Ritsuko squawked. "Katsuragi you can't be serious!"

Misato just laughed, hugging Shinji closer. "Aww come on! It's just for one night! Not like I'm going to put the moves on him!" She gave Ritsuko a leer just dripping with implication. "Unless you'd like to join us."

Ritsuko sputtered. Misato laughed. Shinji obligingly fainted.


	3. Testing

Silence. Awkward silence. Misato tapped one finger on the wheel, driving fairly sedately. Shinji had in his laps plastic bags bulging with snacks and 'culinary' odds and ends.

There had been a bit of a comedy of errors after getting Shinji out of NERV for the night. When Misato had hugged him, her NERV uniform; the red jacket and skirt, had bleached itself out from the aura of sunfire. Misato herself was sporting a notable tan, but her hair had somehow managed to maintain its inky sheen. Ritsuko almost immediately ordered the other woman to hand over clothes for testing.

Misato got a good twenty minutes of needling out of that, before shucking her jacket off and lobbing it at Ritsuko. She dragged Shinji out of the Geofront. The woman tapped one finger on the wheel, while her other elbow hung crooked out the window. Glancing to one side past her sunglasses, she asked the obvious question. "...So... What can you do?"

Shinji curled in on himself. "...I don't know."

Misato let a grin creep over her lips. "You weren't found in a corn field in some strange pod from outer space, were you?"

Shinji just blinked. Misato winced. "Right, probably never heard of that story."

* * *

><p>Misato looked at the boxes that weren't hers piled up outside her door. "Huh... Why is your stuff here? I thought this was only for one night." She looked up and blinked, and before Shinji could even think about feeling disappointed, she was crushing his head against her breasts. "Sorry! I didn't mean it like that!" She pulled back with her hands hooked around his shoulders, smiling warmly. "You can stay here as long as you like!"<p>

Shinji gave back his own watery smile, blushing furiously. Misato pulled him inside, hugging him once more. Still beet red, he felt for the first time in a long time, like he was home.

* * *

><p>Boxes piled high, both his and hers, clothes strewn everywhere (hers, exclusively), national monuments made of beer cans and instant curry trays everywhere. He supposed the only reason the apartment didn't smell to high heaven was both the wide open balcony doors, and the audibly overtaxed air conditioning system. Misato had gone into change out of the remnants of her NERV uniform while he dealt with the boxes. They were easy enough to carry, and it wasn't like he brought much with him.<p>

When he was finished, Misato was leaning into the drawers of her fridge, basking in the cool air. He could only see glimpses of her through the gaps in instant food, snacks and beer. She shut the fridge with one expert swing of her hips, and his mind just gave up. Everything seemed to go into soft-focus, and somewhere, off in the distance, something shouted _Oh Yeah!_

To call Misato 'dressed' would be inaccurate, to call what she wore clothes would be a egregious error. And Shinji would learn one great thing about Misato's habits. When she drank, _everything_ moved.

Cheering loudly, Misato hummed and bounced, dancing to some unheard beat while throwing two plates of instant curry into the microwave. Shinji was just still stuck, staring as her hips wiggled. The rest of the evening past in a very confusing fog, interspersed with flashes of hormonal thoughts and soul-gripping terror.

Also the nightmare of Chore-Jan-Ken, and the mind-rending possibility of such a thing as_ strip-jan-ken._

He had the distinct feeling things were going to get even worse, when she won the round for who gets first bath. 

* * *

><p>Misato for all of her touchy-feely quirks and lack of decorum was a soldier, and had the training and reaction times to prove it. When Shinji screamed, Misato was there, pistol in hand.<p>

She was also naked.

Shinji, trapped between two impossibilities, (beautiful, naked Misato) and what was in his hands, decided to lock up completely. The only sound in the apartment was the fitful sizzle of stir-fry in one pan, long forgotten, and the drip-drip-drip of gloriously-wet-twenty-something-soldier-woman. You see, in Shinji's hands was of one of Misato's pans, nothing fancy, just a standard stainless steel kitchen utensil.

It was also twisted in half. Shinji's finger marks plainly visible. "I-I-I can replace it!"

It took all of Misato's oft-unused self control to not hug him right then and there, as that would probably well and truly destroy what little brain function he had left. Instead she sighed, unloaded her weapon, ejected the chambered round and put both down on the table. Never a good idea anyway, firing a gun with wet hands... No thanks. She raised a warning finger to Shinji. "We'll worry about the pan later." She waved to the gun. "Don't touch that. You can catch bullets with your bare hands, but I can't." Shinji swallowed thickly, nodding.

Then Misato finally noticed her state of undress. She looked down, then back at Shinji. She didn't say anything. All she did was give a slow, sultry smile, before turning on one heel and sashaying her way back to the bath.

Shinji fainted, and the stir-fry continued to sizzle.

-

Misato slumped back into her corner of the couch, one Yebisu cradled lightly in one hand, her other playing with her ponytail. Shinji stared at his knees, sitting in the opposite corner. "So, you're crazy-strong, you can glow, and... That's all?"

"I guess..." Misato shifted, and Shinji's eyes tracked the motion. Misato's post-bath attire was even more revealing that what she was wearing earlier. Shinji had the sneaking suspicion she was doing this on purpose. Yep, the older woman just did that stretching-thing that girls do. Definitely on purpose. His face tinted red.

The older woman grinned hugely at that. "Awww that's so cute Shin-chan~" She gave him a saucy wink. "But why so embarrassed, you've already seen _everything~_" She drew that last word out, adding a playful lilt. Shinji's face burned beetroot and he hunched up again, shoulders rising and head falling. Misato laughed. "Hell, you've even seen my scar."

Shinji sort of blanked at that. "What scar?"

Misato blinked, then laughed harder. "Awww that's sweet of you to say." She lifted the bottom of her tank-top up, demonstrating very clearly that she wasn't wearing a bra, as well as the scar. "A souvenir from Second Impact." She explained.

Shinji coughed a bit, and relaxed a fraction when her shirt went back down. "Does... does it hurt? Now I mean?"

"No, well, just my womanly pride." She shifted again, and the waistband of her shorts shifted in a manner most appealing, not that Shinji ever thought about such things! Nope! Not thinking about it at aaalll! Misato didn't seem to notice, just commenting. "I'm just not built for one-pieces, you know?"

_Most definitely not built for one-pieces._

And then Shinji was trapped in a headlock with the woman's knuckles rubbing into his head, laughing. "I knew I'd get you to flirt back eventually!"

Crap. "...I said that _out loud_, didn't I?" 

* * *

><p>Misato peered through the crack in the doorway, a moss-green towel wrapped around her body. The Third Child was sitting up in his bed, staring at his hands. "I'm proud of you... Good night, Shinji-kun."<p>

She moved two steps away, but stopped when he spoke. "Misato-san." She stood at the between frame and door, looking in. She could see the faintest glimmer of gold on his brow. "Do you want to ask me?"

Misato eased the door open a bit wider. "Ask you what?"

Shinji hunched up on the bed, drawing his knees up to his chest. "...Why I did it... How I did."

Misato nodded. "If you want to talk, I'll listen."

Shinji waved her in, and the woman sat on his bed, before wrapping one arm around his shoulder.

"I was hurting so much." He waved at his eye where the Third Angel had focused its assault. His eye, the Evangelion's. "It hurt so much... But I remembered... That girl, you, everyone on the radio, even my father..." He took a breath. "I knew that if I failed, everyone would've died. And then I was somewhere else."

"I met something. He called himself Ignis Divine, the Unconquered Sun... He told me, he picked me."

The gold disc burned free on his forehead, filling the room with sunlight. "I am _Chosen_." 

* * *

><p>The part of Misato that never really left College was utterly enjoying herself. She reveled in attention and gossip. For her there was no such thing as bad publicity, except for that one time in Bora Bora... She shook her head to clear out the repressed memories. Technicians and NERV employees couldn't help but glance at Misato and the Third Child. The two of them looked exhausted, having stayed up all night talking. About the battle, about the vision, anything and everything.<p>

Of course, everyone saw an smoking hot woman hair mussed up 'just so'. And a tired but pleased look on her face. Shinji was in much the same state. Misato's grin got even wider. Implications! Implications everywhere by the score! She could tease Ritsuko so much with all the horrible places her genius mind could go. It was odd how the scientist never wised up; she always assumed the worst of Misato...

Misato herself didn't understand exactly what her relationship with Shinji was, all of thirty six hours knowing each other. He was young and shy but there was something about him, even before this whole glowing business that called to her. It wasn't infatuation or romantic desire, she knew those feelings well enough to exclude them. Affection definitely, friendship, warmth.

Man she got introspective when tired, she needed a beer. All Misato knew was that she felt Good, wanted and needed.

Shinji was just confused, he lacked Misato's maturity and experience to give word to everything he was feeling. All he knew was that it was scary, even more so than fighting that giant monster. A monster was an enemy, you saw it, you fought it. It really wasn't that complicated. This was something you couldn't see, couldn't know.

And it scared him, because he wanted it so much.

The scientist, found them rather quickly, looking both incredibly disappointed and in turn, impressed. Misato the former, Shinji the latter. She didn't say anything to the other woman, but gave him a nod. "It seems your sense of direction isn't a fluke. I'm glad we won't have to waste any more time." She glanced back at Misato. "Lieutenant Katsuragi, the Sub-Commander would like your report as soon as possible, please report to his office." To the Third Child, she waved him along. "We have tests to perform!"

-

Lift this, push that, jump, roll, obstacle course. All pretty self-explanatory. Shinji was not a physical person by any means, not strong, not weak, average.

He was lifting, without any warm up, barbells weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, pushing much the same. When he jumped, he did so six yards straight up, very nearly hitting his head on the ceiling before Doctor Akagi wisely moved testing to a larger room.

More tests, physical tolerances. Shinji didn't know how to swim, but could hold his breath for nearly two and a half minutes, with no training what so ever. The next test: Over an hour on a treadmill with a variable incline, ended it breathing hard but looked fine, his color normalized in a few minutes. This was all on top of having broken several ribs and an arm not three days previously, but failed to show any bruising or concussion for his troubles.

Reaction times were off the charts, only masters of combat sports or martial arts maintained such high cognitive speeds. His had to be, if he was able to catch bullets. Ritsuko wasn't so foolish as to try and replicate it. She waved in one of NERV's close-combat instructors, a grizzled old man with several black belts and championship titles to his name.

He took Shinji apart in a little over one minute.

The problem was, Shinji should have gone down within the first ten seconds.

The instructor grimaced. "Who trained you, kid?"

Shinji panted on the ground, blood leaping from a split lip and his nose. "No one, sir."

The older man hauled the boy to his feet, before handing him a towel. The teenager daubed his face while the close combat expert watched. "Then where the hell did you learn how to fight?"

Shinji blinked and then looked sidelong, not really seeing anything. His eyes went unfocused. "...I don't know."

Later, the instructor would explain to Ritsuko what he learned. "The boy fights like a warrior, old style. It reminds me of Defendu or Krav Maga, with a bit of Hun Gar. Very utilitarian. 'Beat the other guy, don't fuck around'." Ritsuko didn't comment. "His heart's not in it, but if you can give him a reason..." 

* * *

><p>After the initial two weeks of training and testing, things began to fall into a more stable, sedate pattern. Training decreased in duration but increased in complexity. Repairs were made, life went on.<p>

Shinji would be enrolled in school, his first day was tomorrow.

Doctor Akagi and Lieutenant Katsuragi stood in Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki's office. The grey old man sat behind his desk, piled high with folders and reports, all of the Third Child.

Misato was all-business. "The extent of our knowledge is in these reports, Sir. The Third Child had confided in me his first night here. I made it aware that I would have to report what he told me, and he agreed."

The Sub-commander hummed thoughtfully. "It is... highly unbelievable. Some deity, who by description seems to be a four-armed roman legionnaire, or alternatively, the Sun itself, has picked the Third Child to be..." He looked at the relevant file. "His Chosen?"

Misato nodded. "Yes, sir."

He turned to Ritsuko. "Your report, doctor?"

The scientist consulted some of her own notes. "He hasn't shown any other impressive abilities yet, but I feel we've only scratched the surface." She pulled out a copy of her notes. "Increased overall physical fitness, resilience to injury, enhanced healing. Phenomenal reaction times. According to his medical records and the histories of his parents, Shinji would later in his life require glasses, probably for reading, if not general function."

She pulled out the results of his eye examination. "His eyesight is four times better than any normal human and shows no warning signs of deterioration. Our informal scale only goes up to 20/10. As far as I can tell, on a clear day, he can pick out details on the horizon miles away."

"He has no acne, no blemishes or skin discoloration. He had a mole under his hair, but it fell off during the examination. He isn't just disgustingly healthy, he's beyond human comprehension of fitness." She pauses for a moment. "Well, fitness isn't the right term. He doesn't seem any more physically able than any normal person. In practical terms he seems a bit more agile than a normal person, like someone who's spent a lot of time in some sort of physical sport or martial art, but not the same as a dedicated master. We had Hyuuga act as a control; Shinji was faster, but not by much."

Fuyutsuki looked at his own copy of the report. "I sense there is more to tell."

Ritsuko nodded. "Yes sir... I believe we've barely scratched his potential. He hasn't been challenged. Not even our close-combat instructors have managed to get anything other than what they describe as 'gifted amateur' levels out of him. But I think that's more related to his personality. He's just not competitive. In other fields, he gathers up knowledge and skill faster than anyone I've seen possible."

Misato broke in. "He's been reading medical textbooks in his spare time, and since his schedule relaxed, he's been cooking a lot... But I haven't yet had a chance to try it."

Ritsuko blinks. "He cooks?"

Misato grinned in a manner most Cheshire. "And cleans, but that was because of chore-jan-ken!"

The Sub-commander groaned. "Lieutenant Katsuragi..."

"Sorry sir!"

Fuyutsuki hummed thoughtfully. "Was there anything else? Have you exhausted all forms of testing?"

Ritsuko shook her head. "No sir, not yet, we still have several theories and experiments to follow through on." She leafed through a stack of papers. "Further physical examinations, second and third blood tests, marrow sample if needed." Misato winced, biting off a curse. "We're still confused, something had to have happened to him, but the MAGI keep telling us he's Pattern Red, all the way through."

The old man blinked. "Was this a unanimous declaration?"

"Yes sir, as far as the MAGI tells us, The Third Child is still one-hundred percent human." She adjusts her glasses. "That of course, doesn't mean there isn't anything to find. We just haven't found it yet."

Fuyutsuki leaned back in his chair, sighing. "So, the boy has not yet been challenged, but is quickly becoming skilled. Can he still pilot?"

Ritsuko shrugged, glasses glinting. "So far, yes..." She trailed off. "The obvious question on everyone's minds: 'does he need to?'"


	4. Throwback

Two weeks had seen one of the unclaimed outlier facilities beneath the interior Geofront cavern transformed. Refit into what was gradually being known as the Proving Grounds, on the inside were tables full of equipment, a great deal of it torn apart with guts strewn everywhere. Most of it Misato couldn't even find a name for. A Geiger counter nearly crashed to the floor once her hip brushed it, but she managed to catch it in time. Ritsuko was munching on a bag of chips, sitting in front of a bank of monitors. Her glasses were glowing shards of light in the darkness.

On the screens were multiple views a simple courtyard, in front of Tokyo-3 Municipal High School. From hidden speakers, the full, high-quality recording/transmission relayed the sound of fist meeting face, and the audible crack of bone.

"AUUGHHH! YOU BROKE MY HAAAAND!"

"SORRY!"

Ritsuko hummed, making another note on her clipboard. The page was already mostly full. Misato winced. "Part of that increased damage resistance you mentioned?"

The scientist shook her head. "Different, syringes and tissue samples were incredibly frustrating. Swabs worked well enough, but anything sharp... We had to use needles intended for livestock; Shinji said he barely felt it." Ritsuko made some more check marks, and a few more notes. "Biopsy needles were much the same. I think the orderlies broke... Six scalpels, before we switched to titanium blades. Those worked."

Misato's face grew increasingly pale, Ritsuko turned to face her friend. "Relax, he wasn't awake for most of the testing, he didn't feel us taking any of the samples."

She turned back to the monitor. Shinji was on the ground, while the other boy was cradling his injured limb. The third teenager, the one with the glasses, was trying to help both of them up. "Bruising was slow to form and fast to fade, almost as if it were healing before it discolored." She pointed at the screen. "This is something else. While a man can break their hand punching someone else, notably in the skull or teeth, it's not likely. The Third Child's cheek isn't even red."

Misato blinked. "He does look more shocked than in pain... Are you sure this is... moral? Or even a good use of Section-2's time?"

Ritsuko shrugged. "What else would they do? They watch the pilots anyway, may as well watch them in full high-definition with directional microphones." She made more scribbles. "He's not even glowing, I wonder if there's any sort of threshold he needs to meet, before that happens, or has he learned to suppress it?"

"Any word on where 'it' came from?"

"Not yet."

* * *

><p>Elsewhere, a few minutes previously.<p>

Suzuhara Toji was a simple person, not really a boy and not yet a man. He liked to keep things easy to understand: sports, protecting his sister, hanging out with Kensuke and enjoying the ever increasingly wonderful aspects of the fairer sex. These were of course, in no particular order. Holding more honor, misguided or not, than most grown men in all of Tokyo-3, Toji was compelled by a force greater than anything the world had yet seen.

The love of his sister, injured in the battle.

So, Toji had, after confirming with reliable sources (Kensuke, then the newcomer's own stupid volunteered confirmation), had dragged the boy out and was going to make it utterly clear how little he cared for the pilot.

Which then lead to Toji breaking his hand against Shinji's jaw.

Shinji at that point was on the ground, stunned more by his own lack of hurting than the actual punch, he barely felt that, one hand touching his cheek. "What the hell am I?" He breathed. "Even when I don't want to get hurt I end up hurting other people."

Toji evidently heard that, as he coughed out a laugh, while cradling his arm. "You have a screwy idea of hurting people. I want to knock your head off but I'm the one with a busted hand for punching your iron jaw."

Shinji was about to respond, apologize, anything, when a tiny voice spoke up. "Ikari-kun. We must report to NERV."

Kensuke fell over. "Wh-Ayanami-san! Where did, how did, I mean!"

The Third Child still sat there on the quad, looking up at the blue-haired girl. This was the first time he'd really had a chance to even well, meet with her. "A-Ayanami?"

Anything else was cut short, as warning klaxons echoed out throughout the city. Ayanami looked up into the distance, to the east. "An Angel."

* * *

><p>It came in from the ocean, like the Third Angel before it, swimming through the former downtown Tokyo streets and sky-rises before making landfall. It was fortunate that NERV intercepted it in one of their City-Fortress sections. Looking vaguely shrimp-like, (though Misato had only just barely resisted the urge to comment on its phallic silhouette), the entity codenamed Shamshel began its mission.<p>

NERV sensors had detected the intruder early, and Shinji and Unit-01 were ready to go. Misato was about to give the order to launch, when an errant detail utterly derailed her train of thought.

"Wait a second. Are we going to sortie Shinji in his Eva or not?"

Shinji at that moment was suited up, A-10 connectors fixed around his head, and waiting at the Entry Plug. He heard Misato over the PA system. Ritsuko was speaking as well. "I had assumed he would..." The scientist trailed off.

"But what about the glowy stuff and punching giant monsters in the face?"

Shinji coughed, his throat-mike obligingly relaying his reply. "I'd rather fight in the giant robot, if it's all the same to you."

Commander Ikari and Fuyutsuki sighed from their position overseeing the command and control center.

Shinji felt his stomach bottom out around his ankles, and the teen-aged part of his psyche was thoroughly enjoying the experience of being launched out of the Evangelion catapult. He'd never been on a roller-coaster before, but he figured these launch rails would put any of them to shame. His assent stopped with a spine-wrenching jerk. Ahead of him was the Fourth Angel.

Tactical maps and diagrams were projected as much onto his own brain as it was the sides of the entry plug, it was a really awkward feeling. Armory buildings, traps, shield stations, power connections, all flowed into his mind. Misato's voice rang out through the plug interface. "Alright Shinji-kun, there's a pallet rifle next to you in the armory building." The side of that structure obligingly slid up, revealing the weapon. "We're going to try and keep a few buildings between you and the target at all times. Squeeze off a few rounds and we'll see what happens."

Shamshel didn't obligingly sit around waiting to be shot, however. The second Shinji's hands touched the rifle, pink-red ribbons of energy slashed into the structure, and the weapon! Unit 01 and Shinji doubled back, while Misato and the bridge crew scrambled to give him something, anything to work with. The Third Child was surprisingly calm though. He was standing on that edge of fear, a little bit more and he would break, but he wasn't there yet.

The gold disc burned out on his brow, and Shinji took a breath, then a second. He pulled back on the control-yoke, and the Evangelion responded. He knew what he was doing, it was stenciled into his very soul, waiting to be etched with experience. An honest battle art, for champions, gladiators and heroes. It was forged in the dawning of the world...

With a great screaming cry, Shinji willed his arm forward, driving the Evangelion's fist into the Angel's core!

Or he would have, if the butterfly control stick in his left hand hadn't shattered utterly. Bits of plastic and circuitry floated loosely in the LCL, before being carried into the recycling filter behind his seat. Shamshel lashed out with razor-tendrils, cleaving a line into Unit-01's armored lip and jaw, while another strike flayed open its right arm to the elbow. Shinji stumbled back, clumsy and haphazard. His Sync Ratio fluctuated rapidly, wounded arm hanging limply at his side.

For no reason other than reflex, Shinji turned to shout into the vid window that snapped up without thinking. "Misato! I broke the controls!"

Ritsuko broke in before Misato could answer, shouldering the other woman aside. "Relax Shinji! They're just dummies! They're there to help you visualize, everything important is done with the Synchronization processes!"

Another near-hit scored a line through the Evangelion's armor, forcing Shinji back further. He crashed into an armory building, tearing apart half the concrete facade and revealing the armored superstructure within. He shouted again as he flailed with the controls. "Why didn't you tell me that before!"

Ritsuko's eyebrow began to twitch and jump madly. "It was in the manual!"

"WHICH MANUAL!"

Shinji let out a wordless growl. He wasn't consciously thinking it, but that power, whatever strange thing had happened, it wasn't working alongside the Evangelion. He grabbed the remaining control with both hands, while grabbing whatever it was in his body that let him do those amazing things and shoved it back. As powerful as it was, it wasn't helping!

Shamshel aimed to lash the tendrils around Unit-01's foot, but Shinji saw it coming and jerked the limb out of position in time, scrambling around, he struggled against his low forties sync ratio, the Evangelion responded sluggishly. The only benefit was that he felt the machine's injuries as a dull itch.

There had to be something, anything he could do about this! He wasn't listening to Misato or Ritsuko, as helpful as they were trying to be, nobody _knew_ anything. he had to _improvise_, he had to _win_. Glancing back up at the monster, rewinding its tentacles for another assault, he noticed something. They weren't cylinders, like a whip or cord. They only cut along two angles. That was how it could grab things!

With clumsy, sluggish fingers, The Evangelion caught the next strike in one hand, losing two digits in the process, but holding firm. Scrambling to his feet, Shinji moved in. It was doubly complicated, unfamiliar techniques being forced through an unfamiliar interface, but he couldn't fail here. The Evangelion shoved the Angel into the ground, standing over the subdued monster. One foot crushed the other tendril-arm at the base, while the maimed left hand held the other one away, even as it burned uselessly in his palm.

With his free right arm, regenerated enough to function, Shinji began to slam a metal-shod fist into the creature's chest, the red sphere warping and buckling, chips of crystal spraying out. The angel's heart and power-source flashed, and a biting squeal sent the LCL in the plug roiling. Shinji's ears hummed in agony. His attack halted mid-swing

Misato's voice came up moments later. "Shinji! The progressive knife!"

The shoulder pylon opened at a signal back from the bridge. He nearly dropped it, his fingers felt numb and heavy, like they'd be wrapped in a few dozen layers of gauze and then frozen solid. But he managed, getting an ugly, workman-like grip on the weapon. Thus armed, Shinji drove the knife in to the core. Sparks rushed out in a stinging stream that blackened Unit-01's hands.

It was then that Shinji realized something. He had stopped the angel from attacking by immobilizing its tendril in one hand, and keeping the creature's other arm from moving. He assumed the tendrils functioned like a whip, requiring a 'jerk' action from the arm and wrist to work. That and he somehow had switched from using his weapon with one hand to two.

This is why, when Unit 01 lost half of its face, that Shinji's already hectic day went from less than stellar, to downright bad.

* * *

><p><em>I better not be dead.<em>

Shinji opened his eyes to an unfamiliar everything. Blurry shapes, people, he figured, filled his view. So did a blurry sky, landscape, and everything else. Sounds were muddled, and his vision swam. He tasted dirt and grit along with blood. His vision cleared rapidly. The sky was smudged with the thick, acrid smoke of battle, of air scorched to ozone and the reek of dead flesh, and fouler things.

The blurry shapes became less blurry. One was a woman in an elaborate sort of costume, only her magazine-perfect jaw and full lips visible. Her skin was as dark and smooth as chocolate. Her clothes, wrappings really, seemed to drink in all possible light, even in the dusky late-afternoon sunlight. A visor of black crystal edged in purer-than-pure gold framed her face. This wasn't Tokyo-3. He wasn't in the Evangelion, and that... shape, in the background, something massive and chthonic. Words he never heard flit into his mind before, before finding an equivalent in English of all things. He suppressed a snort. The abomination-language to define something abominable:

_Empyreal Chaos._

Something big and green and laughing slammed into him, and he stopped thinking.

* * *

><p>Half of his face was missing. His Evangelion's, that split in perception was distracting, forcing ins synchronization rate lower and lower. It was maddeningly counter-intuitive. He had to fight every natural instinct to move away from the source of pain, in order to sync with the machine and continue the fight. Vision in his right eye, the one in his head cut out, and his optic nerve began to burn. Inky plumes of red cast yellow began to fill the LCL. Maya listed off status readings over the communication network. "Bleeding in right eye-socket, bleeding in... bleeding in..." Her voice had gone flat, listless. Her mind refused to acknowledge that she was reading off what was happening to Shinji.<p>

Bleeding anywhere, it didn't matter. Shinji grabbed onto his own will and forced his wounds to staunch with a gut-clenching growl. The Evangelion tried to do so as well, but not successfuly. The Evangelion's arterial spray guttering fitfully instead of gushing free under incredible pressure of a titanic heart or stranger mechanized organ. Shamshel stood in front of pilot and machine on its one massive foot. One tendril mangled into uselessness, unable to whip and flex where Shinji had crushed it.

The still functioning tendril powered down and pulled the progressive knife from its core, sparks still gushing from the crack. The red crystal sphere flickered and hummed sickly, but the Angel still stood. Misato was talking, laying out a plan very clearly. It fell together in his mind so nicely. Except for one thing.

Shinji didn't think he was a brave person. Very much the opposite, before he got into the machine that first time, he could barely look his own father in the eye. After, not much had chanced other than the obvious. Misato's plan was good. But the Angel was still able to move, and it could escape. That could not be allowed.

Unit-01 took a step forward. Misato screamed at him to fall back. He kept moving forward. He had to.

* * *

><p>Shamshel was too weak to retreat, too weak to self-destruct. It lashed out with its remaining tendril, recharged and rearmed. The whip speared the Evangelion through the chest.<p>

Status monitors in Central Dogma and the Tactical Operations Center let out the shrill, crushingly final beep of a flat lined heart monitor.

Images, flashes of life he never lived. Scratching in the dirt in some village where strange lizard-monsters watched over them with oddly emotive, almost kindly faces. Men and women fought in gladiator pits alongside or against the dragon-things, or against each other. Everything looked like pictures of those South American ruins and temples. Mayan? Incan? Aztec? All three and others? He wasn't sure. The city itself seemed to be made of that same pure-as-pure gold. Everything gleamed as if lit by the Sun itself.

The same dark-skinned woman sidled up next to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders. She started talking rapidly, happily. He didn't understand, strange syllables tumbled over each other. It reminded him of Japanese... No, Chinese, the characters that were later adapted into modern kanji...

_What the ...?_ He was too polite to swear, even in his own mind.

After a few moments, he realized he did know the language. Bits and pieces were starting to filter through his sluggish mind as the woman pulled him around. He felt off-balance. Something niggled at him though, something was off... another person joined the pair moments later; A man with hair and skin as white as snow, but healthier looking than Ayanami. Shinji blinked, because he swore he saw scales instead of skin on the man's cheek and jaw. Along with a curious sort of thrill. It was... attraction, but weaker, faint, like feeling it through a wall.

He realized at this point he was in a memory, or halucinating, but it was all too strange. He looked at the woman: beautiful, even more than Misato really. Nope, nothing, not even a twitch. Looked at the guy. Weird squirmy feeling of attraction. Oh boy, this was even more confusing.

Then that thing Shinji noticed but failed to actually pay attention to brought itself to his attention.

His hands were tiny. As were his feet, and pretty much everything else about him was tiny. Teeny-tiny.

_Girl tiny._

Before he had a chance to freak out, the woman grabbed his/her arm and tugged her forward. At first he couldn't parse sentences, the grammar was off. He picked up words though. He also got the distinct impression that the dark-skinned woman had a gutter dialect. Mission, some general who had given them orders.

_Solar? Zenith?_

_Exalted?_


	5. Patterns

From atop the hill, near the small shrine and faux-aged tori gate, Toji and Kensuke had a very solid vantage point of the battle. Any sane soldier would've rightly questioned their sanity for being anywhere near as close as they were to the battle. Unfortunately for them both, Kensuke had very strange priorities. The great penis-monster had gotten soundly thrashed, but so had the Evangelion. It had taken a few minutes for Kensuke to explain that down there was the Fortress City, nobody lived in those buildings. They were weapons, just as much as the Evangelion.

Toji leaned back, letting the binoculars fall down, saved by the strap around his neck. Kensuke was looking up into the sky. A loud, keening alert siren began to sound. There must have been one pretty close, for it to shake up all the birds near here.

The jock was looking at the birds when the military nerd called his name. "Toji."

The other boy turned back. "Yeah, 'suke?"

Kensuke's face was grave, his eyes clear and focused. "If I ever try to do anything like this again, punch me in the face, very hard."

Toji had to grin at that. Anything to keep his buddy on the straight and narrow. He shrugged in that easy way friends seemed to. "Sure, why?"

Kensuke had already pulled the memory disc out of his camera. He let the fairly expensive piece of audio-visual equipment fall into the forest loam, while he pocketed the disk. Toji blinked. Normally the other boy wouldn't dare do anything so sacrilegious to his great technology. That damn warning siren was getting way too annoying though. Loud too.

Kensuke pointed back towards the battle. "That's a warning siren, a very specific kind of warning siren. They're going to release an N2 mine over the city."

Toji sighed, he was not going to put up with this. "... Kensuke."

The smaller boy grabbed Toji by the arm and started dragging him up hill. "Our only chance is if we either find water, or get behind the hill, and even then." Toji shook his arm free and planted his feet. "Kensuke, you're nuts! They're not going to drop a bomb on the city!"

The otaku waved at the crater off in Abandoned Hakone. "They did it last time!"

Toji's tone got increasingly incredulous. "That was out in the sticks though!"

"Toji. We are in the sticks." He pointed at the fortress city. "All of that? Everything that's important, the living city part. That's currently under ground beneath enough concrete and armor to withstand every N2 bomb the world has." He knelt down and began to unlace his boots, before re-tying them. He was glad he kept them in his locker, and grabbed them during evacuation. It would suck trying to run around in forests with sneakers or slippers.

He looked up at Toji, his face dead serious. "That's not Tokyo-3 the place where we live and go to school. That down there is the kill box. That's the place where the enemy goes to die."

Overhead, aircraft cut through the air, black angular shapes. Those weren't VTOL. Toji looked at Kensuke. Kensuke nodded grimly.

They ran.

* * *

><p>He was dreaming, remembering again. Same small-girl hands, Skin a warm brown. Heshe stood before a crowd, and she was speaking, saying words he only half-understood. The shrouded woman stood behind him/her, someone else stood to her left. His words lit a fire in the eyes of his audience, they raised spears and swords, clad in armor thicker than any knights of old.

His vision swam, and the army vanished.

Ritsuko leaned back and shouted. "Heart massage! Maya!"

The young woman nodded back, sliding over to the appropriate station, her hand raised and ready to mash the button."Roger!"

Half-a-second before Maya entered the command, half the biometric monitors exploded, sending shards of glass and crackling arcs of electricity. Those that remained screamed warnings and spat out data, screeching and squealing. Shinji's heart monitor jumped and spiked, his heart beating faster than any sane human rate. An instant later, the internal monitors to the Entry Plug snapped back on.

Shigeru turned and announced, "Communication restored!"

Shinji was in the pilot seat, a smear of red soaking into the front of his plug suit, but he was alive, breathing hard and his brow burning gold. The Entry Plug was filled with that same Solar light, refracted through the LCL. He let out a short, two-note laugh. "I-I'm alright Misato-san." He grabbed the remaining control stick, and Evangelion Unit-01 pushed forward. Shamshel threw up a hasty, sickly looking AT field. Unit-01 shouldered through it, barely slowing down.

Warning signs and klaxons blared out across the bridge. "Sync Ratio decreasing to thirty percent! Twenty percent!" Ritsuko scrambled for a functioning mic. "Shinji! You have to keep your sync ratio up!"

Shinji glowed brighter. "I'm sorry Ritsuko-san, I can't do that." More alarms sounded, structural integrity failure, skeletal system compromised, artificial musculature tearing. Shigeru and Aoba, along with their own support staff, read off increasing lists of damaged systems. Shinji blocked it all out. He had a goal, and he had to get it done. The armor along the Eva's torso and arms buckled and warped, and he felt more than heard the titanic snap of bone and sinew. For a moment he wondered about that, expecting more machine sounds, but that was pushed aside. The lower sync ratio was obvious, the Evangelion's movements were sluggish, clumsy, he shuffled and dragged his feet, tearing furrows into the ground.

Got to get in close... have to improvise. Finally in close enough, the pilot willed his Evangelion forward, damaged arms leaking LCL-blood, he engulfed the Angel in a bear hug. Shamshel struggled fitfully, but it was too weak to break free. But every second that passed, tiny spires of crystal unfolded out of nothingness, filling the void in the creature's core. Its mangled energy whip straighted out, slowly regenerating. That could not be allowed. Wrenching hard, the Evangelion's arms all but exploded, but Shamshel was twisted into a gory spiral, spasming weakly.

Meanwhile, the plan was still ongoing. The surrounding armory buildings of Tokyo-3 were retracting into their safe positions, armored shields sliding closed and hardened bulwarks sliding into place. In less than six seconds, the surface of the Geofront was rendered impenetrable to any weapon known to man. Shamshel and Evangelion Unit-01 were left alone, surrounded by hills.

Misato slammed her hands down on the nearest console, shouting into the pickup. "Shinji-kun! You have to retreat! The bombers are ready, we risk delaying the drop!"

"Lieutenant Katsuragi." Misato spun to face Commander Ikari. "S-Sir! He can't just, tell him!"

The Commander's glasses gleamed amber, face masked behind interlocked fingers. Fuyutsuki looked like a statue made of compressed ash. "Begin the operation as planned, Lieutenant."

Misato swallowed thickly, hands clenched so hard blood began to coat her fingernails. "Yes. Sir." She bit out.

The bombers had been given the order to deploy. A black canister, about the size of a refrigerator, dropped from the bomb bay and down into the section of retracted fortress-city. This was its purpose, Tokyo-3 was fly paper, and the target was well and truly stuck.

The ordnance reached terminal velocity very quickly, and in the few seconds the Angel had to think of any form of defense or last-ditch attack, it was too late. The N2 mine smacked into Shamshel's 'head', before bouncing down next to the two struggling titan-beasts. It hadn't fallen far or fast enough to trigger its various impact and acceleration fuses.

Well. That was what remote detonation was for.

* * *

><p>The entry plug all but shattered, pressure waves and differential bias in the inside and outside environments caused one of Shinji's ear drums to explode. A secondary explosion, possibly from the Angel, broke his seat free of the mounting and crushed his head between it and the plug wall.<p>

He was becoming really familiar with the sensation of falling unconscious.

The non-nuclear weapon erased a circular region of the city thirty-two blocks wide, the lowest yield available to them. A single mile. The nearby hills were utterly wiped clean of foliage and structure, an ancient stone footpath now truly obliterated.

Thousands of cameras and observation devices captured the event, but it would take nearly ten days of video enhancement and cajoling on the part of the MAGI to make any sense of it.

* * *

><p>This would be the third time he woke up in the Geofront hospital. The smell of antiseptics and clean sheets brought him out to full wakefulness. He sat up and tilted his head to one side, then the other, soft, muted pops crackled along his neck. He'd been doing that for the past few weeks now, since the change.<p>

_Exaltation. Call it what it is._

He took a deep breath, and that feeling he'd had, that reserve of power within him felt full and ready to be used. But at the same time, the world around him, the hospital, the Geofront, that felt, dry. Not as lively or full of energy.

There was an armed guard, in a charcoal-black suit and matching sunglasses. Shinji would later learn they were called Section-2. His weapon looked like a machine gun. Shinji shook his head, no, sub-machine gun. The NERV combat instructors had drilled those basics into his head very effectively. The guard raised is hand to his ear and nodded to himself, before opening the door. Another guard waited outside, while a pretty, curvaceous brunette in a lab coat slid in, clipboard in hand.

She smiled at him. "Oh good, you're awake." She checked her clipboard. "How are you feeling, Ikari-kun?"

Shinji shrugged, not really looking at anything.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I am Doctor Takamichi Saeko, one of NERV's on-staff general practitioners. You've been unconscious for about a week now." Shinji didn't say anything. The doctor hummed pleasantly and looked over her clipboard again, before stepping up to the bed. She pulled out a pen light and began a basic checkup. She checked his eyes tracking, then an otoscope examined his blown eardrum.

She smiled. "It's healing nicely. Much faster than expected."

She checked a few other vitals, smiling at his progress. "Did you know that when we retrieved you after the first battle, you had sustained nearly half a dozen broken ribs? And a broken arm?"

Shinji shook his head, looking at his limbs and feeling his chest for any tender spots. The doctor laughed, it sounded like crystal bells. "I wasn't there, mind you, but I saw the procedure footage. Everything seemed to just... snap back into place." The boy winced, and the doctor's face soured apologetically. "Sorry."

After a bit of awkward silence, Doctor Takamichi excused herself. The guard followed her, to join the one outside. Shinji heard the doctor talking to someone else outside room.

A few moments later, Misato entered.

* * *

><p>Fuyutsuki took a seat in the conference room. "Your message implied urgency. I assume you have found the source of the... aberration?"<p>

Ritsuko took a long drag on her cigarette, in flagrant disregard for the no-smoking rules. "Yes and no. We missed it the first few times with the contamination examinations mostly because we filter based on exclusion..."

Gendo had already been there for several minutes, elbows on the table, fingers laced together in front of his face. Nothing showed on his face, but everyone could tell he was at the end of his patience. "Explain."

The head of Project E didn't seem to notice his tone. "I was getting there. As far as we know, the entities we codename Angels exhibit certain traits or characteristics that set themselves apart from pretty much everything else on this planet. This is getting down into what they're made of, their energy-states and so on."

Ikari's glasses gleamed. "I'm aware of this doctor."

"Well you're going to hear it again, because I had to basically rebuild half the sensory equipment to even get this far." She took a deep breath. "We isolate known variables and look at what's left. The known in this case, is our general definition of anything human or terrestrial as being 'pattern red'." She took another drag of cancer-stick. "This is how our early warning alerts and Angel-Detection System works, filter out the Pattern Red, find the Blue." She points at a diagram on the screen. "The Third Angel." A satellite image of Tokyo-3, a blob of blue was in the center of a street. A white mark was also evident.

Fuyutsuki hummed. "That white mark, is that Shinji?"

Akagi shook her head. "Not quite, Pattern White is how we filter out the Evangelion's own metaphysical signature as well as AT field interference." A button is pressed, and the image changes. "The Fourth Angel." As before, the Angel was marked out Blue in the false-color images, Unit-01 was marked as white again.

"So, we filtered out his Pattern Red to see if the angel's Pattern Blue had infiltrated. We scanned everything, physical to metaphysical." She nodded the Sub-Commander.

The older man nodded. "His results were red."

"Right, this is why we couldn't find anything. Whatever happened to Shinji basically amplified his human qualities." Ritsuko began to pace. "It's like... normally everyone is like a flat piece of paper laid on a table. It has known dimensions and such. Shinji is like a stack of papers, viewed from the top. With no perspective, we couldn't tell there was more to his pattern red than normal."

"So, we started from scratch, building new sensory equipment that could actually get deeper in." She pointed at a table full of soot-coated components and fried electronics. "Most of the prototypes exploded... But even those failures led us closer."

The Commander's tone grew frosty. "Doctor..."

Glancing sidelong at the Commander, the woman continued. "Whatever happened to Shinji, it's anchored itself to his soul, as we understand it by metaphysical biology. Beyond that, MAGI has classified whatever it is he does as Pattern Green." Ritsuko shrugged before grinding out the butt of her cigarette. "Other than that, the only one who has any idea of what Shinji is, is Shinji."

* * *

><p>Misato was angry.<p>

"You disobeyed a direct order."

Shinji drew up his legs beneath the sheets and wrapped his arms around them, hunched over

and looking to one side. "I know."

Misato pulled out a tablet computer and brought up an invoice. "The repair bill for Tokyo-3." It had, even for yen denominations, many, many zeros.

She pulled the screen back and tapped more keys. "The repair bill for Unit-01." That was a great many more zeros.

She changed the screen again, this time showing Unit-01 itself. "This is how the Evangelion looked after everything. I honestly didn't know the thing had _bones_ until after you got through with it. You literally _shattered_ the arm all the way up to the shoulder, leaving a_ bloody stump._"

"This isn't even getting into a whole mess of other things that have been damaged, destroyed, or_ outright gone_." She tossed the computer on the hospital bed and puts her fists on her hips, leaning over Shinji and getting right in his face. A small part of Shinji lamented the fact that Misato chose to wear something that did not provide a view of her cleavage. The rest of him was rather cowed.

Misato wasn't finished. "When we pulled you out of that entry plug, which by the way was about half the size it should have been due to being mostly crushed, you were smiling."

Shinji shrank back even further "...I-I won though... right?"

Misato leaned back, scowling. "Yes, you did, in a manner of speaking, win. Unfortunately, you did so in the _least_ sensible way." She started tapping one foot. "Yes, we are in a war for survival, no, there really isn't any reason to hold back, but if we fight every battle like our last, eventually we're going to run out of tricks and then we'll all die." She waved her arm out the window, at the Geofront's interior gardens and forests, and the retracted armory buildings undergoing repair or replacement.

"Tokyo-3 is the Fortress City because we built it to buy time so we don't have to employ last-ditch gambits or desperation strategies. We front-load all this time, money and effort on a strategy that, ideally, can and will kill the Angels without utterly destroying our ability to get ready for the next round."

"I am the Tactical Operations Commander. It is my _job_ to provide not-stupid options for the people who pilot the giant robots or have crazy glowing gold powers."

Misato slumped into a nearby chair, spent, hair hanging limp. She looked up at Shinji, his eyes wide and thoroughly chastised. "One day, we'll get to the point where I can trust your initiative and you can trust my plans, but until then, if I give an order, you damn well better follow it. If you have a problem with it, tell me and we'll go from there."

She sighed, leaning back. "Unit 01 is going to take at least six weeks to repair. Ritsuko is going to need you for more testing. She'll need to reinforce the plug and interfaces, if you plan on doing crazy stuff like that again."

She pointed to a stack of clothing, folded on one of the other chairs. "Now c'mon, get dressed. We should at least spend one night at home before everything goes to hell."

* * *

><p>Life went on in Tokyo-3. The Fortress City lived up to its namesake. A single surface detonation of an N2 mine only damaged the initial surface layers of armor, which by design were ablative anyway. It was a simple matter of replacing the concrete. windows shattered for miles around. The buildings of Old Hakone were hit the hardest. Families left the shelters to find their homes and businesses scored by overpressure. Signs and glass broken, doors broken off of their hinges, and debris everywhere.<p>

But for all of that, each problem was easily solved. The question, as always, was scale.

But Tokyo-3 was the test-bed for the construction technologies of the future. Most of the buildings in the blast zone were intact, only suffering minor damage, and most of that focused on the mechanisms that allowed them to extend out for normal city life. The Armory Buildings were more robust. They retracted and extended for maintenance as normal, allowing the civil engineers to focus on the civilian structures.

With construction came jobs, and with jobs came prosperity. Tokyo-3, less than an a day after the attack, threw itself into rebuilding.


	6. Experimentation

Two days later, Shinji found himself stripped to the waist, covered in sensors, and told to 'break things'. A couple of months ago, this would've probably seemed like a really crappy way to spend an afternoon. Now he just sort of gave a weak little laugh and a shrug, and proceeded to do what he was told.

Tables were lined with all sorts of things, one end being pure, non-toxic metals and other substances. Things from the periodic table wrought as bars or ingots, as best one could hope for. Anything solid, Shinji grabbed and twisted and broke, as best he could. He moved down the table, both periodic and the one he stood in front of. He picked out materials to test at random, but organized them as Ritsuko directed, from least breakable to most.

Titanium held up the best, along with Tungsten. Silver, Lead, Aluminum and Platinum were all very easily squished in his hands. He dropped the slugs of metal onto the table in their appropriate places on the scale. His hands wander for the next victim, when something twinged in his mind.

His hands fell upon the ingot marked AU-79; Gold.

* * *

><p>In adjacent, sealed observation chamber, Misato draped herself over Ritsuko's shoulders, crooning into her former college roommate's ear. "Save me from the paperwork, pleeaaaassee~?" The scientist shrugged the other woman off.<p>

"No, go bother someone else, I'm busy." A mug of coffee held in one hand, her other hand tabbing through some analysis. Misato came back, looking everything over. A gauge labeled with a post-it note caught her eye.

The brunette blinked. "Why Pattern Green though? He glows gold."

Ritsuko didn't bother to look up, her voice taking on the tone of someone who had grown tired of explaining "It's a randomly assigned string based on a consistent theme, it could've been Pattern Magenta or Chartreuse or Orange for all the MAGI cares."

Ritsuko looked up at the clock, then at Shinji. "Pilot Ikari, why have you stopped? What is that in your hands?"

"Uh... Sorry Akagi-sensei, just... distracted." He held up a gold ingot that weighed about twenty-five pounds in one hand. "I have uh... AU-79 in my hand, Akagi-sensei."

The scientist clicked the intercom again. "Are you having trouble breaking or bending it?"

Shinji shrugs and twists the ingot in half. "No, Akagi-sensei, Just... It felt weird when I touched it."

Ritsuko scribbles out another note on a piece of paper already crowded with them. "Alright Ikari-kun, continue testing. We have a lot of materials for you to go through."

* * *

><p>Commander Ikari was not paternal. He had cast those virtues aside once he took this course. Most casual observers however, thought of him as such whenever he interacted with Rei. They were wise however, to not comment openly. In the memory-transferstabilization tank, Ayanami Rei floated in the oxygenated fluid. Gendo stood outside at the console, triggering the intercom.

"Rei."

"Yes, Commander."

"You arrived at NERV with the Third Child, during the Fourth Angel attack; why?"

"Pilot Ikari was engaged in combat with two other students."

"The Third Child was in no danger."

"He was not. The engagement might have delayed him in getting to NERV."

"Section 2 would have seen to that."

Rei fell silent. Only two people in the world could read her expressions, or lack of them. One was Ritsuko. The other was Gendo. The Commander nodded and prepared to leave. He could not punish Rei for serving him, according to the Scenario. Nor would he forget that Rei was still a teenager, with all that entailed.

"Well done, Rei. I want you to now focus your energy on retraining with Unit-0. The Third Child will remain in the care of Section-2. Until the extent of the Third Child's... condition has been ascertained, it has been decided that we keep him under a degree of isolation. Were you informed of the visual nature of his change?"

"Yes. Doctor Akagi presented footage of him in the Geofront complex."

"If he is displaying as such, you are to retreat to the nearest NERV access point."

"Understood."

Almost as an afterthought, Gendo stopped one step from the door. "Rei."

"Yes, Commander?"

"While in school and during simulations, observe the Third Child. Discreetly"

"Understood."

* * *

><p>Six hours later, Shinji was tired, dirty, and sore. His hands and knuckles had been torn open, but healed rapidly, in less than an hour after being washed off. Misato fussed over the torn skin, and that felt nice. Inside the proving grounds, nearly everything was in some way bent, broken, cracked or otherwise damaged. Steel rebar, cinder blocks, slabs of rubble, they even had him try his hand on some wrecked Evangelion armor.<p>

He completely destroyed the first ablative layer, and cracked the second under his knife-handed strike. Ritsuko expected more glowing.

The drive home was uneventful, for a given value of uneventful, as far as Misato was concerned. She had to ask though. "So... what's with the gold?"

Shinji looked up at Misato and smiled. The mangled gold ingot rested heavily in his lap, within a thick canvas sack. "I have no idea. You'll know when I know."

* * *

><p>Shinji had an idea, actually, that was the problem. It was just an idea. He scribbled out on a piece of paper in three different languages notes and calculations, diagrams that seemed to belong more in fantasy books than anything like a blueprint or chemical formula. He stared at the block characters of the strange, Exalted script before the actual name jumped into his mind: Old Realm. He started writing more of it. It was pictographic, painfully close to the idea of Hiragana and later Kanji... Symbols for sounds which were later condensed into more complicated symbols that represented entire words with tenses and permutations.<p>

He pushed the linguistic contemplation off to one side. The noonday sun bore down on his back, and he needed that light more than ever. It had taken him this long to figure out. He tapped his diagrams one more time.

He sighed."This would be so much easier if I had an active volcano."

A bead of sweat dripped into his eye. The sun seemed to laugh at him.

* * *

><p>Misato stretched languidly, padding out of her bedroom into the kitchen and into sweet yebisu bliss. She looked around. The apartment was quiet and spotless, and the sun was setting, casting long shadows along the walls and floor of her home. It was quiet. Too quiet. Also the light on the other buildings she could see from her balcony was... off, it was too bright. She stepped out into the fading afternoon sun and looked around. Then she looked up.<p>

"Oh. Shinji."

A few minutes later, on the roof of her apartment, she saw Shinji, glowing almost as bright as the sun and probably ruining the nights of everyone for miles around. He sat cross-legged on the hot tar roof, but didn't seem to notice or care. In front of him was another of her steel pans, inside, bubbling merrily, was the former gold ingot, or at least part of it. A metal cookie sheet was propped over the pan. Misato blinked. Both from the light show and the weird spectacle.

She was glad she brought her sunglasses. "...Are you... What are you doing?"

Shinji glanced over his shoulder. "...I'm distilling. Trying to at least."

Misato blinked. "...What?"

She looked over his shoulder, and indeed he was. The gold bubbled and plopped within the pan, vaporized precious metal condensing on the angled cookie sheet and dripping down into another pot below.

Shinji looked sheepish. "I'll buy you more cookware later, these were the worst ones in your cupboards."

Misato smiled and ruffled his hair. She retreated for a moment and returned with one of her patio chairs. Together they sat in companionable silence.

* * *

><p>Back to the drawing board. Misato had turned in hours ago. It was nearly two o'clock int he morning. He set the stubbornly normal gold off to the side. No matter how many times he pushed it through the cycle, or poured power into it, it refused to do whatever it was supposed to do. He knew there was something there. He picked up a small melted nugget. That latent potential was still there, but it was just ordinary gold.<p>

He sighed and turned back to his notes, squishing the bit of gold in one hand like clay. He tapped the mangled bit of metal against the tar roof, once, twice. On the third time, that strange well of power flexed. The bit of gold, round and smooth and not in the least threatening, tore into the roof.

Shinji blinked. "...What the?"

He tried it again, and again the gold cut into the roof. He tried it on some nearby wooden palettes propped up against the parapet. They were probably left over from some construction project or roof repair. The blunt blob of gold cut into the wood easily, as if Shinji was holding a saw or jagged knife. He looked at his empty left hand. Lashing out with a quick, artless knife-hand, he tore a chunk out wood.

Raising his hand and the lump of gold, he hummed. "...I can make my hand tear through things... And I can make this gold tear through things..."

He looked at his feet. Then he kicked the palette. The wooden structure split in half as if every strut had been cleaved by an axe. Dropping the gold, Shinji picked up a piece of broken wood. Not at all heavy, rather weather worn and weak. He slammed it into the parapet, cutting into the structure. He felt that same sort of inner flexing, that feeling of power flowing... Behind him the twisting arms and mandalas began to appear, flickering and spinning, behind him.

Raising the block of wood again, he remembered that feeling of drawing energy into himself, into his action and tried to not do it. The length of wood did not cut into the roof like before, instead it crushed it. The improvised weapon shattered in his hand, leaving his grip full of splinters that refused to pierce his skin.

The boy shook his hand clean and hummed once more. He hefted the gold nugget and smashed it in his hands, flattening it out. Channeling that power, he felt the gold... sing, almost, in his fingers. Another piece of wood. It thrummed much the same. His shoe, a bit of tar paper, some plastic pipe. All of it equally compatible with that stuff inside of him. He played with them for a handful of minutes. He had to keep doing whatever he was doing, as they only seemed to hold a charge for a few seconds.

After a while, he started to notice something. He looked at his hand and it seemed to have that same sort of quality. That indescribable rush of power and vitality. A hunch, suspicion and inspiration bade him to squeeze the gold disc in his hand and charge it with power, giving the rough shape a cutting edge. The skin on his fingertip parted easily, even though titanium scalpels struggled. Blood welled on the gold blade, and Shinji crushed it into a bowl. the cut bled sluggishly, before slowing entirely. He stared at the blood. Separate from him but still him.

There was power in that blood. He knew it. Somehow. Was hit just his blood? Any blood?


	7. Connections

Three months. Three blessed months without an angel attack. Things had almost gotten back to a degree of normalcy.

Oh wait, this is Tokyo-3. Nothing is normal.

Lieutenant Katsuragi (under inquiry for punitive demotion) after authorizing the release of a N2 mine far too close to the city-proper, Angel attack notwithstanding. She had yet to completely beat back the deluge of paperwork related to that fiasco. That it worked didn't matter, and her advisory board in the JSSDF told her, in so many words, just what she told Shinji a few days after the Fourth Angel.

Oddly enough, Shinji had begun work on a few secret projects. Not figuring out the gold distilling thing seemed to inspire him to try more and more experiments. She never saw the results, but he spent long hours up on the roof of the apartment complex, or holed up in his room. The light cast out from his brow or the display on his back usually tipped people off. They got used to it. Much the same they 'got used' to Evacuation Drills, or the actual Attack.

It came to a head a couple weeks ago, and Misato was still smiling about it. It was yet another round of testing, more close combat training, and anything else Akagi could think of to put the Third Child through his paces. Katsuragi had shown up wearing sunglasses, in one of NERV's below-ground Geofront test facilities. Ritsuko gave her a look that half-said "I really don't want to know but I have to ask." Misato just grinned, and pointed to Shinji as he demonstrated his ability to punch man-sized dummies dozens of yards every direction.

"My Shinji-kun's so bright, I have to wear shades."

The dark-haired woman wisely decided to avoid the labs, EVA testing facilities, Geofront, really anything to do with NERV for the next several days. But not before making a mental note to extort a new pair of sunglasses out of Ritsuko. They were expensive!

But, as is with anything, come routine come contempt and despair, and Misato's hands ached at the end of the day, every day, for weeks on end.

Misato returned home feeling more like a _Jiang-Shi_ than any Romero-walking dead. Her feet felt like lead weights, and it was easier to hop-shuffle, compared to walking. She didn't so much as slide the door of her apartment open as thump ineffectively into it, dragging her forehead across the cool faux-wood and gradually levering the damn thing open with friction alone. But, once the door was open a crack, she perked up almost immediately.

For when Misato crossed the threshold into her apartment, the pleasant sound of sizzling met her ears, and the warm, welcoming smells of good food filled her nose. A single step was a marked change in her demeanor, gone was the waking-dead stumble, in its place an almost zen-like floating gait, as of she where a Bodhisattva lured down from seclusion by the vices of the common man.

One of those vices was waiting, cool and ready, with only the barest hint of condensation building on the can. Shinji-kun was so sweet! She popped the top and downed the Yebisu as per her custom, and she caught a glimpse of Shinji, master of his domain in the kitchen. The frilly apron the older woman had since college somewhat diminished the effect, but Shinji didn't seem to mind. He waved at her without looking. "Dinner will be a few minutes, you can shower and change, if you hurry."

Misato tossed her totally awesome roomie a V-for-Victory and waved. "Don't mind if I do~!"

When she returned, refreshed and relaxed, and not so much dressed as a demonstration of indecent exposure, she loomed behind Shinji, who either didn't notice her impending glomp, or chose to ignore it. He was a boy after all, and she could never be quite sure when it came to teenagers, they possessed far more guile than most gave them credit for. Regardless, her glomp was successful, and Shinji made like a plank of wood. Fortunately though he didn't mangle any more cutlery or cookware.

But with the way she was wrapped around him, Misato was keenly aware of how utterly bunched up and tense he was. She could literally feel the corded muscles in his neck and shoulders, corded in a bad way. He stammered out a greeting, half pleased and half panicked. "M-Misato!"

She hugged him a bit tighter, and he relaxed a fraction, but his head was goose-necked forward, and it took her a second to realize he was trying to avoid what he probably thought of as 'inappropriate' contact. He was after all, far too nice to consider her breasts as anything but attractive. She made a mental note to work on that, as well as the tenseness. Letting him go, she stepped back. He caught his breath and smiled. "Dinner's almost up, two minutes, tops."

A flash of gold caught Misato's eye, and Shinji moved to intercept before she could see around him. "Ah, That's... kind of a surprise. You'll see after dinner."

And what a dinner it was!

Steamed rice hopped past her taste buds in savory morsels, sashimi with actual, hand-made wasabi just begging to be dipped. If she had been less distracted by the orgy of flavors in her mouth, she probably would've made a show of eating, just to tease Shinji-kun. She supposed the moans of rapture would have to do. And they did indeed, Shinji blushed redder and redder each time she vocalized her appreciation.

A bell rang and Shinji begged off. "The main course." He explained. He returned with a covered skillet, with something sizzling inside. Lifting the lid, Misato was assaulted by the heady aroma of expertly made teriyaki. She blinked at the pan, and its curious coloring. Shinji gave her an apologetic smile. "I'll explain later, let's eat first?" Portions were laid out and eating resumed in earnest. The second the first bit of meat hit her tongue, Misato stopped thinking.

When her brain rebooted, she had apparently already finished swallowing that first bite, and the flavor lingered in a manner most satisfying. She was pretty sure mind-blanking orgasm wasn't on the normal list of results when eating chicken. Well, Okay, she didn't _actually_ orgasm, but the way her mouth practically overflowed with savory flavor and deliciousness was pretty damn sexual. And religious. Maybe that was blasphemous... Heh... heresy was _hot_. She shook her head clear and let the pleasant fog of food-induced euphoria fade away.

Misato sighed happily and tucked away more slices of pan-fried chicken, a healthy bit of color reaching her cheeks. She got up to replenish her Yebisu supply when she noticed something was off.

The can she'd been drinking from (her second of the night), was only half empty. She took a moment to test her general level of inebriation:

"I think the Commander's beard wants to rape me."

Shinji obligingly sacrificed a mouthful of tea to the gods of the spit-take. Misato laughed raucously. "Hot _damn_, did you add any alcohol to any of this? I'm so deliciously _buzzed_." Shinji, still dripping, shook his head. Misato grinned, her lips curling into all sorts of interesting shapes while her eyes crinkled. "I'm not drunk, hell I'm not even _tipsy_, but I feel that good feeling after a few beers... Huh."

Having eaten most everything and picking at the leftovers, the two roommates moved back to after dinner conversation, notably, the new bit of cookware Misato suddenly had. Shinji rubbed the back of his head, bashful. "I uh, wanted to stop breaking all of your pans, so I made one that I can't break"

The skillet was fairly standard looking, other than being made of what looked like iron mixed with gold in whirling, water-like bands. It didn't have a handle, just a band of iron Shinji bolted into the side, a steel handle from one of her wrecked pans served well enough. Misato gave a pleasant thrumming purr as Shinji explained, he had such a nice voice when he was talking about something he was good at. She idly picked up the last bit of teriyaki and dropped it in her mouth, and hummed with flavorful-pleasure.

The buzzed-feeling surged back in full force, and Misato giggled. Then she stopped.

Then she giggled again, pointing and laughing at the Third Child. "You're magic, right?"

Shinji nodded warily. "I guess..."

She grinned wider. "That gold stuff is magic, right?" Shinji nodded again. "Sooooo... stands to reason the_ pan _is magic too, right?"

Shinji blinked. And then he slapped his forehead. "I used your blood to make it."

Misato's mind slammed on the breaks. "...Huh?"

Shinji blanched a bit, before blushing, it made him look really unhealthy. "I uh, snuck into your room and pricked your finger, I needed it because it was for you and um..." He started babbling in that language, one arm gesturing weakly while he looked off to one side. Misato took a swig of beer before setting the can down, walking around to the other side of the table, and wrapping Shinji up in a hug.

"It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong, and I obviously didn't wake up when you got my blood... so... Why do I feel so buzzed?"

Shinji shrugged, and closed his eyes. A second later, he opened them again. "I uh, made the... power? I made the stuff that makes up the universe, I made that interact and follow your nature, I think that um... does things for you. I guess?"

Misato hummed. "So... anything made with this pan is going to give me a buzz?"

Shinji shrugged again. "Seems like it."

Misato pulled a chair around and sat down, before hooking her arms around his neck and looking into his eyes. The older woman smiled warmly. "Shinji-kun. Please don't freak out." Shinji blinked. Misato sucked in a deep breath and let the glorious heat of inebriation suffuse her body. "I really want to kiss you right now."

* * *

><p>Hyuga Makoto and Maya Ibuki oversaw the reconstruction of Evangelion Unit-01. Ritsuko was still busy with her own private experiments in the Proving Grounds. A new arm had been fabricated in Terminal Dogma before being brought up to the cages.<p>

Great sections of Evangelion Armor had been removed, and the new arm itself was bare of external reinforcement. Only cybernetic sockets and access ports threaded between bands of muscle thicker than a man was tall. They had to be careful at this point, the great weight of the Evangelion's body still adhered to the square cube law for the most part. The slightest miscalculation could send the whole limb collapsing.

Thousands of wire-thin nerves labeled with non-conductive plastic tape tags stretched out from the arm and shoulder. Veins and arteries were connected via temporary shunts and grafts. All readings were good; the arm was accepting LCL and power from NERV systems. The end of the arm looked ragged, but that was deceptive. The reinforced bone peeked out among the folds of synthetic muscle. The Evangelions lacked proper connective tissue, and instead had bio-technical 'sockets' where their muscles connected to bones and each other

Hundreds of technicians and engineers crawled over the Evangelion. They'd long since used the slave control system to urge the bio-machine into lying down. Instead of a plug and pilot, the crews triggered muscle reflex actions and applied carefully monitored nerve stimulus. Massive cranes dragged the arm closer into position, while the crews slowly but surely connected muscle to muscle and nerve to nerve.

Maya looked up from her tablet computer. "What do you think about Shinji?"

Makoto shrugged. "He saved us. He just did it in a very weird way. Weirder than this." He pointed at the Evangelion. "Artificial humans, giant monsters, and now glowing gold teenagers. Sounds a lot like a sentai series."

The young woman giggled. "I think you mean tokusatsu, besides, we only have the one glowing gold teenager."

Makoto grinned wider, always happy to share common pop-cultural history. But then his mood soured. "Wait a second, are we the imperiled hostages who get taken before the good guys _do_ anything?"

Maya's cheeks drained of color "... Do we get hazard pay for that?"

* * *

><p>Shinji, unsurprisingly, freaked out.<p>

The Third Child seemed to want to both scramble out of Misato's hug, and do anything but move at the same time. this was both comedic and somewhat sad, as his muscles bunched and tensed but his limbs refused to move. He turned away from her and his face burned red. She caught him by the chin and brought his head around.

"Shinji-kun... What's wrong?"

He took a deep breath, but still looked incredibly skittish. "...Nobody touches me, hardly anyone ever _speaks_ to me. Whenever they do they usually want something from me... instead of just me."

Misato's voice was soft. "And when I tease you, all the flirting and stuff?"

Shinji hunched up further. "...it's meaningless."

"I'm sorry?"

"I know it's just teasing, but... I want it, I want it to be real. I want it to mean something... but it doesn't, it can't... I mean, why would it? I'm just a kid! And you're beautiful and lively, and like, twenty."

Misato blinked, it was almost non-sequitur. Then she fell over laughing, inadvertently dragging Shinji with her. He landed with an 'ooof!', with his face buried in her cleavage, cheeks somehow growing even redder. How much blood did he have? A six agonizing heartbeats passed before he managed to scramble away and apologize profusely. Shinji knew this because he could count both Misato's and his own, Misato looked at him and started laughing harder.

"You are just too perfect, Shinji-kun!" The boy wondered if he should feel complimented or insulted. The older woman caught her breath and sat up. "Okay, Yeah, I do tease you, it's... Just what I do, I tease and flirt and poke at people. I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression..." She trailed off before the dark look on his face. "No! I mean, yes, I like you, I want to be your friend, I don't necessarily want to be intimate with you but that doesn't mean you aren't desirable!" She rambled, and Shinji blinked audibly.

Misato took a deep breath. "I mean, yeah, in my case you are pretty young. I'm not known for really holding to convention, but..." She gave him a catlike smirk. "You do realize you're pretty much the most eligible bachelor in all of Tokyo-3, right? If not the world?"

Shinji looked like he was about to explode with disbelief, better, he looked like he could use a drink. Misato pushed off to break out some of her imported reserve and handed one can to Shinji. She made a move to sit back down next to him on the floor, but stopped and offered her hand instead. "Let's move to the couch, okay?" He nodded weakly.

Misato took a sip of her ale and grinned. "So, you did say you were an EVA pilot right, your first day of school?" Shinji blushed and nodded. "Yeah, you kinda did violate about sixty different confidentiality agreements and a few international laws, but uh, I was the one who was supposed to tell you about that so my bad?" He goggled but let out a one-note laugh.

"Anyway, Yeah, you're young, you don't quite get things the way an adult would, it's just part of growing up. But basically, with the right approach, any man can get with any girl he wants, or guy if that flicks his wick, so to speak."

"M-Misato!"

"Relax! I'm just teasing, remember? Anyway, since you're famous, and a real hero, you're not at all in a bad situation as far as getting attention. I admit some of it won't be very good, fans, stalkers, people who want to use you, it's just part of life. Real friends are going to be worth their weight in gold though..." She trailed off, nostalgic. "I won't lie, you are really young, but..." She grinned. "Well, like I said, you're a hero, you saved the goddamn world, twice." She drained half her beer, while Shinji only took modest sips of his, almost mechanical.

The fell into silence for a while, and it was nice. Then, Misato grinned. "By the way, I was born in nineteen eighty-six." Shinji did the math, and goggled. Misato flashed another V for Victory. "Yup, You've just stumbled into one of the many ways to a woman's favor."

Misato considered most of the post-dinner conversation quite successful, having dug out a fair amount of Shinji's crippling neuroses. She was no psychologist of course, but it was a start! At one point she had half-stumbled through the explanation of the Hedgehog's Dilemma, but fortunately for them both, Shinji was sharp as a tack and had a surprising knack for holding his liquor.

"So... people are desperate to connect, but they're also terrified of it, everybody is, even me. I don't act like it but I haven't let anybody really in since my last boyfriend... and now you." She hiccuped, very close to being drunk. Misato however, was a high-functioning alcoholic, 'drunk' for her was 'coffee, black' for most people. Shinji nodded, both out of unease and understanding. He hardly looked inebriated, but had just as many cans of beer on the end table next to him. It was telling however, that he joined in with Misato when they decided to emulate the Eiffel Tower.

Adding in the last beer of the night, Misato glanced over at her roommate and harrumphed. "You're still really tense. Does my raw sexual presence intimidate you?" Shinji nodded. Misato frowned cutely. "You know, you could flirt back. You've done it before."

Shinji did his embarrassed hunching maneuver, blushing again. "I... don't want to offend you." Even inebriated, Misato could read between the lines.

She scooted closer across the couch so they were hip to hip. "I don't want to run away from you, and I don't want you to make me run away." Before he could answer, she laughed and slapped him on the back, sending him tumbling off the couch. She was on him in a second, laughing and tickling, while her real intent was safely obscured.

Shinji was half-out of his shirt when he realized it. "M-Misato!"

She grinned and pulled his T-shirt all the way off, laughing. "I want to give you a back rub, It'll feel good, trust me!" He looked stricken, finally that damned mask of his cracked, and she could see how much he wanted it, as well as feared it. That was only step one however, and Misato never did anything fun by half-measure.

She put on an exaggerated, contemplative look. "If you're that upset about being the only one not wearing a shirt, I suppose~ I could join in."

With that, Misato peeled her already-inconsequential tank-top _off_.


	8. Clarity

Commander Ikari sat in his office, his normally bare desk stacked with papers and reports. Fuyutsuki had pulled up a chair and was sorting through them. The professor was looking rather haggard, but a fire had ignited in his eyes. This was a new challenge, something to be explored, instead of some horrible mockery of the science he helped create.

"Increased physical aptitude... Incredible reaction times. He caught a burst of_ sub-machine gun_ fire between his fingers, if these reports are to be believed."

Gendo rarely equivocated. "And this most recent episode, during the battle?"

"A continuing trend, if Katsuragi's reports are to be believed. Your son is very excitable, and his powers respond to his emotional states as much as volition." The older man laughed. "Akagi is pulling her hair out over the broken controls."

Gendo rumbled in utter deadpan."She looked better as a brunette."

The older man nearly slid out of his chair. "Something must be bothering you, to say something that could be taken as a joke." The young man didn't respond further.

Fuyutsuki leaned forward into his side of the desk. More shuffling.

"The scenario is still on track, correct? The Fourth Angel arrived and behaved as expected. The Light of God is next, correct?"

Gendo nodded. Fuytsuki pulled up a copied budget request. He let out a bemused hum.

"Akagi has already fast tracked funding for reinforced plug designs and the like. She has a main line to the Committee for a reason."

Before Gendo could respond, Fuyutsuki continued. "All the designs and communications are being vetted, of course. Our black-box section of the MAGI hasn't seen any cryptographic trends and the like, baring the conspiracy buffer."

The commander of NERV nodded. "Progress on repairs?"

Fuyutsuki's response was immediate. "On schedule, though our timetable for the next Angel is... Suspect."

Gendo snorted. "Strict adherence to the scrolls dooms us all. That is where SEELE will fail and I will succeed."

Fuyutsuki fell silent at that. A while later, he pulled out another stack of papers. "Ah, a compilation of 'powers' the Third Child has exhibited."

Gendo perked up. Fuyutsuki pinched his nose and blinked away the eyestrain, and soldiered on.

"His martial arts instructors pointed out that he learns the forms of any unarmed style almost instantly, though Shinji-kun always feels as if he's doing something wrong... Akagi-kun has roughly described no less than five close-combat techniques supplemented by the boy's new found power. He may turn aside blades with his bare hands, as well as punch through most personal body armor. Against most structures, he's capable of reducing them to rubble with a few punches." He turned the page, and his eyes widened by a hair.

"His ability to grapple is unsurpassed. He outperforms Olympic-level wrestlers when fighting on the ground." Another page turn. "Akagi is unsure of the fourth technique, it doesn't seem to do anything in and of itself... But the boy's attacks henceforth are utterly devastating. The fifth technique, the one he employed against the Third Angel, sends whatever he strikes flying for dozens of yards."

"There are other things, like his new-found persuasive abilities. I doubt anyone could so easily talk their way out of the brig..."

* * *

><p><p>

* * *

><p>Shinji lacked a lot of context. He didn't have many peers yet, especially male ones. He hadn't yet become friends with Toji or Kensuke, and he wouldn't have their far more normal, well-adjusted (if immature) perspective on women and the enjoyable aspects thereof. To them a woman was a metaphor, unique to their own experiences. To Toji, to see a vision of loveliness was to see a perfect three-point shot, or the rhythmic, effortless grace of a dribbled basketball.<p>

Kensuke on the other hand was brought to mind the visuals of various main-battle-tank mechanisms, the bang-slip-squish-CLANG of pistons, the cycling of munitions being loaded into cannons, sighting in on target and firing. For him, a woman was a glorious time-on-target barrage of aesthetically pleasing engineering.

Shinji, confronted with the glorious beauty sitting next to him, skin set aflame by the sunset, could only think of one thing. For each sensual bend and sway, delicious jiggle or wave of silky smooth hair, a divine chorus echoed throughout his mind. Everything seemed to move as if in slow motion, blurred into soft focus and the very air itself sparkled. Skin flushed by alcohol down to her chest and a smile so powerful, it could outshine the sun.

In his head, Shinji heard one thing and one thing only. Ludwig van Beethoven's Ode to Joy. The first few chords of that epic, immortal piece floated through his mind as he absorbed every wonderful, exquisite detail.

Then, the rest of his conscious mind decided to check in. He started hyperventilating, and almost ready to bolt. Misato's flirty smirk fell away as well. "Shinji-kun! Relax!"

"How can I relax when you're naked!"

Misato couldn't help herself, she turned and put one foot on the sofa, like a conquering hero. One arm thrust out, pointing the window to the setting sun. With all the great majesty of the great kings and queens of old, she declared in a manner most imperial, "I am not naked! I am half-naked!"

The absurdity worked, and Shinji slumped back, letting out a sobbing laugh. Misato joined in a few seconds later. "You don't need to be afraid, Shinji-kun. It's just skin."

She folded her arms around her breasts, as much to cover them as to heft them higher. "It only seems important because everybody wants to keep them covered, right?"

Shinji swallowed thickly and nodded, though his eyes were tracking almost randomly.

She nudged him with one hand. "C'mon, grab a pillow and lie on your stomach. I wanted to give you a back rub, remember?"

The Third Child was in no condition to argue. But once he got situated, and stopped looking at her, he screwed his eyes shut, painfully so.

The woman leaned in, next to his ear. "Shinji-kun, I chose to take my shirt off. You didn't do anything wrong. I want you to look, to relax..."

And, to her surprise and satisfaction, he did, just a bit. His eye cracked open to see her smiling face, and his own lips quirked, one corner visible from around the pillow he had buried himself in. Misato hummed pleasantly and put her hands to work.

After finishing his neck, which resulted in the young man almost melting beneath her fingers, Misato started talking. "You know, part of why I flirt with you is so you can practice. I mean, I'm not going to be offended, because I know you're not really good at it yet. And you may get lucky and hit on your own style and way of doing things... Get _really_ lucky and well..."

She trailed off. Shinji could almost _feel_ her grin.

* * *

><p>The apartment was quiet for a while, aside from the chirp of cicada and the two roommates breathing. Shinji's back and shoulders gradually unknot themselves, and to Misato's great joy, he fell asleep. Grabbing blanket, she threw it over the both of them and laid down beside him.<p>

While not exactly a common presence at Tokyo-3 Junior High, Shinji had a much stronger attendance record than Ayanami Rei. Enough of one that he had gained a reputation for being shy, introverted, and charming in his own way, but not very outgoing.

So when he all but bounced through the halls on the way to class, people took note. Suzuhara Toji glowered in a manner most impressive, his right arm still a bit paler than his left after getting his cast off. Fortunately for his family, NERV footed the bill. Unfortunately for NERV, Suzuhara Toji cannot be bought so easily!

Ignoring the twinge in his hand from lack of use, the jock grabbed the effervescent pilot by the collar of his shirt and hauled him upright. "Whatchyou smiling about, new kid?"

Shinji let out a short, two-note laugh. "I slept well."

* * *

><p>NERV was built much along the same lines as life itself, in terms of organization. It <em>strived<em> for ever increases levels of complexity, expanding into new stores of resources and occupy all habitable space as quickly as possible. Efficiency followed at it's own glacial pace.

In one of the massive hangar complexes within the Geofront, Ritsuko observed her new domain. For all of the trouble and toil involved, this mystery surrounding the Third Child had captured her attention so thoroughly, she found herself forgetting the Evangelions themselves. There was no mystery, to the great titan-beasts. She knew all that was needed.

The scientist sucked at her latest cigarette. "...The great tragedy of science."

Maya turned up from her console. "Sempai?"

"The Evangelions... They're a tragedy of science. They were made for a goal, a purpose... And nothing else. No journey of discovery or mystery. That all passed us by with GEHRIN and Yui Ikari."

The younger woman blinked. So much about the Evangelions were unexplained... "...Sempai?"

"Forget it, Maya. What's our status?"

"Construction is on schedule, reinforced structures in case of... Impromptu demolition. Sensors and full research suite. It only needs a name."

Ritsuko's glasses caught the light and scattered it in a spray of shards, a grin curling around her lips. "We'll call it the Proving Grounds."

* * *

><p>Expelling anything from one's stomach would never be a pleasant experience, but Shinj was finding more and more perks to his new condition. His throat did not so much as tickle, nor did it take long for him to get over his initial discomfort. It was rapidly becoming habit, instead of a dread annoyance. He stepped out of the washroom, trying not to glance overmuch at the curtain, and silhouette behind it. Ayanami was changing back into her school uniform.<p>

Toweling out some more LCL from his hair, he turned away. "Ayanami...?"

The young girl continued to dress. "Yes, Pilot Ikari?"

"...Why do you pilot Eva?"

Rei's answer was immediate. "It is my connection to humanity."

"I don't understand."

"I pilot to protect mankind. It is my purpose."

"You want to be needed?"

"Yes. That is accurate."

"By all of mankind?"

"Yes. And NERV, and the Commander. And others."

"The Commander? Father?"

"Ikari Gendo, correct."

Shinji licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry. "Wh-What is my father like?"

"I cannot say."

"huh?"

"Your father did not raise me. He is... Important, to me. He is the Commander of NERV. NERV gives me Eva, and Eva gives me purpose."

Shinji fell silent. Then Rei spoke up.

"Is your power the Light of your Soul?"

"I'm... Sorry? I don't understand."

Rei swept the curtain dividing them aside. Her stare was unflinching, locked on his eyes and she never once blinked. Shinji had stripped out of his plugsuit down to the knees. The young man started to make a twisting, grinding, choking noise in the back of his throat, while his face grew redder and redder.

"You have not been briefed on this?"

Shinji somehow managed to shake his head. Rei continued to stare, her eyes never once wavering, even as Shinji tried to very slowly shift his thighs and preserve his modesty.

"I will discuss this with the Commander. You must be made aware of the Light."

Rei turned and left, leaving Shinji to choke and sputter.


	9. Training

Commander Ikari was not paternal. He had cast those virtues aside once he took this course. Most casual observers however, thought of him as such whenever he interacted with Rei. They were wise however, to not comment openly. In the memory-transfer/stabilization tank, Ayanami Rei floated in the oxygenated fluid. Gendo stood outside at the console, silent and unwavering.

The First Child could be described as apathetic, but that only covered a tiny fraction of what one meant. For most people, apathy was the feeling one experienced when tasked with something they found both distasteful and mentally unengaging; they were incapable of even mustering the needed energy to grow irked at their situation. Apathy was what one felt when they put off emptying the garbage two, three weeks in a row, no matter what it did to their hygiene.

The description was muddled further, when people see Ayanami's almost mythic focus on any given objective. She attended class infrequently, but since her entrance into public education, she never missed an assignment, nor scored less than one hundred percent on any standardized test. Her grades suffered, when confronted with assignments that involved personal feelings or expression.

Apathetic, Unswerving, possessing dedication to one's objectives to the point of madness; these were all qualities of Ayanami Rei.

Another quality, with associated behaviors that the uneducated would classify as bipolar, was her willful subordination and dedication to the Evangelion, and by extension, Commander Ikari. Rei could move from unresisting, unobtrusive and quiet to animated, lively, and one could almost say _bubbly._

If Gendo were a more emotive man, he would've found her behavior both endearing and bitter.

The memory transfer room was otherwise empty and silent, aside from the persistent thrum of pumps circulating LCL. If Rei gave any indication to her discomfort, floating naked in that tank, she never once mentioned it. Rarely did she speak while undergoing the record process.

"Commander."

"Rei."

The First was quiet for a moment. Not altogether unheard of. "Has the Third Child been briefed on the Light of the Soul?"

Gendo blinked, but his response was fluid and unhesitating. "The Third Child does not have an AT field like you, his Light of the Soul remains inverted, like the rest of humanity."

Rei didn't respond for several minutes. "What is his power, then?"

The older man's voice did not waver, nor did he dignify his response with inflection or verbal tic. "An anomaly, nothing more." He reached over and began ending the transfer process. "We're finished here."

Rei nodded and closed her eyes while the LCL began to drain.

"Rei." He didn't bother looking up.

A pair of red eyes opened. "Yes Commander."

"From now on, the pilots will have separate facilities for training and sortie, in the interim, you must limit contact with the Third Child. Observe, but do not interact."

Her eyes closed. "Understood."

* * *

><p>Saturday. For most students it was only a half day of class. For Shinji, it was Evangelion Simulation Training.<p>

Ritsuko leaned into the microphone, and Shinji could hear the grin in her voice. "Okay Shinji, you've had enough of basic procedures. We've destroyed enough dummy angels."

Shinji slewed the control sticks around and locked onto another virtual opponent. It dissolved into junk graphical data after liberal perforation. He grinned to himself. "Target Centered, pull the switch."

Ritsuko snorted. "Very funny. We can't afford to have you going through the motions with every fight. Now you've proved you can take initiative... But we have tactics and strategies for a reason."

The pilot nodded and pulled the Evangelion back to a neutral position. "Understood."

He flipped through the interface displays, before he settled on a pectoral camera that had a view of the control room. Doctor Agaki had somehow managed to figure out which camera he was using in two seconds. It was oddly unnerving making eye contact through the mental 'window'. He shook his head but the image did not leave him. The woman kept taking, but Shinji had lost his train of thought.

Full scale testing like this was in a large chamber, where massive umbilical cables and bypass conduits were attached to the biomachine. They intercepted the nerve impulses from plug to the lower limbs, substituting the Evangelion's legs for a virtual copy. Ritsuko didn't explain much else.

She tabbed through the weapon database. "You're checked out on the pallet rifle. It's a stopgap. I won't lie." She flicked the technical specifications over to Shinji's wetware interface. The information was mostly a jumble of numbers and lines, but he felt better being able to see it. He subconsciously tried to look 'up' at Ritsuko, but his vision swam as the Plug tried to interpret his intent.

He wrangled control back to the cameras he wanted, before responding. "Stopgap?"

Ritsuko looked like she wanted to say something, and the other test technicians stopped working to listen. She opened her mouth, then closed it. "I can't really think of a way to explain how badly the pallet rifle was designed, in light of what we now know about the Angels. I suppose the short version is... 'It doesn't work.'"

Shinji blinked and tossed the schematic into the wetware's deletion buffer. "So... What does work?"

Ritsuko sucked on her teeth, aching for a cigarette. "We don't know yet. The Angels don't exist in the same... Space as we do. Not normally. You saw the first Angel when Misato was picking you up, right?"

The pilot busied himself with some manuals while he answered. He didn't want to run into another fiasco without knowing the right documentation... "Yeah."

The other woman pressed on."Did you see how it flickered?"

"...Yeah."

"That was because of their altered space."

Shinji blinked rapidly, and his earlier train of thought derailed. "...So what, the Angels are... Aliens... From another dimension?"

Ritsuko stopped for a moment, and grimaced. "You have no idea how much I want to tell you that is incorrect."

The other technicians in the room all slowed and stoped working, when Ritsuko turned to face a newcomer. Commander Ikari loomed in the doorway. The head of Project E had pulled her hand away from the talk button. Shinji felt the corners of mouth pull back into his cheeks, and his brow furrowed. He tabbed back to the simulation, and sunk back down into repetition.

Target Centered. Pull the Switch. Another simulacrum spun away into nothing, and a duplicate took its place.

_Father..._

Target Centered. Pull the Switch.

Target Centered.

Pull the Switch.

* * *

><p>The drive home was oppressively quiet. The muted thump of air pressure overpowered what little life was in the car. Misato tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, while the Geofront tram cut through the air. "Hey, Shinji-kun?"<p>

The teenager started, before looking up. "Misato-san?"

The older woman gave the boy a kindly sidelong glance. "You were... You were pretty impressive there, back in the simulations. Can I ask what you were thinking about?"

Shinji hunkered back in to his shoulders. "...Nothing in particular."

Misato leaned over the wheel and pillowed her cheek one arm, smiling widely. "C'mon, you can tell me!"

A flickering image of his father appeared in his mind, and Shinji sighed. "... I want to be... Worthy."

* * *

><p>Training never seemed to end. It was either school, training his mind, or NERV, training his body. Shinji slumped against the uncomfortable plastic benches. An unopened can of vending-machine iced-tea pressed against a magnificent bruise on his cheek. An older man in a grey NERV uniform and equally grey hair stepped up, a folded wooden box held under his arm.<p>

The old man smiled. "Good afternoon, Ikari-Kun."

Shinji looked up, one blackened eye tracking sluggishly. "Ah... Good afternoon, sir..." He trailed off.

He laughed, eye crinkling. "It's quite alright, I don't think we've been properly introduced. I am Fuyutsuki Kozou, Sub-Commander of NERV and Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University." He smiled wider. " I helped your mother create the discipline of Metaphysical Biology, which makes the Evangelion possible."

Shinji sat up, pain and fatigue forgotten. "My mother?"

The other man sat down on the bench , nodding. "Yes, she was a student of mine, and later became my research assistant, before utterly eclipsing me with her brilliance." Shinji smiled, he hadn't heard anything about his mother in so long...

The older man looked around. "Are you waiting for someone?"

Shinji shook his head. "Akagi-Sensei ran out of things to test today."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "I see. And that injury?"

Shinji winced, and visibly resisted the urge to rub the bruise. "One of the combat instructors, I didn't quite get my defenses up in time."

Fuyutsuki offered his own sympathetic wince, then he stood, offering a hand to the pilot. "Well then, join me in the cafeteria for a lunch? You haven't eaten yet I imagine."

The nearest NERV commissary (Central Dogma was rather large), took them a few minutes to reach. Taken so firmly by stories of his mother in college, Shinji hadn't quite realized they were already seated and served until the Sub-Commander stopped talking. When they finished eating, the Sub-Commander retrieved that wooden box.

"Interested in a game, Ikari-Kun? Your father used to play, but..." Shinji blinked before nodding. "Sure. Chess?" Fuyutsuki confirmed it. Shinji laughed weakly. "I know the rules, but I don't think I'm very good."

The Sub-Commander smiled genially. "We'll see, Ikari-Kun."

* * *

><p>It was hardly surprising that Shinji lost two out of three games. But of far more value was the conversation between pilot and sub-commander. They spoke about the boy's mother, the field of metaphysics, all and sundry, for several hours, until Shinji pointed out the elephant.<p>

"...Does it bother you? The..." He waved to his forehead. He didn't like talking about it in words the rest of NERV didn't understand, even if translated.

Fuyutsuki laughed. "I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me, but I am probably far less afraid of you than others I could name. No, I'm more curious." He moved his rook forward to take one of Shinji's pawns. "Has Akagi-Kun informed you of any of her findings?" Shinji shook his head. The older man bit off something that sounded like 'Ethics', before putting the friendly grandfather face back on.

"Your power, this thing you called Exaltation, has anchored itself to your soul. It also apparently verified several ancient spiritual beliefs or understandings about the construction of the human soul itself. During my time as a professor, we theorized the soul was one aspect of our greater self, it was where our... consciousness resided, as much as it did in our brains." Shinji nodded, moving a bishop to put pressure on the black king.

"The Exaltation anchored itself between what we now recognize as two separate aspects of the human soul. Random chance and quirk of the universe aside, you are the greatest find in the history of Metaphysical Biology, Ikari-kun."

Fuyutsuki moved a knight and put Ikari's king into Check. "...And Mate, Ikari-kun, we will have to play again sometime." Shinji nodded, smiling.

* * *

><p>Happy Misato was a loud Misato. One can of Yebisu down, many more to go. As the months marched on, Misato had progressively grown more relaxed about her state of dress and general sense of propriety. This was impressive, considering what she thought of as 'decent' before. Shinji for his part was both getting used to and starting to enjoy the sight of Misato not even bothering to get into her room before stripping out of her work clothes.<p>

Pen-Pen nudged Shinji's leg and the boy nodded, smiling. He set down the penguin-pet's dinner with a flourish. "There you go, as you like it!"

The sounds of splashing and relaxation floated through the apartment. Shinji had some time to kill while Misato was in the bath. Ducking into his room, he unearthed his Cello. He was just about to sit down, after having fully unpacked it, when Misato called. He leaned out of his door and looked down the hall. "Y-Yes, Misato-San?"

"Shiiinjii~kuu~un~" Misato sashayed out of the bathroom wrapped in a clinging, damp towel, another held up around her head and hair. Even if he'd already seen her naked, he couldn't quite get over how gorgeous she was.

"I'm in dire need of a back rub! Be totally awesome, my totally awesome roomie?" With a free arm, she kneaded her neck, (never mind that this did interesting things to how well the towel stayed up). Shinji stammered out an agreement. Pillows were laid out, and Misato made a big show of letting the towel drop just so, doing wonderful things to accentuate her figure.

She winked at him. "Relax, I'll be gentle, it's your first time." He sputtered, face twisting into a panicked grin, and very nearly bolted... But the Third Child held his ground.

Giving a massage was a whole different experience than being given one, and it was extremely rewarding. At first he was clumsy, but as he got used to the motions, he started figuring things out. Misato hummed appreciatively. "You're a natural, Shinji-kun."

Once Shinji got over his initial unease, Misato's moans of pleasure began in earnest, even more... Provocative than the ones she made whenever he cooked. She simultaneously relaxed and pushed into his hands. Smiling through the pillow, she murmured. "Mmm... Musician's hands..."

Shinji slowed his massage a touch. "Misato-san... Are you trying to seduce me?"

She turned up, one arm cradling the curve of her breast _just_ so. "A little~, Do you want me to stop?"

Shinji flopped back "...I really have no idea."

He returned to the back rub, his own sense of propriety keeping his hands on track, so to speak, much to Misato's chagrin. After a while, he noticed something. "Misato-san... Are you missing a rib?"

She turned her head to look at him. "...Yes, can you see that from back there?"

Shinji shook his head. "No, I just... Knew it? And that scar... from shrapnel... And, from not being treated quickly."

He seemed to be looking off into the distance, seeing something she couldn't. "You've smoked in the past, not often, but you did ...Your liver is impossible."

Emotions flickered past Misato's face, fear, memory, unease, half a dozen others. When his own face changed, she panicked. "No! Shinji-kun, you haven't done anything wrong! It's just... Bad memories. Second Impact... Only two people know what you just guessed... I doubt Ritsuko told you...?" Shinji shook his head. "And you've never met Kaji, so..." She trailed off, before smiling. "Now you got me all tense again! Get back to back-rubbing Shin-chan!"

It was amazing how fast one could adapt to new circumstances. Crippling fear of alienation and general social panic versus being able to put his hands all over a beautiful woman.

Well, he was still scared out of his mind, but at least it was _worth_ it.

* * *

><p>Things shifted into routine. Misato would come home, bathe, and Shinji would have dinner ready as she was toweling off, and digestion would be aided by an after-dinner back rub. Though these sometimes devolved into tickle-wars and Misato firing off innuendo in broadside. Shinji often lost these contests, mostly because Misato liked to play dirty.<p>

Massaged, flushed and decidedly relaxed, Misato poured herself into a yukata and lounged for the rest of the evening. Shinji had his eyes glued to a medical text, but they locked onto her cleavage every time she moved. She had the sneaking suspicion though that he was starting to ogle her just as much for her own benefit as his own. It felt really good to be wanted. Even for something so simple. Putting her arms on the table and leaning just so, she grinned, casting a shadow over his book. "Whatcha readin?"

"Ah-uhm... Some uh... Notes on acupuncture, actually."

She glanced over at the rest of the kitchen table, stacked with books, and quite a few note pads filled with notes and those strange characters. She thought she recognized a name on one of them. "Did the Sub-Commander write this one?"

He nodded. "Yeah, He loaned it to me when we talked me about my Exaltation." There were more text, historic Chinese theology, a book of zen koans, all kinds of things. "Quite the little scholar aren't cha, Shin-Chan?" The teenager ducked his head and blushed, but smiled under the praise.

Misato shifted, leaning more on one arm and closer to Shinji, grinning fondly. "So what's all this for? I doubt you study this in high school."

He blushed a bit harder and shook his head. "This is just for me. I... I know things. Like how I knew about your scar. I want to know why I know them... So I have to learn about them first." He shrugs helplessly. "It's like not knowing the word for something, you know what it is, but you can't say it." She nodded, thinking.

She stopped, for a moment, growing contemplative. Standing, she waved the teenager up. "Get up."

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked him over, before taking his chin in one hand and tilting his face to one side. Take off your shirt."

He sputtered, doubly so once she winked. He eventually complied, blushing notably. Thumb on her chin the older woman looked the pilot over, walking all the way around him as he stood with his shirt off.

"You're getting bigger."

He blinked. "Huh?"

She gave him a decisive nod. "Yep, bigger. Your eyes were in line with nipples when we first met." He sputtered at that, but she blew past his indignation. She tapped his chin, he'd definitely gained about three inches in almost five months. "You're wider too, broader shoulders." She licked her lips and grinned. "It works for you, I have to say, Shinji-kun." His skin turned molten, but smiled regardless.

Misato thought back. "You're also eating a lot. I mean, teenagers, it's what they do, but seriously."

He gave a sheepish bow, hunching his shoulders and smiling apologetically. "Sorry..."

She tapped his cheek with one loose fist, following it up with a winsome grin. "None of that,"

He nodded again, smiling and rubbing the back of his head. "I've been kinda sore lately, more than normal."

Misato winced. "Growing pains? I can imagine." She wrapped him up in one silk-sleeved arm. "If you're sore I can always give you a back rub~." Before he could answer, she took on a contemplative look. "Y'know, if you keep growing like this we might need to get you a bigger bed... Or I suppose you could just move into my room, my futon's got plenty of extra space..."

A few weeks ago, Shinji would've probably been utterly incapable of responding to that, or if he had, it would've been very awkward or lacking in guile or wit. When it came to Misato however, the mantra was Adapt or Die. Shinji put on his best knowing smirk and threw one arm around Misato's middle, still a bit stiff, a bit awkward.

Smiling, he gave her a look sidelong. "I'd like that. But you'd have to clean your room. And I've seen how you sleep. I'd never know where I'd end up!"

The look on Misato's face was worth the flirting, innuendo and thinly-veiled sexual references he endured for the next two days.


	10. Realization

Fuyutsuki tossed a sheaf of papers on the commander's desk. "The situation is becoming untenable."

"The Dawkins protocols will hold for a while longer. The MAGI are functioning perfectly."

I'm not talking about SEELE. I'm talking about your son."

"What of the Third?"

The Sub-Commander waved at the papers, growing increasingly aggravated with each point of data."Voice Stress analysis, sleep studies performed by Section 2, Akagi's physicals, telemetry from Evangelion simulations. Between the scenario's initial psychological sculpting, on top of his Exaltation, and _your_ isolation, the boy is on his way towards a psychotic break."

Gendo took up the papers and leafed through them, glasses for once clear. His eyes tracked from word to word while Fuyutsuki cooled down. The commander looked up. "Veracity?"

Fuyutsuki stood up straighter. "I had the MAGI run through the analysis, a two-of-three consensus. And before you ask, I've already accounted for the conspiracy buffer."

A grunt followed. "Understood. Who was the dissenter?"

"Caspar."

The younger man set the papers down and shifted in his seat, threading his fingers together and tilting his head just so. He was quiet for a long moment.

"Thank you, Fuyutsuki-Sensei. The matter will be attended to."

Fuyutsuki felt a chill run down his spine.

* * *

><p>Misato leaned over a console, frowning. "What the hell is the Dawkins protocol, and why is it taking up... Seventeen percent of the MAGI's operational budget?"<p>

Ritsuko kicked back in her chair and rolled to another counter, where a warm cup of coffee waited. "Who are you and what have you done with Katsuragi Misato."

The dark haired woman huffed and stood up, planting her hands on her hips and twisting her mouth to one side. "Hey! I know my way around computers, and it's not like the screens are hard to read."

Ritsuko shook her head and sighed, rolling back to her primary station. She tapped a few keys to unlock it while answering. "If you _must_ know, the Dawakins Protocol is a memetic filter and conditioning program. It's a security measure in case NERV needs to execute information warfare."

"...So?"

"It's named after Richard Dawkins, who more or less popularized the idea of memes and natural selection applied to cultures. Basically Darwinism for ideas."

"Okay... So why are we using it?"

"Because of the Third Child's glowing problem."

"It's not a problem."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's not a problem! I mean it's weird and scary and I'm sure you're just pulling your hair out over it, but he's a sweetie, and he's done nothing to hurt anyone!"

Ritsuko sucked on her teeth. "Be that as it may, orders are orders, and anything to do with Shinji's new status is being carefully scrubbed from all outgoing media. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Shinji is just a pilot."

Misato reigned in her temper. "So why again is this Dawkins thing running?"

"The Magi are scrubbing out every scrap of digital information and media coverage on the Third's powers. Footage is being edited and seamlessly reinserted."

"...How much is there really? He's never done the glowing gold stuff outside of his Evangelion."

"More than you'd think. and the roof of your apartment, for one. If you were wondering what that EFJ-17 reduction in your pay was, it was allowing him to perform his experiments out in the open."

* * *

><p>The fault was unexpected in its simplicity. The Geofront's primary power source was a trio of fusion reactors buried off site of Central Dogma. However, those reactors were tasked with powering the majority of Tokyo-3, and the critical Project-E facilities. Other regions of the base were run on conventional, if highly efficient pre-impact power generators, natural gas most notably.<p>

The Prinbow Box housed the Evangelion simulation bodies, and for the moment, was the site of Unit-00's reactivation test. Also on site for further analysis were the remains of Shamshel, the fourth Angel.

A gas line, perfectly mundane in construction and purpose. Its length went in straight, unbroken lines throughout the complex, terminating in furnaces that in turn heated and powered great chunks of the complex.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko was a cautious person by nature. She didn't take risks if she could avoid them, and only once bet on 'A Sure Thing'. The horse unfortunately was lame, and the scientist wisely decided to never listen to Misato again, with regards to gambling. Or to ever gamble again, for that matter.<p>

But she was also a scientist, and that meant Certainty was part of her daily life. So was uncertainty, but the math checked out. Reassured by her calculations, the head of Project-E indulged in her flair for the dramatic. A significant portion of NERV, including the Commander and Sub-Commander, were in attendance for Unit-0's successful reactivation. Granted it had already done so successfully two days ago, but a ceremony would be good for morale and break up the doldrums.

* * *

><p>After that one incredibly embarrassing, cryptic and outright <em>weird<em> conversation with the girl, Shinji was, for lack of a better term, interested in Ayanami Rei. He understood the feelings of sexual attraction well enough to know he wasn't lusting after her, at least not consciously. But she was a mystery. After that day she never remained in the same room if she could help it, but he somehow wasn't offended. She always greeted him and bade him goodbye, even as she moved to avoid him with utmost efficiency.

A mystery to say the least. Aloof, not disdainful. Un-socialized, not withdrawn.

Now he was struck with a new piece of information. Rei, who was normally someone who apparently could not smile, did so in the presence of his father. She was animated, girlish and charmingly energetic, and all of it directed at the taciturn man. It was baffling.

Feeling his stomach churn, Shinji leaned back against a bench and willed his stomach to settle. A brief pulse of power within his body responded, and he visibly relaxed.

Misato leaned into the wall over him. Her hair fell over one shoulder in a silky curtain, and she smiled. "Excited?"

"Huh?"

"Are you excited? If this test goes off without a hitch, you won't be the only active pilot. I don't know about you, but I feel a whole hell of a lot more comfortable having two Evangelions ready to fight."

Shinji shrugged weakly. "I suppose... I'm not much of a fighter though..."

"Shinij-kun, need I remind you that it was _your idea_ to grapple with an Angel to make sure an N2 mine hit it full on? That's not just being a fighter, that's being soldier." She sat down next to him before he could respond. "I don't think I told you that. I had to chew you out as soon as possible, for the lesson to stick. But I was scared when you did that."

She leaned back and sighed. "Being a soldier... It's knowing when to sacrifice yourself, for a greater cause... I think you understood that back in that fight." She sighed. "Unfortunately, a lot of soldiers die for no real reason, their lives are wasted, not spent."

The teenager turned to look up at her. "Misato-san...?"

She gave him a wan grin. "It's tough. I'm not just a soldier, I'm a commanding officer. I may have to make the choice to send you or any other pilot to their death... I don't want to, but I may have to."

She shook her head. "Man I hate this maudlin crap. C'mon, let's go bug Ritsuko about all the shiny buttons and knobs. I think you being there aggravates her. The whole..." She waved at her forehead. "That thing."

Shinji let out a two-note laugh while the older woman pulled him up and dragged him to find their resident mad scientist.

* * *

><p>The procedure was simple: synchronize with the Evangelion.<p>

As Shinji learned the hard way, this was a subjective experience, and not one that could be properly codified into a manual. Rei, since the day she first stepped into an Evangelion, knew that it did not like her. Without the shackles and restraints placed upon it, even her own iron will could not subdue it.

But today she could. If she had words to describe it, her synchronization was akin to going down, into her own mind and personality. To find that one point of commonality between herself and the Evangelion. To Doctor Akagi's ever increasing vexation, however, that point never stayed consistent... And so Unit-0 was always at a risk of going mad.

It was fortunate that Rei was the most persistent, methodical person NERV had ever known.

Ritsuko was in rare form. Well rested, only mildly caffeinated , and supplementing her single allowed cigarette with at least one nicotine patch. "Well, here we are ladies and gentlemen. If we're successful here, we'll have reached or goal of sixty-six percent activation rate. That means we can use Unit-0 in combat. We all know its the prototype, and well... buggy, but between Rei and our own efforts, we've got this locked down."

Behind her were six-inch thick armored glass panels, windows into the test chamber itself. Consoles hummed reassuringly, and NERV technicians were eager to show their stuff. Maya stood next to the doctor, portable terminal clasped under her arms and looking pert and full of sunshine. Shigeru and Makoto were at their stations, initiating pre-test checks, but smiling widely.

The primary control room was filled with NERV employees and support staff, most people standing elbow to elbow. Other observation decks were similarly packed, and more than a few people were watching via live video feed.

Forming an unlikely trio were Fuyutsuki, Misato and Shinji, standing with the best view of the orange Evangelion. Rei sat on the edge of the released plug, a concession to showmanship on Ritsuko's part. It clicked then in many people's minds just how big the Evangelions were, seeing the tiny teenage girl sitting on the spine of a monster-mecha.

The Commander was also in attendance, but elsewhere in the Prinbow Box. A backlog of paperwork from the JSSDF forced him to miss the initial activation sequence.

Rei stood and looked down at the main control room. "I am ready to begin."

Ritsuko nodded. "Alright Rei, you know what to do." She turned to the scientists, engineers and technicians who all made this possible. "We're starting the activation test."

Rei nodded, and sealed the plug behind her. Shigeru and Hyuga bent to their tasks, initiating the sequence. Their fingers flew over keyboards and input commands with practiced ease. This was just like the dry rehearsals and the previous test two days ago. It worked then, it should work now.

Should.

In turn, the men and women at the consoles spoke out. "Syncrograph start."

"Connect primary contacts."

"All processes are tracking forward and clear."

"Minor fluctuations in EKG, within safe margins."

"Good, we're at Stage One. Start Stage Two." Ritsuko turned back to the audience. "Stage One's the easy part. When Rei makes it past Stage Two, she'll have synchronized, and we'll be good to go."

She nodded to Shigeru. "Connecting secondary contacts."

"A-10 nerve connection, normal."

"Configure the language logic interface for Japanese."

"All preliminary contacts established. Performance nominal."

"Bi-Directional circuits are open."

"Synchronization at thirty-nine point six percent."

"Harmonics are... Fluctuating, but within acceptable limits."

Rei's vision swam as the plug walls dissolved into sheets of colors and symbols, before finally fading away until she could only see and feel through the Evangelion and the wetware interface. Unit-0 stood a bit straighter within its restraints.

"I have synchronized."

* * *

><p>The furnace was a top of the line model, barely three years old and in perfect condition. It was installed with all due caution and foresight. Automated systems would detect any gas leaks and immediately shut the furnace down before triggering fire suppression systems.<p>

The equipment was at an excellent standard. Routine maintenance was not. Those sensors had short-circuited, feeding a constant cycle of good status to the failsafes, while their leads ended on dead gas-sniffing terminals.

A tiny bit of weakened metal in one gas line in turn became a crack, that in turn lead to a raging firestorm.

The Prinbow box was a study in compromises. The fire itself was hot, deadly and raging onward as it burnt through more gas, found more sustainable fuel elsewhere in the lower floors, and in turn defeated the countermeasures that would've prevented further gas leaks. Pipes melted and burst into flame and the heat grew higher and hotter. Alarms screamed down every hall as emergency lights flashed.

But for all of that, the Prinbow Box would not have fallen, if not for being ahead of schedule and under budget.

That is to say, with corners cut.

Concrete support pillars were incorrectly assembled, and the cavities and channels that allowed for pre-stressed construction in turn became brittle rock surrounding sealed air pockets. The pillars cracked and shattered, great swaths of load bearing material sloughing away to reveal rebar and badly cured material within. The upper floors and test chamber walls began to groan and creak under the strain, while the people above grabbed on to anything they could reach.

Then the blaze reached a main gas hub, and life for a great many people suddenly became _interesting._

* * *

><p><em>...Dreams? Memories? Where am I. What am I?<em>

She tasted blood, but she couldn't tell if it was hers or not. It was also green and angry.

The sky was lit across the horizon with towering pillars of gold and silver light. Impossible... things moved off in the far distance, rendered murky by atmosphere as much as their own intrinsic nature. The great city of the gods that rose up to surround Meru was riven by war and weapons of reality distortion. The Green Sun shone high above, sickly and punishing, but at the same time restrained. She knew the only reason they weren't all dead from that light was the Deva's inherent strength of character.

Noble or not, the war to end all wars was not going well. She couldn't begin to count how many were wounded, and the dead piled in even higher numbers. The world stank like an abattoir, and it was all she could do to keep hope alive. They would win.

They had to.

Nearby, one of her circle was bent over a man whose body had been quite frankly exploded. The doctor hadn't even bothered to strip out of his blood spattered armor. With one glowing hand he held a plant bulb, forcing that light and reaffirming power of Righteousness into it. The bulb sprouted tendrils and roots that grew around his hand, and half a second later, he drove the growing bulb into the warrior's ruined torso.

The roots and vines surged through, oozing foam and pulling closed rent flesh. Organs were wrapped in careful vegetation, and in a few seconds, the man was mostly whole.

The Doctor saw her then. The lower half of his face was open to the air behind his lion-mask. He smiled. One life saved.

Untold trillions to go. Including themselves.

* * *

><p>The voice was perfect in modulation and tone, repeated with utmost care to be as consistent as humanly posisble. Only one person could speak like that.<p>

"-Octor Akagi. Doctor Akagi. Wake Up Please."

"R-Rei? What?" Ritsuko regained consciousness with a racking cough, choking on grit and foul chemical smoke. The whole test observatory had listed, sagging into a pit while a great deal of the test chamber walls had collapsed into each other. Through the smoke and fumes, she could see Unit-0, still active, but bracing one of the wall panels against itself. It hadn't gone berserk and killed them all, so they had that going for them.

Rei was brief in her reply. "There was an explosion below. Many people are injured. I did not want to move, as I may get in the way."

Ritsuko coughed again and clutched her arm. Her hand came away bloody. "Th-That's great Rei. You did fine- MAYA! STATUS!"

Makoto waved a flashlight through the muck, cradling the young woman in his other arm. "Maya's down ma'am, concussion it looks like." He pointed the beam at a console. "Bank C's still got power and telemetry."

Ritsuko crawled over to the console and brushed the screen clear of grit. Unit-0 was still on umbilical power, and that was from the fusion plants. She turned and tried to see through the gloom. Emergency lights were starting to come on, and alarms were ringing throughout the complex. She was starting too see far too many people down and bleeding.

Whirling around, she coughed again. "Katsuragi! Commander! Fuyutsuki-Sensei!"

The Sub-Commander groaned. "We're here Akagi-kun."

Ritsuko turned and saw Misato, Fuyutsuki and Shinji behind a fallen support beam. Shinji was wrapping his bloody hands with pieces of his uniform button-down while Misato rubbed his back. The Sub-Commander looked haggard and shaken, but his eyes were focused.

The scientist shook her head to clear it before turning her attention back to the orange Evangelion. "Rei! Can you talk to topside?"

The Evangelion shifted slightly. "Radio communications still function, Doctor Akagi."

"Good! You'll have to coordinate for triage and emergency medical. Can you do that? It's training kernel C-6."

"I remember that kernel." The line clicked off.

* * *

><p>Slowly, space was cleared for the wounded. The air was hot and gritty, and what was left of the ventilation system groaned under the strain of moving so much dead air. A battery powered lantern filled the observation room with rich, incandescent gold light. Ritsuko was about to light up a crinkled cigarette, before Fuyutsuki gave her a Look and shook his head.<p>

She slowly lowered the lighter.

Misato coughed. "So... What's our status?"

Ritsuko leaned over the sketched map of the Sigma Unit, and Prinbow Box within. Large swaths were scribbled out in permanent marker. "Most of the complex has collapsed in some way or another. Ventilation's shot to hell. We've got no power, people who need medical attention..."

The lantern guttered out, its batter old and dead. The twenty or so men and women in the chamber felt the darkness rush in to crush them.

Then the room was lit with the light of the sun, and Shinji sat there, grinning sheepishly between the Sub-Commander and Misato with a golden disc hovering over his brow.

Outside the Sigma Unit, Section 2 was confronted by its glaring weakness: Lack of manpower. Fortunately, that was mitigated by UN mandated security contracts and other loopholes. What Section 2 lacked in on-site resources could be made up for in JSSDF support packages. Ikari preferred to run NERV and Tokyo-3 as an autonomous entity, but the reality was far from it.

Clearance was requested, granted, and the Geofront opened to the JSSDF. Medics, recovery craft, earth movers and more. Men and women piled into the Geofront, and descended upon Sigma Unit.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko sucked on her teeth, pouring over the map once more. "We're not trapped in here, not really. The problem is that we can't get the injured out fast enough. Smoke inhalation and their injuries will get them and us before we really escape."<p>

One of the technicians whispered, "So what do we do?"

"Simple." Misato pointed at the orange Evangelion, still bracing against one wall.

"Rei walks right on out."

* * *

><p>Being the prototype, most of the features demonstrated on that model were in turn propagated to all subsequent Evangelion designs. This included a full radio-magnetic sensor suite and electronic warfare package. This, among other things, included a highly specialized form of ground penetrating radar.<p>

Rei was able to 'see' through the collapsed building, which to her Evangelion was positively tiny and as sturdy as paper. Especially considering she was still on umbilical power. The issue was precision. It took time and effort to clear everyone out of the one direction she had to go in, so she was patient, utterly still and focused on the task at hand.

Kernel C-6 was fairly sparse on detail, but it was carefully constructed to be as broadly applicable as possible. Secure a temporary safe zone, then secure passage to the nearest allied recovery point. Phrased so openly, the human brain would spiral out into creativity to accomplish those objectives, especially one properly trained to in turn break large problems into smaller problems.

Rei was alarmingly good at that.

Below her in the test chamber, there were no people to get in the way. The wall braced against the Evangelion's shoulder was easily negated as an obstacle. Massive hands sunk into the panels and concrete, crushing steel and more into powder and mangled chunks of metal. Handfuls at a time, the wall was torn down to dust and rubble, and spread around the Evangelion's feet.

Ahead of her was the collapsed ruin of a multi story, subterranean research base.

She started digging.

* * *

><p>The Evangelion-deficient survivors and injured worked with what they had. They were fortunate however, to have Shinji along. He was proving his strength and stamina many times over. That which he could not lift, his strikes destroyed as handily as Rei did.<p>

Ahead and to their left, Rei kept digging, and above they could begin to see tiny gaps in the roof of the complex, which in turn let in the light of the Geofront. Shinji himself still lit the way, while men and women carried their wounded in makeshift stretchers and on their backs and in arm. The group came up to another obstruction, a tangle of steel and cracked concrete. It was the largest obstacle they'd seen yet, and one everyone knew Shinji could not lift.

Shinji walked up to the wreckage and laid one hand on it. He slapped it once, and the metal _ponged_ obligingly. He hit it two more times, drawing forth more echoing peals of metal. He nodded to himself and stepped back.

Dropping into a stance, he exhaled. Streamers of light and motes of solar fire curled around his arms, and his brow glowed brighter.

Rearing back, he sucked in a breath. Any strike was more than just his fist hitting the target. He had to strike _through_ the target... It was not just his fist, but everything behind that fist. His hips pivoted, and from his toes through his thighs, into his spine and back and out that one hand, he pushed his open palm into the pile of rubble.

Aoba helped the Sub-Commander along, the former let his jaw drop open. "Holy Shit."

* * *

><p>Rei broke through at almost the same time as the Geofront rescue teams. Almost immediately, ramps and metal plates were laid down as trucks and dozers shoved more debris out of the way. The NERV employees cheered as fiber optic sunlight joined with the beacon surrounding the Third Child.<p>

Hundreds of people piled into the opening, while Rei and Unit-0 marched off for recovery and disembarkation. Once the initial dust settled, doctors and paramedics and everyone possibly trained on First Aid were thrown into the rush to save life and limb.

Shinji found himself shoved into the nearest corner with everyone else classified as 'Not in Danger', and left to his own devices. He stared at his bloody hands, and felt something stir in his gut.

He heard paramedics shout out to each other for supplies, assistance. Their cool professionalism shout through with the very real panic that they couldn't save everyone.

_They're wrong_.

Some were hissing at each other while desperately executing chest compressions. They couldn't get her breathing. It wasn't working, they hadn't got to her in time.

_We can do this. I can do this._

He clenched his fists and felt his palms sting. Was this ego, he felt? He was so absolutely sure he was right. He could find out what was wrong. He would just _know_. And he knew how to fix it. He could make things _better_.

He was on his feet and moving. He shoved his way past the two paramedics. "H-Hey kid! G-What the hell are you doing!"

Shinji didn't bother answering, he shoved them again, hard enough to send them both sprawling. He raised his arms and put one hand on the woman's sternum and closed his eyes.

He opened them and turned to the two men. "Her lungs have collapsed. She has thirty seconds before permanent brain damage."

The paramedics blinked and scrambled to their feet. "Wha-No _way_, how would you even _know?_"

Shinji's voice dropped an octave, and he spoke with certainty that echoed in their bones. "Because I do."

They jumped to and saved the woman's life in less than ten seconds. Neither man thought to question the faintly glowing disc on the boy's head.

* * *

><p>He found Ritsuko with a bloody gash in her arm and suffering from exhaustion. He couldn't do much about the latter, but the former was well within his skills. The older woman thought otherwise.<p>

"W-What are you doing Shinji!"

He shushed her and focused back on her arm, a needle and thread held in his fingers. "Quiet. And Hold still."

She squirmed and tried to pull her arm away. "Where the hell do you learn how to stitch wounds?"

He puffed up his cheeks and blew a bit of sweat-stuck hair away from his brow. Setting his jaw, he answered. "I read it in a book, now hold still!"

That, understandably, made her want to do anything _but_ hold still. Shinji however was much stronger than he looked. He glowed in full force, his body surrounded by a growing column of solar fire and mandala. His fingers blurred with the skill of a master surgeon, and the scientist barely felt the sting of the needle.

* * *

><p>Another life saved, and still dozens more to go. Men and women were shouting now, for more bandages, medicine, anything. Shirts were being cut up, and water boiled to sterilize equipment.<p>

Shinji looked at his hands and the half-used roll of bandages he held. A nurse grabbed the length of sterile fabric before he could blink, and he was gone. The chaos and panic reminded him more of historical footage from the Second Impact. Tent cities sprang up around disaster zones, becoming havens of relief and treatment. And just like in those films, the supplies ran out well before the injured.

That surge of ego welled up again, and challenged the world. _Fine. Be that way_.

He raised his bloody, bandaged hands and set his stance, before walking into the storm. "I'll heal you all with my bare hands, if I have to."

A burn victim thrashed against the gurney while nurses scrabbled to inject a sedative and slather salve over the man's blackened limbs. Shinji swept in and held the man down. "Sorry!"

With one arm braced across his chest, and all too aware of how much agony that must've caused, the boy hurried. His other hand folded rapidly into mudra, one symbol after another, while a steady, warm glow grew in his palms. The mantle of light he wore earlier had faded, and now it came back in force. He mumbled under his breath, reciting acupuncture points alongside textbook anatomy. His motion left outlines of those hand symbols in the air, before he brought his opened palm down on the man's chest.

"Heart." The boy intoned, before lifting his hand. He brought it down once more, onto the man's brow. "Crown."

He stood over the burned man, himself surrounded by a growing column of solar fire and expanding mandala. Ghostly arms spun lazily around, hands shifting into symbols and mudra like his own flesh and blood limb. His hand moved from point to point on the man's body, humming another name or structure.

The strange treatment lasted several hours, and with each touch, the man's burns changed. Not healed so much as treated. Wounds were cleaned without water or cloth touching them. Blisters collapsed into nothing before they could fully form, and skin too damaged to save instead broke free and sloughed off.

A task that would've taken an entire surgical team, quality tools and a sterile environment was done by one teenager, with his bare hands in the ruins of a collapsed building.

Shinji stepped back and exhaled, before pressing both hands into the man's abdomen. "Solar Plexus."

Through it all, the man had continued to thrash, despite the sedatives and Shinji's own attention. He still fought at that base level to survive. But those veteran surgeons and medics could tell. The man was stable, no longer going into shock. The man would be scarred forever. But he would heal and live.

The boy looked at his work and nodded. "His skin should grow back beneath it. But you should bandage it just to be safe. I'll come back to check on him later."

Shinji bowed and moved on, leaving people to stare at the growing collection of glowing gold mandala and six extra arms radiating from it.

* * *

><p><em>Compound fracture to the right arm, cracked collarbone on the same side, bruising, contusions, minor flesh wounds. Mild smoke inhalation. Moderate risk of infection<em>.

He was already halfway finished when he realized who he was working on.

Light bounced off of the Commander's glasses, and the strange glass badge that most NERV staff wore.

* * *

><p>Zero casualties.<p>

Many people would call that a miracle.

Today, people were calling that Ikari Shinji.

The cavernous space turned triage theater was filled with people. NERV employees, surface-side paramedics, citizens, scientists, soldiers. The chamber was lit not from harsh operating lights and spot lamps, but the warm glow of the sun at high noon. In the center of it all was Shinji, surrounded by a tower of golden light and wreathed in an impossibly complex mandala.

Men and women pressed forward to shake his hands, and he thanked them, blushing furiously and ducking into his shoulders. Some moved into hug him, or kiss him, but he refused as politely as he could. For as many people he thanked, others he gently pulled off to one side. "You're hurt worse than you think. Lie down and let's get you some help."

Misato smiled and let the light warm her face. "Won't you believe in him?"

Ritsuko turned, trying hard not to rub her bandaged arm. "What?"

Misato's mouth curled into corners much like the Cheshire Cat. "That... Even if there is no God or Buddha... There is Shinji-kun."

The blonde woman's reply was agonized. "...Tell me you didn't just quote a pulpy tokusatsu comic."

Misato chose not to dignify that accusation with a response.

Finally, Shinji came to the Sub-Commander of NERV. The old man was winded, and had one arm wrapped around his middle, but he offered his other. "Well done, Ikari-kun."

The teenager helped the old man to his feet, smiling. Then the Third Child frowned deeply. "You're having a heart attack."

The Sub-Commander blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

Shinji pulled the man to his feet. "Your chest is hurting because you're having a heart attack."

The older man looked very well at ease, facing a life-threatening event like that. Only a slightly hurried pace his speech said otherwise. "Oh dear. Well. We should do something about that, shouldn't we?"

Shinji nodded and brought his hands together, folding his fingers again into mudra and symbols as fast as the eye could see. The mandala behind him spun faster, expanding out into a towering array of discs and arms. He pressed the heel of one hand into the old man's forehead, while the other landed on his heart.

"You're not having a heart attack now."


	11. En

NERV was a tangled nest of conspiracies within conspiracies, headed up by all manner of people and following all sorts of causes. Most of them were benign and not really conspiracies; not in the sense of spy thrillers or ancient cabals. Instead they were the normal office fare, relationships, pranks and simple human behavior.

But everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief when the JSSDF relief teams uprooted and marched out of the Geofront, drastically reducing the amount of eyes on special projects great and small.

* * *

><p>Still sporting a few bandages, Lieutenant Katsuragi found herself putting on yet another hat. Lead investigator, heading the team that would find out of the destruction of the Prinbow Box was sabotage or not.<p>

This was hampered by the fact that Misato was not a trained forensic analyst, (though Section 2 had several on staff), in addition to the actual test structure being a half-collapsed ruin.

Ritsuko spun in her chair, visibly resisting the urge to rub at the bandages wrapping around her arm. She looked up at Misato and sighed. "The MAGI keep telling me the same thing they've been telling me; it's a freak industrial accident. Faulty construction plus budget cuts on maintenance checks leads to exploding bad things. Sometimes there just isn't a plot here."

Misato sighed, arms folded under her breasts and one finger tapping against her bicep. "Ritsuko, I know you. I've played poker with you, I've cleaned you out more times than I have fingers and toes. You're lying to my face and I don't like it."

The other woman gave her a helpless wave of her arms, kicking against the desk to roll aimlessly around. "But that's what the MAGI _is_ telling me!"

"Sure," Misato allowed. "But you're the one who tells us what the MAGI says. This is NERV, Rits-chan, everybody's in something up to their eye-balls, even me."

Ritsuko's jaw went slack, and lost all tension in her back and shoulders. She listed forward like an unstrung marionette. her glasses slipped down her nose. "So what, do you not even trust me now?"

The other woman shrugged, as if to say that was a given. "I have to trust someone."

* * *

><p>Exercising power was vitally important skill. Too much and you wasted it, too little and you gained nothing. There was an art to it. Machiavelli was both right and wrong, Rousseau was right and wrong. There was no unifying model of human interaction, so to be the master of it, one had to embrace the diversity inherent in the human condition. Gendo internalized that truth decades ago, and it had served him well since.<p>

All across the world, people were selfish, altruistic, indifferent or simply not consciously aware of how far they would go for their own benefit, or the benefit of others. There were a thousand archetypes for the human condition, and a hundred thousand yet left undefined. With that understanding, the supreme commander walked through the paths of others. Their hands were his hands, and he saw what they saw, literally and figuratively.

No one questioned how Gendo had the phone numbers of every rank officer in the JSSDF. Nor did they question how he had a small, unassuming rolodex stored in his deck, filled not with contact information, but brief, handwritten notes and pressure points of a thousand politicians and industry magnates.

An older man sat on a clean, white painted bench, in a well-tended to park, enjoying the sun with his daughter and two grandsons. He did not ask how a plain-clothes Section 2 agent jogged up to next to him, only him, then dropped a cellular phone and finally jogged off. Picking it up, he pressed speed dial for the only programmed number. He did not need to ask who was on the other end.

"General."

"Ikari-kun."

Gendo replaced his phone in the cradle and leaned back in his chair. The matter was resolved.

* * *

><p>The professor had time. vanishingly little of it, but he had time.<p>

His MAGI access was Unrestricted, which was to say he had on paper the most access to the MAGI systems other than Doctor Akagi or the Commander. In reality, his access was quite limited, but it would suffice.

He was not an intelligence agent, nor a secret government operative. No one with training. He was a teacher, a professor of a formerly niche subject that changed the world. What he lacked in training he made up for in experience. And one mark of experience was admitting that you didn't know something, and would be willing to find out. So Fuyutsuki 'found out', with his own small network of contacts and favors, how to accomplish his investigation as quietly as possible.

A perk of his access level lay in the fact that he would not be logged by the MAGI. Such a log would also keep track of any external devices connected to the supercomputer triumvirate. The old man connected a small device, about the size of a pocket defence book. It was basically an external hard drive. The consumer culture of the late nineties ground to a dramatic halt with Second Impact, and how only sixteen years later did it really pick back up again.

Fuyutsuki signed and threaded the serial cable into the available port. He sat down and didn't bother looking over his shoulder.

* * *

><p>The commander's office was dark, imposing, to say the least. The back-lit etchings shifted, some lines glowed brighter than others. It made the room feel unsettlingly alive. The commander, his father, sat behind the glassy, obsidian-black desk. He barely stood out against the dark back wall. His uniform jacket blended in, as did his hair and beard. Shinji felt like he was staring at a ghost. The adult held his elbows on the table with gloved hands laced in front of his mouth. He looked down at his son past his orange-tinted glasses.<p>

Shinji sank in on himself, sitting in the painfully uncomfortable chair. "Father."

The commander broke his position and flipped a hidden switch. Almost immediately the polarizing glass covering the floor and left wall cleared up. The Geofront swept out below them, Shinji almost jumped out of his seat, for a moment feeling like the floor vanished. The room grew bright and sunny, though the shadows around the commander remained thick. "In light of your talents, I have added you to NERV's medical staff. You will report to the Head of Medical Operations for your assignments and work schedules."

Shinji blinked, still a little off balance. Too shocked to be immediately intimidated."Sir?"

Gendo continued as if he hadn't hear the boy. "I cannot speak as to the specifics, but consider this a medical internship. You will be given accreditation with all institutions of higher learning and medical profession. I however, require that you remain discreet. If your exotic abilities became further public knowledge, NERV's security envelope would become overtaxed."

Shinji nodded, that was more or less what Misato told him. "I-I understand."

Gendo nodded, and his son knew a dismissal when he saw it.

Before the pilot crossed through the door, the commander cleared his throat. Shinji stopped with one foot over the threshold, and began to clinch inward.

Gendo was quiet for a long moment. "Shinji."

The boy held agonizingly still, waiting. "Thank you."

He inched out of the office, wracked with stress and euphoria and a million other whirling emotions.

* * *

><p>Existing in as much a virtual space as a real one, a black monolith faded into view. A bright red 09 stenciled in block letters, with the bracketed sub heading that read SOUND ONLY. Another monolith faded in with an ominous hum, followed by another, and another. The last was 01. 07 thrummed, the voice behind the monolithic project distorted and devoid of accent or intonation, completely synthesized.<p>

"NERV has failed to report in for almost six months. The Fifth Messenger refuses to descend upon the base earth."

04 spoke next, the red symbols on its face glowing in time with syllables. "Aside from publicly available sources, we have no information flowing out of Tokyo-3. The city and MAGI have gone into autistic-mode."

More monoliths began speaking, each one picking up where another left off, and too fast to track who was saying what. After a few moments, it was as if they were all one mind, speaking its thoughts aloud.

"All our local assets have replied via backup channels, incapable of further reports. Ikari has issued a total lock down on communications."

"We have received word of a breach in Ikari's security."

"JSSDF personnel were called in to assist with an 'industrial accident'."

"Ikari will certainly squelch that breach."

"Agreed. Mark all incoming data from JSSDF sources as 'Suspect' and 'Pending Corroboration."

"Concur. We have an alert from Qurman; Page one-thousand and thirty-six has changed."

"The Dead Sea Scrolls have updated themselves again?"

"They have."

"The procedures are set in place?"

"They are. We have multiple recordings and transcriptions, with confirmed records of the previous transcription."

"Has a translation come through yet?"

"No, the alert was only this morning, and our translators are working carefully to avoid mistakes. We all know how well the Scrolls can influence the mind of the viewer."

"A wise precaution "

"The last time this happened was nearly thirty years ago, was it not?"

"Correct."

The monolith of SEELE 01 faded away, revealing a truly ancient man, supported by machines and metal in a single desk chair. He nodded. "Execute Prometheus and prepare further contingencies. We may need to adjust our timetable."

* * *

><p>Ritsuko did not have one office, or one laboratory, or one anything, in NERV. As the head of Project E, she was the first, second, and often times last word in dispensation of floor space and resources. So there was really no 'one' place to find her. Rei however, could locate anyone, anywhere within the Geofront and related installations. The professor was in one of the many specialized terminals for the MAGI. They were less graphically intensive compared to the War Room's 'big-board' holographic displays, but infinitely more useful for the kind of work Ritsuko did.<p>

Rei all but appeared in the doorway, whisper-quiet and unassuming. "Doctor Akagi."

The older woman turned, pushing her hair out of her eyes. It had been a long morning. "Rei?"

Rei stepped inside the terminal room. "I have questions."

The First Child never quite fully understood the concept of politeness, not the same way normal people did. It proved to be easier to adapt to her mannerisms, than to fully instruct her. Ritsuko took the awkward pause after Rei's statement as the unvoiced 'Do you have a moment to answer them? Please?'

Ritsuko pulled off her glasses and nodded. "Of course, Rei. What do you need?"

Rei began without preamble. "The Commander explained that the Third Child does not have an AT field like I. His Absolute Territory remains inverted, like the rest of humanity."

The other woman chewed on her cheek a bit before answering. "The commander is correct. What Shinji does exists outside of... Almost everything we know. We're pretty sure its related to his Metaphysical Biology." Ritsuko was suddenly glad she kept dying her hair; that boy was probably going to make her go grey in a year or less.

Rei nodded. "Intellectual field pioneered by Ikari Yui and Fuyutsuki Kozou, summarized as 'Anatomy of the Soul'."

Ritsuko gave the pilot an approving grin. "Absolutely correct, but it's still a young, unexplored field of study, and we're running into a few blocks."

Rei's silence was as good as asking a question. Ritsuko suppressed a full blown smile and continued. "We're still working on creating better analysis equipment, Shinji apparently has a symbiotic construct attached to his soul, but we don't know more than that."

Rei cocked her head to one side and blinked. "His power is external?"

Ritsuko held her hand level and wiggled it. "Somewhat. We can't 'see it' yet, but he violates a lot of rules we take as self-evident. Conservation of Energy, most notably. He seems to waste a lot of power with the iconic projections and luminescent effects."

"He does not impose his absolute territory?"

Ritsuko shook her head. "Since his AT field still faces inward, like mine and most everyone else's..."

Rei was quiet for a few moments."Understood."

* * *

><p>Shinji stood up and smiled when he saw a familiar face. "Takamichi-Sensei!"<p>

The brunette woman grinned, adjusting her glasses. "Shinji-kun. I hear you're looking to put me out of a job?"

The boy bowed, grinning sheepishly. "No, but... I want to help people."

She laughed, standing. "You're in the right place. NERV serves as all basic civil services in Tokyo-3. Your little light show has quite a few people talking, so we don't know how long you're going to stay under the radar."

The doctor waved for Shinji to follow her. "I haven't actually received any specific orders, but I can guess that the gag order on your powers is still in effect. So until I hear otherwise, we're going to assume it's still an in-house matter."

The two meandered through the main NERV infirmary. He'd been here before, after that first Angel Attack and his Exaltation, then after defeating the following Angel. Most of the windows looked out on the Geofront interior landscape. The dust and grit had finally settled, letting the sunlight reach in through fiberoptics cables. The Sigma Unit was a rapidly vanishing crater and pile of debris, waiting to be recycled and repurpose. Most of the armory buildings and other retractable structures were lowered today for maintenance and security.

Their conversation continued while they walked, passing rows of ER beds and empty surgical bays. NERV was a fairly safe work environment, as long as you weren't in an Evangelion. "So, what that means for you is that unlike most of the staff, you won't be rotated out into Tokyo-3 clinics and hospitals. Believe me, I would want you out there normally, but..."

Shinji nodded. "Aliens from another dimension are bad enough, teenagers with glowing gold powers..."

Saeko gave him a pert grin. "Exactly. Though I bet any day now the story will break wide open. We'll take it as it comes."

She pointed to an unmarked door with an empty placard mount. She pulled one out of the sheaf of folders held under her arm, smiling all the while. She nudged the door open revealing a somewhat bare, small office. A comfortable chair sat behind a desk, while two more for guests were laid out in front. Office supplies and so on were already set up, waiting for him.

"Welcome to your office, classroom, retreat, whatever. This is your space, in the NERV infirmary. That's our rule down here. Dean of Medicine to the lowest intern. When you're in your office, you call the shots." She smirked. "This is why you will never seen the Dean outside of his office. In there we can't tell him to stop smoking."

She slid the placard emblazoned with the name Ikari, Shinji, and then attached another one that said 'intern.' Shinji looked up at the woman and tried not to blush. "Ah... Thank you! Thank you so much!"

Saeko smiled and pushed her hair back over one shoulder, grinning warmly. "You're a wonderful person, Shinji-kun, and Lieutenant Katsuragi adores you. It's the least we could do for you." She leaned down and poked his forehead with one manicured finger. "You're an Evangelion Pilot and you're volunteering down here. That sort of selflessness is rare, especially nowadays."

Shinji hunched up and blushed. "I-I just want to help."

* * *

><p>Shinji sank into his seat and let his head fall into the cool plastic surface of his school desk. The class of 2-A hustled and bustled around him, and he quite happily tuned it all out. It was only three weeks into his internship, and he rapidly started to find the limits of his own endurance. <em>Sleep seven hours, wake up, breakfast, feed PenPen, Misato if she's awake.. School for eight hours, EVA drills or intern work for the rest of the day, six days a week..."<em>

He sighed and let himself drift off. The teacher was on one of his tangents about the Second Impact. Any minute now he'd be asleep... Any minute... now...

A few seats over, Toji idly clenched his healed hand. It still hurt a bit every time he looked over at the new kid. Kensuke smirked. "You're not going to try that again, are you?"

Toji snorted. "Che, I'm ignorant, not stupid. It'd be like touching a hot stove to see if it's hot." The boy shook his head. "So you're sure he's the pilot, fought the penis-monster?"

Kensuke nodded and flipped a switch on his laptop. He ran multiple operating systems to keep his school and private enterprises separate. "Yeah, Pretty sure. Ayanami was still beat up then. I wouldn't have put a pilot in, if she had a broken arm."

"So... What are we gonna do about it? Bout him?"

"Toji, I have no idea. We almost _died_ a few weeks ago. Right now my priorities have shifted a bit."

The track-suited boy turned. "Huh, to what?"

Kensuke leaned back in his chair, catching the light on his glasses for a split second. He smiled thinly. "Getting laid, for one."

Toji grinned and clapped the geek on one shoulder. "Kenuke, that's the smartest thing I've ever heard you say."

* * *

><p>"<em>Iii-Kaa-Riii-Kuuuuun!"<em>

The whole class turned as one towards the Class Representative. It was fortunate she had not leaned in to shout in Shinji's ear. If she had, his head and shoulders would've plowed right into her face. Instead, the Third Child shook bolt upright in his seat. He and the desk shot up nearly a foot before landing with a resounding crash. Not done, he flailed, slapping his palms into the plastic surface and utterly demolishing it.

All told, this took maybe two seconds. Shinji blinked owlishly, turning to the Horaki Hikari, then around at the class. Their teacher adjusted his glasses and leaned over his desk, trying to figure out what had happened. The pilot looked at the ruins of his desk and let out an awkward, shaky laughed. "...Must've been defective."

* * *

><p><em>Power isn't all its cracked up to be.<em>

By the time Shinji had been resettled with a new desk, the bell for lunch had rung, and the classroom emptied almost immediately.

Shinji sighed and picked at his lunch. He'd been having less and less time in the mornings to prepare for school, so no bento. Instead he had to make due with the school food. In hindsight, that probably wasn't the best idea. He was acutely aware of what ingredients comprised his meal, and what was done to make it. For better or worse. That wasn't to say it was _bad_, or unsanitary or anything like that. It just wasn't _quality._ And he missed it.

His lackluster lunch wasn't helped by the racket all around him. People were talking and hustling about in the grassy yards and tables. It was a bright sunny day in the long summers, and students were out in force, enjoying it. His ears pricked, and then started to burn. Someone was talking about him. Girls were talking about him.

"...So handsome, you know?"

"Mmhmmm... Strong too, but not bulky. Juu-ust right."

"He's fourteen!"

"Please, I'm a year older than him, big deal. Looking doesn't hurt anyway."

"I think he's pretty."

"Pretty?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm... I could see that, Its his jaw, I think."

"Yeah..."

"I dunno, you saw what he did to his desk..."

"Eh, it was defective, like he said. You saw how high he got it to hop though, right?"

"Yeah...?"

"Think of the thighs that could do that! Think of that as-"

Shinji had enough. He was flattered, flustered, but they were just being plain rude talking about him behind his back! He twisted in his seat and started to speak, his voice growing louder with each syllable. "you know, I can _hear yo-"_

He stopped mid-word, annoyance drained out of him and jaw fell slack. The girls stopped talking as well, and had turned to face him. So had the rest of the lunch crowd.

The gossiping girls were crowded around the table furthest away from him, on the other side of the lunch yard.

* * *

><p>Horaki kept him after class, due to his episode with the desk. After cleaning the room under her intense supervision, he finally made it out of the building and into the courtyards. The sun was setting, and the sky was burning orange-red. Most of the civilian buildings had raised themselves out earlier in the day. Shinji was tired, and the early evening sun was beating down on his neck and shoulders.<p>

Someone started dribbling a basketball. The rubbery slapping sound was behind him, and to the left. "Hey, new kid."

Shinji turned to see Toji and Kensuke leaning against one of the ball caddies. The pilot gave them a weak wave before moving on. Toji wasn't going to let him go so easily however. "You fought the penis-thing, right?"

Shinji nearly tripped, wind milling around to face the two again. "Y-Yeah?"

Kensuke pushed his glasses up into place. "They dropped an N2 mine on you, how'd that work out?"

Shinji rubbed the back of us head. "I was, kind of unconscious for that part..."

Toji bounced the ball one more time before catching it. He held it with both thumbs and started it spinning between his hands. "That thing had those energy arms. I saw it stab you. 'Suke got some video too, right?" He turned to the other boy, who nodded.

"Yeah, We had to run before the mine dropped, but I got some good footage."

Shinji nodded along, but had no idea where this was going. Toji tossed the ball behind him in a high, thin arc. It landed in the ball caddy behind him. "I never got around to apologizin', for trying to hit you." He reached up and tapped his cheek. "So I owe you one free shot, new kid."

Kensuke coughed. "Ikari-kun's been here for more than half a year. I know him well enough to loan him porn." Shinji turned red, but didn't say anything.

Without looking, Toji reached over and flicked the other boy in the temple with two fingers. "Shut it, 'Suke, this is about honor."

The pilot wilted, shuffling back a few steps and holding his arms behind him. "I don't think that'd be a good idea..."

Toji huffed, folding his arms over his chest. "C'mon, it's a free shot."

Shinji shook his head frantically. "No, Uhm... No, it'd not be very good. I mean..."

Kensuke stepped in. "Toji, you saw what he did to the desk..."

Toji snorted. "So his desk broke, big deal." He folded his arms across his chest and turned back to Shinji. "You gonna square this or not?"

Shinji sighed and wracked his brain. He looked around. He supposed he could flag down Section 2, but that'd be a waste of manpower and really unnecessary... Taking another quick look for observers and witnesses, he sucked down a quick breath. "Okay. I'm not going to punch you."

Toji puffed up, face turning red. His accent thickened rapidly. "Oh and why the hell not! My sister's in the hospital because of you and that robot, I gotta do something to square that and you punching me is what I'm gonna do!" He stalked over and pulled Shinji up by the front of his shirt, and the pilot felt his heels lift off the ground. "So what, too good to dirty your high and mighty fists on my mug?"

The uniform-clad boy waved his arms frantically, for the moment deciding not to ask about the other boy's convoluted logic. "Nothing like that! Just, set me down and I'll show you."

Toji dropped him with a over-exaggerated snarl and stepped back. "I'm waiting, new kid."

Shinji took one last look around, before lifting his foot up a few inches and stomping on one of the concrete tiles.

* * *

><p>The long hours weren't all bad. Three weeks internship introduced him to the majority of NERV's in-house infirmary staff and fellow interns and nurses. The actual on-site staff was quite small, seeing as they were primarily focused around caring for the pilots and NERV personnel. A fairly constant stream of new faces came in every week as students, doctors and professors rotated in and out of the various above-ground hospitals.<p>

Shinji found himself yet again at a lunch table, indoors this time and regrettably, without food. Instead he was kept company by more than a few medical textbooks, and a thick stack of case files and patient medical histories. Unlike his fellow high school students, most of the staff and students were college age and above, and far more outgoing.

A tray of hot noodles slid in front of his face, while someone plucked the book out of his hands. "Ah, Shinji-kun, you know as well as anyone you need to eat right. Skipping means isn't good for you."

Shinji blinked, and would've said something about how cafeteria noodles as being anything but healthy... Instead he wracked his brain trying to place a name to the face. He'd met most of the graduate students and nurses, but matching names was eluding him. "Ah, yes. I'll... Yeah."

Turning, the pliot dug into the offered noodles, mumbling the customary benidiction, while his benefactor slid into the seat next to him with his own lunch. He was student, older but not adult. The other intern specialized in infectious diseases. They ate in companionable silence for a short while. Outside, the Geofront was cast in the incandescent oranges of sunset, and slowly shifting to the strange, bluish-white twilight. Light cast from below on the walls made the whole dome feel incredibly cold and artificial.

The dark-haired man leaned over to peer at Shinji's 'homework'. "Whatcha working on?"

Shinji coughed a bit, sucking down a mouthful of noodles before answering. "Ah... Cardiology."

Hiking himself up to sit on the table, the grad student dug into his own lunch. A few bites later, he spoke. " Want to be a heart surgeon, eh? That's pretty advanced. Weren't you on basic trauma a few weeks ago? "

The teenager let out a weak laugh, thinking back a few weeks. He'd never need a scalpel... "I was," He began. Something like that. Most of the courses on trauma procedures were easy. I'm still struggling with the..." He trailed off, reaching for one of the books, then a case file.

The intern laughed and hiked himself up on the table. "Alright, I'll help you. Lemme see the book. You never stop learning in medicine." The older student started quizing Shinij on answers out of the book, interspersed with questions about the Sigma Unit explosion. "Name the four kinds of tissue."

Shinji's answer was quick and accurate. "Connective, Muscle, Nervous and Epithelial."

The intern gave the pilot a thumbs up. "Ding! Okay... I'm sure you got your ear bent about this one, but did you really treat a heart attack by chanting?"

Coughing a bit, Shinji slurped up a mouthful of noodles. Misato was rubbing off on him. "Y-Yeah. I did."

The intern leaned back, whistling. "Okay well. It's great that it worked, but general rule of the medical profession: You have to know what you're doing, and why. Even if it's only to explain what went wrong when your patient died."

Shinji scrunched in on himself at that, but a bit of steel crept into his voice. "I did know what I was doing... I just knew it. I could do it. So I did."

The intern nodded. "And that's blatantly cheating. That's 'collected history of modern medicine' cheating. That's kinda _creepy_. But also incredibly cool." He flipped through the textbook a bit before tossing it on the pile and reaching for another. "Well, that one's a bust... How about..."

As the evening wore on, more interns, a handful of nurses and in-house doctors swarmed around Shinji's table. Together they laughed and told stories of their lives in the medical world. They discussed advances, new techniques and technologies, and so on. Someone called out for pizza and soda, and Section 2 obliged. The agent was thrown off a bit when some of the order was split off for the pilot's nearby security detail, with the Dean of Medicine's compliments.

Eventually their bullpen session devolved into a strange game of 'What would you do'. The rules were fairly straight forward, someone would call out a scenario, and someone else would respond with a solution. Then that idea would get shot down, rebuilt, and restated. It was all fun and enlightening, but Shinji was left in the middle, unable to contribute with his limited experience. Initially.

The Dean of medicine was named Hirikawa Tenzo, a grandfatherly, wide-set man with a salt and pepper moustache and thick, square glasses. The venerable professional look was offset somewhat by the dripping slice of pizza in one hand. He leaned forward and glanced left to right. "Ladies, Gentlemen. A patient comes in with a badly broken arm. Specifically a fracture of the Radius and Ulna. In this case, the breaks are quite serious, with multiple sections of bone now loose within the patient's arm. He needs to be splinted immediately."

He leaned back and took a bite of his pizza. "So," He grins. "What would you do?"

The debate became extremely spirited, extremely fast. Trauma was one of the easiest subjects to brainstorm around, but also difficult, because there were _so many viable ideas_. Several interns and nurses point out the usual methods, and they were given appropriate accolades. But Professor Hirikawa was looking for far more inventive solutions. He elaborated with resource restrictions and conditions, such as over capacity, understaffed, and out of resources. With each passing answer, he grew more and more pleased, basking in the brilliance and enthusiasm surrounding him.

Shinji, however, refused to step up. Hirikawa wouldn't let that stand. Not after what he saw. The old man deliberately lapsed into accented English. "So, _Mister_ Ikari," Pausing to take a drink, he put the pilot in the hot seat. "The patient has come in with a severely broken arm, as stated. Your resources are limited, and you cannot use your previously demonstrated powers. With the means available to anyone else, what would you do?"

Put on the spot, Shinji paled visibly. He swallowed his fear and started thinking. Really thinking. He raised his arm and twisted it, feeling the way his own bones shifted. His vision seemed to wash away in gold, and he then just knew. He ducked into a nearby hallway. When he came back, he was dragging a collapsible supply cart, loaded a few of the wall-mounted lamps that dotted the infirmary halls.

He moved his burden on a nearby empty table and them both to the crowd. He started breaking one lamp apart, pulling out a handful of rectangular slugs of metal. "These lamps all have magnets in their bases, so we can move them around and put them on walls and anything we want, right?" The teenager got more than a few encouraging nods, though everyone was squinting.

"These carts are great, and they're modular. We can bust them apart to save space." He held one of the magnets near the cart's leg. Letting go, the slug flew through the air and slapped into the with a metallic clang. "And these magnets are really powerful."

Shinji broke the cart into the legs and shelves, before pulling one of the legs around and holding it against his arm. "So, you set the bone, then lay one of these on both sides. then you put enough magnets to hold the splint in place."

He looked around, and everyone seemed to comprehend his idea. He knew he was right. Unorthodox, maybe, and not necessarily ideal, but it would work. With a bit of refinement... He shook his head a bit, turning back to the Dean. "...Is there something wrong?"

Hirikawa just shook his head, but he kept staring. His glasses reflected solid sheets of gold. That first intern, the one that started this whole impromptu party, coughed and pointed to his own brow. Shinji blinked for a bit, before lifting a hand to wave in front of his face.

"Oh. I'm glowing again. Aren't I?"

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Un-beta'd. Please forgive the numerous grammatical errors, and feel free to point them out in reviews.


	12. Understanding

Shinji immediately established that he was a clean, fastidious person. Misato's apartment almost magically transformed over a period of weeks into something resembling 'kept up'. Clothes still found themselves kicked into the sides of hallways and corners, or draped over nearby furniture. National monuments were erected out of empty cans of beer, and so on. Of course Shinji, being Shinji, especially in those first few weeks, was a bundle of neuroses and issues. This meant, among other things, that Shinji refused to touch her laundry, even if she stripped out of her uniform on the way to her bedroom.

One day, that changed.

Misato leaned through the door to her apartment, left open for some reason. Section 2 was nowhere to be seen, so there wasn't a security breach. Then her eyes started to sting. Taking an experimental sniff, she realized the air was rank with cleaning chemicals, and some other smell. It was rich and sharp and extremely appealing, and very familiar to her after long nights of studying and the subsequent early mornings.

Her eyes started to sting more, when she realized all the lights were on in her apartment... And that every wall was sparking, pearly white. "Shinji-kun?"

"In here Misato-san!"

The older woman blinked. He was speaking quickly, with hardly any pause between words. She looked at her watch, then the kitchen clock. It was ten o'clock at night. "Shinji-kun...?"

Her roommate appeared then, wrapped in a thick dark green apron and holding a mop on one hand. He stood in front of her, practically vibrating. "Yes Misato-san?"

"H-How long have you been home?" She pulled herself into the apartment fully, finally putting a word to what she was seeing.

Her apartment was clean. Not just clean, _restored_. Her walls were apparently that natural white color, instead of the milky tan she'd lived with for nearly a year. Who knew? She took another sniff, and aside from the stench of chemicals, there were no other funky odors. It was so alien and unexpected, she found herself missing the smell of her apartment... But had long since stopped actually smelling it.

The floors were polished to a mirror sheen, every pane of glass and mirror was washed and wiped to gleaming perfection. She turned and closed the door, and absently noted the tracks were clean of dirt. Military precision, almost. 'Get down on your knees with a toothbrush' precision. Oiled as well.

She snapped out of her reverie when Shinji answered, just as rapid-fire as before. "About two hours, Misato-san."

Blinking, Misato wandered past the teenager into the living room. She pulled off her shoes and padded out onto the carpet. It was spotless, and had a cushy bounce that she never felt before. "You've been cleaning for two hours?"

Shinji nodded. "About that long yeah."

Misato prowled around, examining behind her couch. Her _clean_ couch. And the beanbag chairs. Her TV was sparkling like new, and the curtains, her curtains looked like angel feathers. The good kind of angel, that is. "Uh-huh... Wasn't today a long day? Internship?"

The other boy busied himself with something just out of her field of vision. The specifics were far less troubling than the whole. She ambled into the bathroom, and nearly went blind. "Yes, after training with Ritsuko. Armory Building procedure."

After blinking her eyes clear of red and purple spots, she made her way towards her room, dreading what she would find...

Yep. Clean as a whistle. She had just about enough of this. She found Shinji putting away the last of his cleaning supplies. "Right... Don't you have school tomorrow?"

He nodded rapidly. "Percolator is all set up."

Percolator?

She spun back to Shinji and turned on the charm. "Shinji-kun, sweetie? C'mere please?"

That lilting tone of voice never failed to make Shinji jump, and he all but teleported to her side. She reached over and took his chin hand, looking at his eyes. Yep. Bloodshot and blurry. She shooed him off to bed, telling him she'd call him in sick. Once he was safely behind his bedroom door, she found her phone and called Ritsuko.

The tactical commander flopped into her impossibly clean futon, while her voice took on a deliberate, sing-song tone. It was her 'I caught you now' voice, an'Oh shit' tone. "Rits-chan?"

On the other end, Ritsuko sighed, rolling across the lab floor in her personal, cushy office chair. She glanced up at the clock, longingly. "Misato...? I was about to leave before midnight, for once. Can this wait?"

Misato's voice just dripped with cyanide tainted honey. "No, it can't. We're going to adjust Shinji-kun's schedule a bit."

The scientist sat up straighter, brow furrowing. "We are?"

Misato's tone allowed no argument. "We are."

Ritsuko let out a noncommittal hum and took a sip of turgid, stale coffee and regretted it. She swirled it a bit in the cup and tried again. She regretted that one too. Misato was quiet for a moment. Ritsuko was in the process of downing the rest of her drink when Misato finally spoke.

"We're adjusting his schedule, Rits, because Shinji-kun has discovered coffee."

* * *

><p>The laboratory and consoles regretted it too.<p>

The next morning, Misato called Ritsuko again, her voice rising a few notes higher than normal.

"It is worse than I feared, Ritsuko."

"How could it be worse?"

Misato looked over at her kitchen, and the proud new addition, most likely purchased with Shinji's own money. A device of polished chrome pipes and smart, black plastic. It sat on her counter in place of pride next to her microwave. A rack of tiny ceramic mugs perched nearby. A small LCD timer cheerfully alerted her that it would start brewing in five minutes.

"Espresso."

* * *

><p>A week after the coffee interlude, Misato found her roommate awake at three in the morning. He looked much, much more focused and at ease this time. She padded into the kitchen and winced at the chilly tile floor. The teenager looked up from his books, blinking. The glowing disc hovered above his brow, shining softly.<p>

"Ah, Misato-san... I'm sorry, did I wake you?" He blushed a bit at her rumpled, too-small night clothes.

She raked a hand through her matted hair and yawned, stifling a smile. "Yeah, but it's okay. I thought we were trying to get you to sleep more?"

He nodded. "Yeah, but..." He leaned back in the chair and sighed. "I'm groping in the dark. Everything I'm doing... Some of it comes naturally. Like it was just put in my head. I just... Do things. Like during the accident. Or when I'm in the Geofront at the infirmary."

Misato pulled up a chair and joined him at the table. Like most nights it was piled high with books. Medicine, Metaphysical Biology, religion and more.

He continued, just letting the words tumble out. His voice was even and steady, without a hint of slur or lack of sleep. "Before you reset my training schedule, I was drinking a lot of coffee... But I was also just, telling myself not to feel tired. Just pushing through that feeling of 'I want to be in bed.'" An embarrassed smile worked its way onto his face. "You just caught me when I didn't... Make it work. I mean. I was using my powers to do it, to make me feel not tired."

His guardian just nodded. She grabbed one of his hands with hers and gave it an encouraging squeeze, urging him to continue.

He looked down and away, but the smile grew wider and red crawled up his cheeks. "I'm just... Doing things. I don't want feel tired, so I don't. I don't want to feel sore, so I don't. I don't want to _bleed_, so I _don't_." Yesterday in combat practice, one of my trainers punched me in the chest."

She nodded again, and he continued. "That would've knocked the air out of me, easily. There are techniques that you can do to prevent that; tense your diaphragm, harden your muscles... I had only heard of them, but no one had ever taught me. Not the 'advanced' versions." His free hand wandered to his chest where a twenty year veteran soldier punched him. There wasn't even a bruise beneath his shirt.

He looked at Misato out through the corner of his eye. "When he hit me, I just took it and didn't even flinch. I knew exactly what to do, and I did it perfectly." He stoped for a moment, lost in thought. He shook his head to get his train of thought back on track. "So, I wasn't sleeping well, and I was powering through with my Exaltation... A few days ago I stopped doing it the way I had been."

She cocked her head to one side. "I don't understand."

Shinji just gave her a one-shoulder shrug. "I have a lot of... Things I can do, techniques. It's getting better. I'm starting to recognize how to do each one when I want." He stopped again, trying to find the words. "It's like... I was doing something, throwing my power at it. It worked, but I wasn't doing anything... Unique. I was just supercharging myself. I've done it when treating injuries, or during sparing. I reach for... More. More power, more skill. Here I was reaching for more resilience. That was the first way."

The kitchen flooded with blinding golden light, and the mandala and extra arms blurred into the air behind the pilot. He looked up at Misato. "I can tell how good a fighter you are, just by how you're sitting here. I can tell you've been in a real fight before and know how to handle yourself. I know this, because I'm making myself a better fighter. Right now, just then." He waved to the corona of light rising out of his back and shoulders, which rapidly began to shrink and fade.

He squeezed her hand this time, mostly for his own benefit than hers. "I feel different when I do that. Less human? More?"

Misato pushed out of her seat and wrapped Shinji up from behind in a hug, not at all caring about how she was practically standing inside the lingering cloud of light. "Enough of that! You're a wonderful, decent human being and a great guy. You are not inhuman! Anyone can tell you that just by looking, and Ritsuko's proved it six ways over that you're human too."

She wrapped her arms a little more around his shoulders and leaned in further, pressing her cheek against his. His skin was burning and flushed, but he didn't pull away. She drew back herself, but stopped and darted in, planing a quick, soft kiss on his temple. He only very nearly bit his tongue. She stood full upright before he could respond, and started to rub his shoulders. "You were saying something about a second way?"

He sputtered a bit, shaking under her hands but still starting to relax. Eventually he gathered his wits and explained. "So a few days ago... I had been using that first way... And I started playing with it. My powers." His hands started to move along with his explanation. "I'm... I'm moving parts of my soul around, Misato-san. I don't know how to describe that any better. "

She just continued to knead his shoulders, and let her thumbs trace soothing circles on the back of his neck. Shinj's breathing eventually slowed, and sounded audibly relaxed."Eventually, something just sort of clicked, and I stopped feeling tired. I was just studying, and studying... And studying. I ate when I was hungry, and did everything else... But I didn't feel tired. I didn't go to sleep."

Misato blinked, then asked the obvious question. "How long have you been awake?"

Shinji looked at the kitchen clock. "About thirty hours."

* * *

><p>Six months since the last angel attack. Nearly ten since Shinji first arrived in Tokyo-3.<p>

The section of the city demolished during the fourth angel attack was now cleared of debris and ready for rebuilding. Mostly only the roads and top layer of armor and fortress-city machinery needed work. Several of the civilian buildings were extended already, and most of the armory buildings were retracted in time to salvage them from the original N2 mine. Regardless, the damage was extensive, and required armies of men and machinery.

In the center of the blast zone was a tent city, with a massive, central canopy that was as tall as a sky scraper. Evangelion Unit 01 had long since been retrieved and repaired, but the Angel's corpse was slowly decaying into native conventional matter. The damaged core sections had been immediately stabilized and removed, before being sent off to NERV-Nevada.

Toji, Kensuke and Shinji leaned the rail and looked down at the reconstruction. The pilot hadn't seen the aftermath of the battle with his own eyes until today. But it happened _months_ ago. Any feeling of guilt or inadequacy he could think of just... Wasn't coming. He wondered if that made him a terrible person, not feeling anything... But then he remembered that no one had died either, though Toji and Kensuke nearly lost their lives due to the overpressure wave.

Shinji had ended up gravitating to the pair of misfit students, mostly because he had no idea what to do with his free time. In a way he liked working more. It kept him occupied and focused. His mind wasn't allowed to wander.

Shinji felt an arm wrap around his neck, while another fist dug into his scalp.

Well, they'd keep him occupied in their own way.

The three boys roughhoused and tumbled, the park they ended up in was well suited for it, with well kept grass and a great view of the the city in all directions. It was bright and sunny, and the clouds were thin and high in the sky. Food stands and carts filled the terraced park, while kids and parents laughed.

Kensuke picked some grass out of his hair and looked down at the lower level. "Fools, all of them." He looked back at the pilot and his best friend. "You wouldn't think we're at war, seeing that."

Toji laughed and tossed a wadded up food wrapper at the geek. "Che, you sound like a busted old man, 'Suke."

The other boy dodged and laughed. "Hey, calling it how I see it. We're not just at war. We're at _interstellar war_ with another species... And we have no idea why."

Toji wouldn't have any of that talk, he dove at the other teenager and administered another noogie assault. The pair wrestled while Shinji laughed, before trailing off.

The two friends turned to stare at the pilot. Shinji coughed and forced out a weak, two-note laugh. "Ah... Interdimensional."

Kensuke de-tangled himself from Toji and prowled over to Shinji, looming above him. Shinji pulled back and sunk into his shoulders. The geek's eyes were tight and narrow, focused on the pilot. With slow, deliberate action, he raised one hand to press a fingertip against his glasses. They obligingly caught the light. "Did you say 'Interdimensional?'

Shinji shuffled back on his hands, dragging the rest of his body out from under the other boy. How was the skinny nerd scarier than the jock? "I-I-I did."

Kensuke followed on hands and toes with an almost boneless, awkward flailing of limbs. Toji made a step to move forward, then stopped, and started again, rapidly losing mental traction. "As in, aliens from _another dimension?"_

Shinji couldn't _not_ confirm it. He pulled away further, turning his face and thinking that the other boy was more like a tiger at the moment. "Y-Yeah. That's what I said to Akagi-sensei when she explained it to me."

Kensuke stood up and threw his arms out in exasperation. "Oh we're doomed. So very very doomed."

Toji called the other boy out with a warning tone. "Kensuke..."

The otaku whirled on the other teenager and poked him in the chest. "Extra-dimensional entities from beyond the stars! Beyond. The. Stars. This isn't something we can fight with germs or chirality or sway with pop music. This is bowel-voiding, old school plutonian horror. So we're doomed."

Toji slapped the hand away, getting in his friend's face and standing up for their pilot company. "We got the Evas, don't we? They work?"

Kensuke would not be cowed. "It's not that simple. They work _now_, but the Angels... We have no idea what they're capable of, and what they're here for..." Kensuke trailed off, before looking at Shinji once more. His arm snapped out with an audible whip-crack of tendon and bone, fixing the pilot with an extended finger. "You. You're super human aren't you?"

Shinji back-pedaled. "Uhm.. Uhh... Maybe? No?"

Kensuke's grin was fairly mad. "You are. You really really are. Even if you aren't and I'm delusional, we're going to do this anyway. Because it'll be fun."

The other two boys were rather lost at that point, neither of them really noticed who responded. "Do what now?"

Kensuke started pacing, and Shinji's already damaged calm rapidly started to erode. Toji was just as confounded. The sandy haired boy snapped his fingers. "Okay, we have to do this around your schedule," He nodded to the pilot. "Because of training. Ask for a weekend off, or something. Once you get it, call me. We're going to go _camping_."

* * *

><p>Well within earshot, on the nearby lower level, Ayanami Rei sat on a simple stone bench in perfect poise, sipping a cup of tea.<p>

_A weekend. I must be ready._

* * *

><p>Misato was still marveling at how clean her apartment was. Shinji somehow had even arranged for maintenance to fix her air conditioning system, so the apartment was only <em>hot <em>at midday, instead of nearly uninhabitable. With all of the beer monuments removed, she realized she had a lot more space, and owned a lot more furniture than she thought. Most of it she didn't remember unpacking either. The apartment felt far more open and inviting.

Shinji was taking advantage of the unexpected spacious living room, slowly shifting through his assigned combat stances. He looked distracted. Misato watched while sitting in her (clean!) couch with her legs folded, feet pressed heel to heel, and a can of Yebisu cradled in her hands.

He stopped mid punch and shook his head before resetting. He tried a few more times each time something seemed to stop him. She cocked her head to one side. "What's wrong?"

Shinji sighed, but continued to practice. "I don't know. I feel like something's missing."

Misato took a sip and thought for a moment. "An opponent."

The teenager blinked owlishly. Misato grinned and plowed ahead. "If you sped up, it'd look like you were actually fighting someone." She stretched, holding the can well above her head and letting the tiny cotton tank and denim shorts do the work for her. Shinji swallowed audibly. "What do you say, Shinji-kun? Wanna wrastle?"

"Uhm... Ye-No I mean. I.." He sputtered for a bit more, before finally sucking in a calming breath. "I don't want to fight anyone."

She shook her head and smiled warmly. "I think you're more of a fighter than you give yourself credit for. Being a fighter doesn't mean you need to go out of your way and hurt anyone." She drained the can and tossed it into one of the new bins Shinji purchased. "Something to think about."

The pair fell into companionable silence then. Shinji resumed his practice, but wouldn't stop checking his movements. A while later, Misato sat up straight, blinking rapidly. Her face screwed up in a crazy grin. Shinji's routine ground to a halt, and he stared at the older woman.

Snapping her fingers, she fixed Shinji with a pointer finger. "That's what's been bothering me about you this whole time!"

The boy just stood there, droning inarticulately. "Huh?"

Her smile grew toothier and more manic. "You're a magic kung-fu master!"

* * *

><p>"It makes perfect sense though!"<p>

Misato had cornered Ritsuko in one of the numerous labs that slowly began to grow around the Proving Grounds. It was Shinji's newly-established day off from training, and the pilot was given clearly worded suggestions, to the effect of "Go hang out an an arcade all day. Eat junk food, hit on cute girls. I don't care, just relax!" These suggestions did not in any way help him relax, but the pilot went along with the flow, heading into the city with nothing to do.

Ritsuko reeled back in her chair, rolling across the lab floor like someone ten years younger, nonplussed and wide-eyed. "Katsuragi... Slow down."

Misato did anything _but_ slow down. Regardless, she made herself clear. "Okay. Shinji-kun was explaining how he figured out his latest trick, and then I was watching him practice. Then it suddenly started to make sense. It was like all those old stories and legends of kung-fu masters, and the things you see in all of those old Chinese action movies!"

Ritsuko rubbed her temples, rapidly losing patience with the other woman. "Katsuragi..."

"I'm serious! It's like, all those stories have the old master go "You can step on air as if it were stone." or things like that... Shinji is the old master! He's the one learning how to do all that stuff, the same way they did in the stories! Uhm... It's like that story of Siddhārtha Gautma!"

Ritsuko blinked and pulled off her glasses. Misato was most certainly not unintelligent, but sometimes she made strangest of references. "The Buddha? You're comparing _Shinji_ to the _Buddha_?"

"Yes! No! I mean, the story goes that Siddhārtha meditated under a tree for fifty days to find enlightenment. It was like, you had to train yourself to fast that long, to not _die_ when you did that."

The scientist felt her jaw go slack. "Misato, that's mythology, scripture!"

The other woman nodded, folding her arms under her breasts. "Yeah that part is, I don't think he actually sat there for fifty _consecutive_ days, but it still makes sense. Someone had to learn how to do all these amazing things, things that takes lifetimes to learn... And Shinji is doing them from a cold start!"

Ritsuko stopped for a moment. Then the color drained out of her face. "I once heard a story from Kaji, about how they supposedly trained ninja."

Misato let out an ugly snort, but nodded. Ritsuko shrugged helplessly. "It's probably fictional. The story goes that when a child was born into a ninja clan, a bean sprout would be planted at the same time. The bean would grow along with the child. When the child was old enough to learn, they brought it out and made the trainee jump over the bean stalk... The stalk would grow much taller and faster than the child, and the child wouldn't be allowed inside until they jumped over the plant without touching it."

Misato leaned back, her own face glowing with the realization. The smile on her face grew wider. "That's exactly what Shinji is doing. NERV is the bean stalk, and he's the trainee."

Ritsuko nodded slowly. "Brute force iteration, he won't allow himself to fail... So he learns how to succeed no matter what."

The two women were quiet for a while, letting that deduction sink in. Ritsuko blinked and slapped her forehead. "You said he learned a new trick?"

Misato nodded, smiling. "Yeah, he learned how to ignore the need for sleep."

"That... Doesn't make any sense at all. He has no pattern to his powers. He's talented with medical sciences, martial arts, and now ignoring the need to sleep?"

Misato grinned. "Yeah, I noticed that too, so I asked him . I said. 'How does that work? You're like, a glowy gold guy. That doesn't say to me 'unnecessary sleep cycle'."

Ritsuko leaned forward, positively vibrating with anticipation. Misato's grin took on Cheshire curls. "He asked me this: 'Have you ever tried to take a nap with the sun shining in your face before? It works like that. But all the time."

Ritsuko and Misato blinked, and as one: "Ooooh."

* * *

><p>It hadn't occurred to Shinji that introducing Toji and Kensuke to his guardian and commanding officer would be a bad idea. It also hadn't occurred to him to warn her company was coming over.<p>

So Misato greeted the three boys with nothing but a pair of towels wrapped around her head and body. "Hello boys~."

Toji and Kensuke were struck dumb and useless, and Shinji, finally, had enough. He slapped his hands into his face and dragged, pulling his eyelids and cheeks down. "Are you just constitutionally incapable of being a mature, well-adjusted person?"

Misato just rocked on her heels and grinned. "I was wondering when you'd finally start showing some more backbone. Of course I figured you were enjoying my company as it was."

Toji just looked at Misato, then at Shinji. His mouth worked like a fish for a few beats, before finally asking "Are you a god?"

Shinji sputtered, but before he could answer, Misato broke in. "Shinji-kun, whenever someone asks-"

"-If you're a god, say _yes_."

The woman turned to the sandy-haired boy. He cut her off mid sentence. Slowly, Misato raised one hand, palm facing Kensuke. He obligingly returned the high-five.

That done, the woman nodded. "I've cleared everything with Ritsuko and the commanders. Just keep your phone with you. Have fun out in the wilderness."

* * *

><p>They left Friday evening, taking a train to the most outlying station surrounding the fortress city. From there they padded along a thin, buckled, sixty year old north bound road. Eventually they stopped at a field with thick, tall wild grass. Sliding down a small hill, they found the remnants of Kensuke's normal camp site. From the small clearing of flattened grass, the only sign of civilization was an abandoned, derelict power pole, long since stripped of salvageable cables and transformers.<p>

Kensuke had to help Shinji buy the right equipment for the trip, and shared the rest with Toji. Between the three of them, they'd be set for a week, not just two days.

Toji dropped his pack of supplies with an agonized groan. He was a track athlete sure, but a sprinter, not a marathoner. "Kensuke... What are we doing?"

Kensuke, clad in fatigues and salvaged web gear, just pushed up his glasses and waved at Shinji. "He's super human, or something, so we're going to figure out what he can do."

Shinji at that point wasn't even winded. The walk out to the camp site was nothing compared to the endurance runs he'd undertaken at NERV. He ended up carrying the most as well, their tents, food and camping stove.

Toji tried to walk through that logic. "...Why do you think NERV hasn't figured it out already?"

The other boy started setting up his tent and bedroll. "Because he's the only one. If they had figured it out, they'd have tried to replicate it already."

Toji wasn't convinced. "That's pretty weak, man. Crazy weak."

Kensuke just grinned. "If in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, then in the world of the mad, the sanest course of action is to listen to the crazy person."

"Kensuke."

"Yeah?"

"You're full of crap."

* * *

><p>Everything was set and ready for the night, when the three boys sat down to discuss their plans. The sun was less than an hour away from dropping past the horizon, and the stars were coming out in force.<p>

Shinji sighed and rubbed at his face. He was smiling however. "I'm not supposed to tell you. Everything's all top secret, more than me being a pilot."

Toji snorted. "You blabbed about that pretty quick though."

The pilot's voice rose higher and panicked. "That wasn't my fault! Nobody _told me_ I had to keep it a secret."

Toji raised his hands in surrender. "Easy! I didn't mean anything by it. So if you can't tell us... What are we doing here?"

Shinji shrugged helplessly. "Let me check something."

With that, he turned and started shouting into the grass. "Section Two! I know you're out here! Somewhere!" He paused for a moment, mumbling to himself. "...Of course, I'm sure they won't respond."

Toji boggled. "Section Two? What's that?" Kensuke leaned in and whispered. "NERV paramilitary arm, pilot security detail." The other boy let out a soft 'Oh' of comprehension, while Shinji continued to shout at nothing.

"Look, I'm going to tell them about this," He waved his hand at his forehead. "Unless someone tells me not to, Okay? I'll give you to a count of ten!"

The grassy field did not answer. Shinji started counting. "One..."

* * *

><p>Back at NERV, Ritsuko was scrambling for the radio. It was far too late at night, on a weekend, for a security breach. She flailed and kicked at the floor, trying to get her chair to roll towards the console. She already started barking orders, despite not actually transmitting. "Abort! Secure and contain the pilot! Abor-"<p>

She stopped mid sentence as a single manicured finger pressed down on the transmit button. "This is Lieutenant Katsuragi, All Section Two observers are to maintain cover. Do not interfere with the Third Child."

The radio operators clicked back twice, confirming her order. Ritsuko was livid. "Katsuragi? What the hell are you doing? This is against protocol!"

The tactical operations commander just folded her arms across her chest and fixed her friend with a look. "It's my decision. I'll take full responsibility."

* * *

><p>A few beats after Shinji finished counting to ten, he sighed. "Looks like they didn't follow me... Or they're just not going to show themselves."<p>

He turned to the others. "I'm not going to tell you everything. And there are a lot of things I just don't know either."

Kensuke pushed his glasses up and nodded. "Right, let's get a fire started before it gets too late."

While Toji busied himself with the flint and tinder, Kensuke started the inquisition. "So what can you tell us? What can you do? You stomped a crack into concrete, so you're obviously super strong."

Shinji shook his head, raising his hands. "I'm not actually. Strong. Stronger than I was, but no, I'm just really good at breaking things."

"Alright... Anything else?"

The pilot began ticking off points on his fingers. "Uhm... I learn fast. I heal fast... I can't get paper cuts. A lot of the things I try to do come easily to me." He decided to leave out any of the explicit powers and techniques, and the glowing.

Kensuke let out a low whistle. "Sounds like a strong base for a super soldier."

Shinji shrugged. "Misato-san calls me an 'magic Kung-Fu master', but I don't see it."

"Magic kung fu?"

Shinji shrugged again and dropped into a low stance, executing punches and blocks. The fading sunlight was enough to see that he was making the tall grass bend in the pressure wave. Toji looked up from the fire and whistled, and Kensuke boggled at the implications. "Where the hell did you learn that?"

Shinji shrugged. "I just... Knew. I got better when NERV started training me directly. They still beat me, but everyone tells me that I can probably outfight anyone who isn't a trained hand-to-hand expert."

* * *

><p>Toji sat bolt upright, nearly tearing down his tent. Sweat beaded over his face, and his eyes tracked wildly. Something was out there... He sighed and flopped back down on the bedroll. It was muggy and stiflingly warm, and that mosquito repellant Kensuke had given him stank. Still, he was a teenage boy, and he knew how to sleep. He was just about out of it when he heard something again.<p>

"Ikari! 'Suke! Wake up!"

The moon was out and cast everything in pale white light. The boy dug around for a flashlight and clicked it on, waving it around the campsite. The fire had long since burned down to embers, and dew was gathering on the surrounding tall grasses.

"...S'hup Toji..."

There was a flash of white out of the corner of his eye. Whirling, the light showed shifting, shaking grass, but no intruder. "Guys! There's something out here!"

"S'probably Section Two... Go back to sleep."

Toji's mind ground into full alertness, and his flight instincts were rapidly giving way to fight. He howled into the darkness, snarling viciously. "Alright you sonnovabitch! Man or not I'm gonna tear you a new one!"

Shinji and Kensuke nad crawled out of their tents at this point, and were about to tear into Toji when the grasses shifted again, and they too saw the flash of white. An arm maybe? Toji was off like a shot, bare feet easily digging into the soft soil. Kensuke shouted as he blew past. "Don't! That way is-"

He was cut off by a muted splash, and an undignified, yelp of surprise. "...Swamp."

Toji twisted and ground his heels in, digging up furrows in the soil as he wind-milled to a stop. Ahead of him was the aforementioned swamp, with algae covered pools of water and buzzing clouds of mosquitos and more. Siting in the foot-deep water and soaked like a drowned rat was Ayanami Rei.

It was four in the morning, and the fire was back, crackling brightly. Rei sat near it, swaddled in towels and dry blankets while Kensuke strung her school uniform up between two tent poles. The girl sniffled, and to all present, it was the first time she looked even remotely human. That expression of discomfort and awkwardness was so normal, it immediately hit home how little she normally emoted.

Kensuke was determined to ignore the fact that he was currently hanging up her bra and panties. After they sorted out their initial shock, the three boys had to do some fast talking to prevent a disaster. Once Rei acknowledged that she could get sick, and would feel worse sitting in wet clothes, she began to disrobe, utterly unconcerned with the three teenage boys watching. They were most certainly not dense or immature enough to see this as anything but wrong, and immediately stammered out a compromise.

This, among other things, led to their tents being combined into one large shelter, where Rei undressed and wrapped herself up. Meanwhile, Toji and Shinji restarted the fire.

Finally, when all was said and done, Shinji sat down on a repurposed block of firewood. "Ayanami-san... Why are you here?"

She didn't say anything for several minutes, just looking at Shinji. Finally, after blinking once, she answered. "The Commander ordered me to avoid direct contact with you, after our previous encounter. I was instructed to observe discreetly." She blinked again and looked at her drying clothes. "I was not discreet."

Toji and Kensuke turned to the other boy with identical, narrow, speculative looks. They glanced back at Rei. If she noticed, she gave no sign of it. Focusing back on Shinji, they let out a disgusted sigh. Toji threw an arm around Kensuke's shoulder. "Ain't no justice in this world, man. No justice at all."

"True, such a pity, that." Toji pulled back and started to flex, pulling into puffed up, exaggerated body building poses. "I got the brawn," He bent one arm and showed off one stringy bicep.

The other boy laughed, shoving Toji into the grass. "And I got the brains. Life is just too cruel."

The other boy just blinked owlishly while the pair continued their double act. "First Misato-san, now Ayanami-san. And all the girls of 2-A just hanging on his every word. It's a shame such greatness is wasted on the weak-willed."

The dry pilot gaped like a fish, red rising up the back of his neck and into his cheeks."Tha-No I don't mean to-Oh you just two just shut up!"

* * *

><p>The sun began to crawl over the horizon, burning away the early morning dew and mist. The boys squabbling gave way to a fairly comfortable silence. The fire crackled, and Rei was able to put her mostly dry clothes back on. Kensuke broke out their morning rations, and almost immediately, Shinji took over. The camp stove was inadequate, and the ingredients were cheap but sturdy. He could make do. Kensuke knew how to pack at least, and they had fresh eggs in small ice-packed case.<p>

Shinji's hands blurred over the stove, cracking six eggs into the pan, three at a time. One hand stirred while reaching for another ingredient. Rei loomed next to him, or she tried to. It hadn't clicked until then how much taller he'd gotten. Misato still towered over him, or so he thought. But he'd _held_ Rei before, and she looked positively tiny next to him. Her eyes flicked to the eggs, then back at him without blinking.

"...Ayanami-san?"

Her eyes tracked back down to the eggs, and her voice was tiny. "I do not like meat..."

He blinked. "You're a vegetarian?"

The girl barely moved her lips to speak. "...I don't know."

The other pilot nodded absently, stirring the eggs with one hand and adjusting the heat with another. The old gas stove sputtered, but held out. "Have you ever had scrambled eggs before?"

Rei shook her head. "I don't know."

Shinji felt a small smile pull at his lips, even though red crawled up his cheeks. "They how about you try them." He turned and shouted back to Kensuke, who was half buried in their combined tent. The lack of sleep was starting to catch up with the four of them. "Hey Kensuke!"

The other boy pushed one flap aside, twisting around to answer. "Yeah?"

"Do we have anything that isn't meat based? Fruits, veggies?"

"Uh, some canned preserves, that sort of thing. Granola bars. Why?"

The cook waved at their female guest. "Rei doesn't like meat, I just wanted to be sure we were good until Sunday."

"I think we'll be fine, but this is gonna be awkward if we keep the big tent."

Toji swept back in later, yawning. "We'll figure it out. Relax."

* * *

><p>Breakfast preparations continued, while Toji and Kensuke laid out blankets and plates for their meal. It turned out that Rei did in fact enjoy scrambled eggs. Their original plan to investigate Shinji's capability was put on hold until breakfast was finished. Their immediate concerns were lack of sleep, and dealing with their tents. Both of these were further impacted by how uncomfortably hot it was going to get over the weekend. Shinji was busy serving when something occurred to him. "Hey, Kensuke. What do you usually do out here, anyway?"<p>

"Hey, Kensuke. What do you usually do out here, anyway?"

The geek turned a bit red, laughing. "Uh, military play, reenactments. I'm just the one guy so I have to use my imagination a lot."

"May I ask why?"

The other boy shrugged. "I love machines and technology, and the military exults that more than almost anything else in the world. I want to die in glorious battle. Well. I did."

"Did?"

"Yeah, having an N2 mine explode two miles away made me rethink my priorities. Like getting laid."

Before anyone could answer, Shinji's cell phone rang. Misato was on the line. "Pattern Blue detected, an Angel's on its way."

As soon as she was finished speaking, five clumps of grass and a bush all stood up, revealing as many NERV-marked soldiers. A helicopter blew past overhead, shaking up treetops and flattening the grassy fields for dozens of yards. It settled down on the thin road with a muted chirp, and the soldiers and agents ushered the four teenagers aboard.

Despite himself, Shinji grinned at the bewildered look on the faces of Toji and Kensuke.

* * *

><p>A section of stars seemed to detach from space and move across the sky, covering familiar constellations and distant stellar objects. Massive in human scale, the object was tiny compared to Earth.<p>

Ramiel descended to Earth.

Across the world, remote sensors light up. Alerts in hundreds of military bases and research stations woke tens of thousands of people. A worldwide war machine rumbled into action. MAGI tasked satellites and sensors to track the incoming attacker.

SEELE watched from dozens of remote villas, institutions of higher learning, places of worship, and armored command bunkers. Armed with their prophecies, they were utterly assured of their total victory. The Light of God would test NERV's capabilities, and SEELE would observe. Ikari could not maintain his stranglehold on the city for much longer.

And even if he could, the old men were already preparing contingencies.

* * *

><p>Strapped in and set up with headsets and radios. The teenagers and agents shot off into the air towards Tokyo-3<p>

One of the Section Two pilots leaned back and gave the four kids a surprisingly reassuring smile. "We're taking all of you to NERV. Aida-kun, Suzuhara-kun, your families are all set in shelters and the Geofront." He looked off to one side before speaking again, looking at Kensuke. "Got word from the campsite, we'll pack your stuff up and bring it back, assuming the Angel doesn't kill us all."

The other boy laughed. "Thanks."

As the pilots got closer to the city, the radio filled up with more and more chatter. The Angel was approaching, and tension began to rise.

Rei turned her attention to the military geek. "Aida-san"

The boy blanched visibly. She'd regained the alien distance that normally her extremely uncomfortable to deal with. The stare was just plain creepy. "A-Ayanami-san?"

And as fast as that nearly inhuman demeanor reappeared, it vanished in pure, teenage befuddlement. She tilted her head to one side and blinked, while one blue eyebrow raised fractionally.

"What do you mean by 'laid'?"

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Whoo. Chapter 12. Probably lots of errors. I may go back and add in further dialogue tags and better elaborate on the camping scenes, but I just ran out of steam, and I wanted to get moving on Chapter 13.


	13. Reasons

Kensuke long understood that there was no such single entity as 'coolest thing ever'. Instead, one could plot out 'cool' on a radial graph, with the center being 'Not cool', and each extending ray acting as it's own category. Sex, for example, had it's own hypothetical ray, with a question mark denoting its unconfirmed state. Another ray governed 'military technology', with many data points including specific makes of guns, vehicles, and advancements in the military sciences.

The Geofront immediately became its own ray, marked out in the category of 'Incredible human engineering achievement'.

The helicopter landed on an armory building, which itself extended panels and retracted the helicopter inside itself, before funneling the aircraft down into the Geofront's internal railway. Shinji had already enjoyed the view, and despite the incoming Angel, Toji and Kensuke couldn't help but press their faces against the windows. The interior rail exited out of the tunnel and into the Geofront interior space. The pilot and copilot let out a much needed laugh.

The helicopter was shifted onto another transport rail, which in turn shot off towards an interior station under the Geofront's ground layer. The two pilots were ushered off to their ready rooms, while Shigeru and Maya introduced themselves and collected the two civilian boys and escorted them to the bridge.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko met the pilots on the way to their ready rooms. She took one look at Rei and sucked on her teeth. "You didn't get enough sleep last night, did you? And you haven't taken your supplements."<p>

Rei looked visibly drained. Not quite slouching but not in perfect posture either. Her hair was limp and eyelids just a bit lower than normal. "No."

The scientist pulled out a radio and thumbed the transmit button. "Commander, Katsuragi. Rei can't sortie right now. She'll be ready in six hours."

Shinji could hear the reply. "Understood." and "Handle it, Akagi."

The scientist pointed Shinji towards another door, to the changing rooms. "Get suited up. The Angel's several hours out. Once you're finished, I highly recommend you try to sleep..." She trailed off, licking her lips. "...Katsuragi told me you can ignore the need for sleep as well. If that's true, consider using that."

Shinji nodded and moved to get ready.

* * *

><p>Doctor Akagi had left her with a syringe full of sedative, and a small dish full of pills and supplements for her unique physiology. The head of Project E had dashed off in response to another call. Rei sat upright in a hospital bed, dressed in a long grey cotton T-shirt fresh out of sterile packaging. Far more luxurious than hospital gowns.<p>

The hospital room was dark. Outside, the Geofront dome had closed off all surface access, including the mirror arrays and fiber optic conduits which funneled sunlight into the chamber. The First Child looked the assorted medicines and drugs over. They all were necessary, in some way or another. Some provided needed minerals and vitamins that her diet didn't provide. Others maintained a healthy balance with her non-human traits. The sedative was to help her get to full, restful sleep, quickly.

And some of those pills suppressed certain capabilities that were unnecessary for her intended purpose.

She examined the syringe again and wondered. She wondered if the Angel reached the Geofront, would it wake her up? Would she die in her sleep, and a new Rei would take her place? Would there even _ be_ a subsequent Rei?

That last thought stopped all others. _I can be replaced... But that may not always be possible._

The logic cut through her thoughts with no effort. She always acknowledged her own mortal worth as being 'less' than that of others... But it hadn't occurred to her that to be replaced, the infrastructure to do so must exist. Her heart started beating faster, and the heady, perception-altering surge of adrenaline grabbed hold. She'd never felt it without severe injuries or pain before. Her whole body seemed to hum with nerves.

She stared at her hands, head bowed down. "I... Could not be replaced?"

Half-remembered tutors explained the cognitive sciences to her. It was necessary to harness her AT field without destroying her own ego barrier. Among those lessons was the idea of a child's pre-operational stage...

The First Child blinked, and looked back at the medicine. Minutes later, the syringe was empty, as was the cup of pills and capsules. Rei was asleep in moments.

No one one would notice the few milligrams of powder and gel buried at the bottom of the bedroom waste basket. No one would notice that Rei swallowed empty capsules as well as full.

* * *

><p>As one, the NERV command staff watched a small, unassuming green dot on the big board holographic screen. It blinked in one second intervals, tracking along a projected path if dashed lines. Further, layered displays showed terrain detail, topology, force deployment and readiness. When the rest of the bridge crew returned with the civilians in tow, she favored the two boys with a thin smile.<p>

She turned back to the main display and drummed her fingers against one arm. "Well. We couldn't have asked for a better enemy approach."

The Angel would come in from the Pacific ocean, starting southern shores of Lake Ashi. Tokyo-3 was situated in a small depression on the north shores of Ashinoko, and bracketed on three sides by low slung hills and Mount Hakone itself. Due to the geography, all MAGI simulations determined that most Angels would attempt to approach the city from the south or east, looping around the high ground mountains. Unfortunately for the Angels, the majority of the interception systems were placed along those paths in overlapping fields of fire.

She looked up at the Commander and Sub-Commander. Commander Ikari was _pissed_, in her professional opinion. Not that he showed it. Now wasn't the time for sarcasm or humor, at least, not directed at her superior officers.

She turned back to Toji and Kensuke, raising one immaculate eyebrow and draining any warmth from her tone. "Normally this would be the point where I pull out a gun and explain the concept of 'Top Secret' and 'Non-Disclosure Agreement'. But right now, I think you understand the gravity of the situation."

Kensuke broke out in a veritable deluge of sweat. He braced and snapped into a picture perfect salute, visibly trembling. Toji boggled for a second, before following the other boy's lead and nodding vigorously.

The Tactical Operations Director vanished, and bright, cheerful Misato returned, flashing a dazzling, thousand watt smile. "Good! Now stick around, this is probably the best seat in the house and you'll probably never see it again."

Aoba allowed him self a tight, drawn smile. "We're lucky. Assuming it doesn't speed up, we'll have at least have six hours before it makes landfall in Japan."

Misato tapped her foot. "How's our artillery?"

Makoto tapped a few keys at his station. The main holographic display lit up with markers denoting the numerous defensive emplacements and outlying assets. There were _hundreds of them_."Our forces are in place and ready to attack on your order."

They watched the glowing blip advance. The solid trailing after it seemed to crawl ahead. Misato lightly bit her thumb. "Let's lead off with one of the remote mortars. I want to see what will make this thing raise its AT field."

* * *

><p>As the map had proved, Japan in general and Hakone in particular was practically honeycombed with tunnels and bunkers. Many of them housed remote staging areas for Evangelions and conventional forces. Others contained extensive remote controlled guns and missile launchers. Each such emplacement was hidden behind armored doors, concrete fortifications, and the very soil and foliage on the hillside. On paper they could demolish any conventional force without risking the lives of soldiers and operators. Angels however, were decidedly unconventional.<p>

The coastlines of Japan had changed somewhat following Second Impact. The small seaside tourist town of Manazuru was half-submerged. The Manazuru peninsula itself was greatly diminished. Recessed into the higher hills, a single cannon, intended for long range bombardment rotated and angled itself to strike the Angel as it approached. Properly timed, the shell would be fired, arc and intersect the Angel's predicted position, using the invader's own forward motion to assure a successful hit.

At present speed, the Angel would come into range after two hours. Misato gave the order.

* * *

><p>The Fifth Angel, Ramiel, took the form of an octahedron, an eight-sided equilateral diamond. It was nearly invisible, because its blue crystal body reflected the sky and ocean almost perfectly. The diamond split along the horizontal center line, revealing a dark valley between the two symmetrical halves. There was first an audible, shrilling sound, though no observer was around to hear it. It was the screech of air molecules being rent apart in a high-energy medium. A cloud of glittering, scintillating bolts of light crackled between the two halves.<p>

A split second later, the artillery shell detonated in mid flight.

* * *

><p>The remote response was fast and accurate. The various remote sensors that made up the angel interception network lit up with data, where the MAGI sampled and analyzed it. Human operators reviewed both the raw feeds and the supercomputer results, and all of that information found its way to the fingertips of bridge operators.<p>

Misato leaned over Makoto, staring at his screen."Report. Was that the AT field?"

The sensor arrays and observation posts returned with results before she even asked the question. "Negative, we registered a fusion reaction inside the Angel, but our resolution at this distance is low. We think it has some sort of interception system."

Maya stood in for Ritsuko while the other woman was on her way. "We detected a positron buildup, but there was no visible projectile or energy discharge. The shell was there, then gone."

That was interesting... "Range?"

The response was immediate and encouraging. "Approximately five kilometers, but we only have the one sample so far."

"Keep firing with our remote guns until we know its range, then shut them down. If it can shoot down an artillery shell at five klick, I definitely think it can counter-barrage our guns."

* * *

><p>There were times Misato marveled at the commander's offices. The floor was not only a window to the Geofront below, but served as a holographic projector. A wave of her arms summoned up pictures, alongside tactical and strategic maps. "The Angel has stopped above the center of the Geofront, in the thinnest point." She pointed to the right, out the window's office. "A bit more than a kilometer that way, in the center of the fortress city system."<p>

"As we speak, the Angel has extruded part of itself as a drill, and will break through the twenty-forth layer of armor in approximately nineteen hours."

She flicked through more images until a map overlaying the Ashinoko region, alongside the 'down town' Tokyo-3 fortress city, and the outlying 'old town Hakone' suburbs. A wire-frame diamond designating the Angel overlaid the center of the city, in turn surrounded by a circle denoting its retaliation range.

"Our findings determine that the Angel has an interception system with an effective range of five kilometers, but for safety,we're assuming it has a seven kilometer range." The Operations Director flipped to another image. "We've also determined it has two retaliation modes; A low power, this invisible positron stream that's sufficient to destroy most incoming projectiles. So far no conventional weapon has gotten close to the Angel, therefore we cannot accurately assess the strength of its AT field."

More pictures were brought up, laid out into a grid. The view was distorted in some, like watching a straw through a glass of water. Light was being refracted around the Angel."However, we can _see_ the AT field with our bare eyes, which according to the MAGI analysis, implies this is the most powerful defensive field we've seen yet."

"The primary retaliation mode also appears to be its primary weapon, a nearly unstoppable positron beam. This was only employed in response to threats within its attack range. Three gun emplacements were destroyed learning this." A video played then, showing the beam tracking from one target to another and cutting into the hillside. "The beam can be 'walked' from target to target, and has an approximate warm-up time of four seconds."

Another video played back, showing a artillery barrage from multiple directions. "Once the Angel has charged, it can salvo continuously with minimal delay between shots." The positron beam slapped out one projectile, before twisting along the center valley and firing again.

Misato brought up the last map, designating the one of the city-based Evangelion launch exits, less than one hundred meters away from the Angel. "Our plan is to sortie Unit 01 as close as we can and engage in melee, hopefully denying the Angel the advantage of extreme range."

Gendo nodded. "Approved, Katsuragi."

* * *

><p>Misato found Shinji's friends in one of the commissaries near the bridge. She'd already stopped at a nearby vending machine, carrying an armload of drinks. The Angel was passing over their heads at that moment.<p>

She sounded surprisingly sunny, given the circumstances. "How are you boys doing?"

Toji puffed out his chest a bit in the presence of a beautiful woman, before sagging back down. He cradled his face in his hands, hunched over and pale. "Is it always like this, the waiting?"

The operations director gave him a wry grin, handing him a can of iced tea. "Yeah, sometimes. The first two Angels we fought were at least fairly fast to get here. This one's taking its sweet time."

They cracked open the can tops. "Shinji's doing some last minute prep with the Evangelion, it's not any better for him, let me tell you." She turned to Kensuke. "So you organized a little camping trip, to see if you could do better than the combined budget of six small nations?"

The bespectacled boy had the decency to look embarrassed. "When you put it like that, I was probably feeling my ego... But when I realized he wasn't... Normal, I just.. I wanted to be a part of it."

Toji shoved the other boy off the chair. "A few months ago you wanted to die in glorious battle, make up yer damn mind."

Misato blinked. "You wanted to die?"

"I wanted to be a soldier." He elaborated. "Purple Heart, Medal of Honor..."

One dark eyebrow arched high. "Those are American military decorations."

Kensuke just gave the woman a sour look. "Fine. I wanted An Order of the Chrysanthemum, I'd have been dead either way." He shook his head. "Anyway, it was like every TV show and comic plot just fell into my lap. I could see every detail... And I wanted to see if it would work."

The laugh bubbled up out of her, despite everything else going on. "You know, the first night he stayed with me, I asked him if he landed on Earth in a pod from outer space. He had no idea what I was talking about."

"Seriously? That's a tragedy. We didn't loose _that_ much of popular culture in Second Impact..." Kensuke pushed his glasses up on his nose. "You know what this means then, don't you?"

Misato's eyes practically gleamed with mirth. "I think I do."

Toji saw the signals coming a mile away; that was the Geek tone, they were planning something, thick as thieves. "I don't! What are you two getting up to?"

Kensuke and Misato turned to face Toji with the same, eerie, half-lidded Cheshire grin.

"Movie night."

* * *

><p>The Angel hovered over the center of Tokyo 3, the center of the Geofront and its thinnest point. twenty four layers of armor, soil and rock sat between it and the underground chamber. From its lowest point, a cylindrical drill emerged, already chewing through the surface strata and grinding away at the first armor layer. It started drilling at noon.<p>

It initially surprised Shinji that the launch cages were actually situated in the 'roof' of the Geofront, but when he thought about it, it was the only way it made sense. If the cages were on the 'floor', or further underground, they would have to somehow crawl up the interior curve of the dome, or the 'aerial' train tracks, which would've been an engineering nightmare. Just as it was, the whole foundation of Tokyo-3 was riddled with transport tunnels and the various systems that allowed the city to sink underground. Tokyo-3 had already shifted into fortress configuration. Aside from the 'Old Town' outlying suburbs, the city was ready for war.

The operation timer ticked through milliseconds, seconds and finally minutes. Maya entered the command before Misato opened her mouth to give the order. Shinji rocketed to the surface, secured to the spine of a god-killing machine. The transport harness jinked and juked along multiple tracks, switching approaches as he got closer and closer to the surface. Without the LCL surrounding him, he would've been mashed into jelly against the sides of the plug all the way up.

Above, the Angel withdrew its drill appendage in an instant. It tilted, angling downward and splitting open once more. Shinji could hear everyone in the command bridge, and Maya's shout broke out over the others. "High Energy Reaction! The positron beam is charging!"

Shinji had time to blink, and breath out a low, hesitant "What?" But after that, the harness jerked to the left, and Shinji was now going horizontal, instead of vertical. At street level, the coruscating glow of charged positrons shifted and spun along the Angel's axis, tracking like a single lambent eye. It locked in on an unassuming patch of city street and fired.

Unlike the earlier interception shots, this was a visible, fully realized positron beam, melting the road and adjacent buildings to slag. It dug into the street, the soil, concrete, bedrock and first armor layer, before cutting into the launch rail tunnel and the Evangelion.

"The catapult is destroyed! Unit 01 is stuck at armor layer 1!"

* * *

><p>Misato bit off the fouler things she could say in regards to her own stupidity. She gambled with her pilot's life and was paying for it. The damn thing could see Shinji coming!<p>

Ritsuko tabbed through telemetry. "Syncrograph is... Solid!" She looked up at the video feed of the plug. "AT field is holding. It's holding! Shinji! Are you alright!"

Inside the plug, the pilot was screaming, they couldn't tell if it was fear, rage or agony. Maybe all three. Six ethereal gold arms were folded over the pilot's torso. A smear of burning red-orange bubbled through the plug suit, centered on the pilot's chest. Outside, frozen in its harness, the positron beam cut into the Evangelion's armor. The gold hands cupped the point of burning flesh and nerves. The sympathetic reaction was extreme, and he felt his skin blister under the heat and pressure. "I can't do this much longer! Misato-san! Father! Get me out of here!"

Ritsuko shouted to the operators. "Extend the blast shields!"

The monitors and maps told her the same thing the crew did. "There aren't any! The Angel's firing position is too close!"

"Can we eject the plug?"

Ritsuko waved to the AT field projections, straining against the positron barrage, but holding. Somewhat. "That won't work! Without the AT field he'll just..."

Misato bit off a curse. She made a mistake and it might cost her the pilot's life, but she wasn't out of the fight yet. She put Shinji out of her mind, for the moment. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, but he needed her A-game now. A hundred options hummed through her mind based on what she knew of her opponent. She bit her thumbnail once more.

It was another gamble... "Salvo the type twelve mortars!"

In the hills surrounding Tokyo-3, armored covers shifted aside, revealing rail-mounted propelled guns, the type twelve mortars. They let loose a vicious, multi-pronged attack from three directions, and fired as fast as the guns could reload.

The first shot, against all odds, slammed into the glassy blue crystal armor and exploded. A spider-web of cracks unfurled from the impact. The second and third shots slammed into other sides, shearing off great chunks of blue crystal. The positron beam tapered off, and the Angel shifted, resetting its AT field. The Angel shrieked, so much so that glass and stone alike cracked or shattered, for miles around.

Kensuke and Toji leaned over the rail, staring at the big holographic display with white knuckles. The military otaku grinned. "It can't fire and use its AT field at the same time."

Once the positron beam cut out, Shinji managed to kick his way past the ruined catapult harness and slide down towards an intact transport tunnel. The Evangelion was smoking, and most of the melted glacis plate was slowly hardening.

The rest of the command staff were letting out sighs of relief, and plans were already being drawn up to deal with the enemy.

* * *

><p>One of the NERV in-house nurses helped him clean the burns on his chest. Ritsuko told them it could've been a lot worse. Shinji suffered extensive second degree burns over his chest. The Evangelion had not fared better.<p>

The head of Project E made a mark on a tablet computer, adding yet another observation to her growing list impossibilities, with regards to the Third Child. "Beyond human pain tolerance..."

Any other day he'd stumble over himself, apologizing for the inconvenience. Today it just hurt too much to breath. "I was able to fight through the pain. I was...Reaching for more. More toughness. Misato can explain... " He winced when the nurse excised a piece of burnt flesh and melted plastic.

Normally they'd be doing so in a surgical theater,, and the boy would probably be sedated, but they already knew how fast he could heal. And they didn't have time. Even then, those burns would be with him for several days, if not weeks.

His guardian and commanding officer looked like she wanted to hug him forever, but held herself back. "We can get Unit 01 repaired in three hours. Do you think you can go out there again?"

He took another breath, and let out a long, painful sigh. "I think so."

* * *

><p>There was no time to present the briefing in the Commander's office. Misato instead explained the plan via an audio terminal on the bridge. Her mouth was drawn tight in an uncompromising frown. She clicked her heels and braced, even though he couldn't see her salute. "Commander. I accept full responsibility for the damage Unit 01 suffered. Fortunately the pilot was not severely injured, and the Evangelion can be repaired in time for the next operation."<p>

She plowed ahead without waiting for a response. There wasn't any time to waste on etiquette and decorum, either. "The Angel has the strongest offensive and defensive capabilities we've seen thus far. As previously established, it has an effective interception range of five kilometers, and we now know it can detect Evangelions if they are in this range."

Misato's face shifted to a fierce grin. "We also know that it cannot use both its AT field and primary weapon at the same time. As we speak we're maintaining sustained artillery bombardment, but that's at best at temporary measure. Its slowly regenerating the damage inflicted by the initial attack, and has continued to drill. It will breach the Geofront roof in approximately nineteen hours."

Even as she spoke, the bridge crew jumped to execute their orders and enable others to do their jobs, including hers. Toji and Kensuke had pride of place through her authority, sitting in the command level where the JSSDF brass normally observed NERV operations "We've requisitioned the JSSDF's prototype positron cannon, and have begun work redirecting the collective power capacity of Japan to fire it. Our sniper position is the extreme southern shore of Ashinoko."

In less than an hour, the senior command staff would relocate to their new forward operating base. "Rei is currently asleep, in preparation for her part of the operation. Shinji is currently training with the positron cannon. He can go without sleep upwards of eighty hours now, so we feel this is an acceptable risk."

The Commander terminated the connection without a reply, positive or negative.

* * *

><p>Toji found Shinji at the same hallway where Misato bought them tea. He was still in his plug suit, though his chest was covered in off-white sticky sealant patches and hasty repairs. The pilot waved to the other boy, letting out a broken, two-note laugh. It came out more like a sob though. "I'm terrified. The positron beam, that Angel nearly boiled me alive in the entry plug. And my chest is still burnt."<p>

The other boy leaned against the wall. "Why do it then?"

"I don't know! I've been coasting through this whole thing since I got here. I got into the Evangelion because my father would've put _Rei_ into it, and she was _bleeding internally_." How... Wrong that was suddenly hit home even more so. He now knew how serious her injuries were, instead of just the instinctual understanding.

He rubbed at his face. "I'm sure he would've made her do it, too... We're doing this to save the world, apparently." He flopped back in his seat and sighed. "I may not have a reason to do this, but I know we have a lot of reasons _to_ do this. Rei would've gotten in and tried. She would've died..."

He gave Toji a wan smile. "After that... After that I just kept doing it because nobody told me to stop. I don't have the option to stop."

"I think you do." Toji blinked a bit, before thinking what he said through. His hands waved frantically. "I mean. You can't quit _right now_. 'Cuz y'know, impending doom. But afterwards. How hard is it to find pilots? 'Suke'd volunteer in a heartbeat."

Shinji shook his head. "I don't think it works like that... But I don't understand why they haven't replaced me either. I don't understand the Evangelions that well, but I'm not deaf either. "My synchronization is... Weird. I get really high scores sometimes, like my first day here... But other times it just bottoms out for no reason."

That brought Toji up short. "Wait wait, first day? When exactly did you get here, anyway?"

Shinji pulled his legs up to his chest and winced. Toji then noticed that the pilot's voice was rough and wet, like he had a bad cough. "The day that first Angel attacked, the one where I wasn't careful about..."

Oh. "That one."

He nodded. "Yeah. I'd maybe seen the Evangelion for... twenty minutes? Less?" He leaned back and laughed. "This is insane, I barely remember that night. First I thought it was bad enough that I'm suddenly piloting a giant robot. Then this happens." he waved his hand at his brow. "I changed that day. I was Chosen."

"Chosen?"

"I'm Exalted. an Exalt." He let out another humorous laugh. "Don't say that word outside of the Geofront."

Toji just raised his arms in surrender. Didn't have to be told twice. Kensuke got off on secrets. He pulled the pilot up with one arm. "Listen, if I were in that seat behind that thing, I'd pilot to protect my sister and my family. Your family's done fucked up, so I don't think that'll work for you. "

That got Shinji laughing. Wet and guttural, but still laughing."You're really bad at motivational speeches, you know?"

The athlete clapped one hand around the other boy's shoulder alongside a good-natured snarl. "Shaddup! I can only do sports team morale chants. If you wanted some geek super robot spiel or famous military speech, you get Kensuke." That shoulder got a reassuring squeeze. "Protect your friends and coworker's. If you can't do that, protect yourself. That's all we can do I guess."

Shinji was quiet for a long moment, though looking better and standing taller than he had been since noon.

"No. No it's not." With that, he dragged the other boy deeper into the Geofront complex.

* * *

><p>Around the corner, unheared and unnoticed, Misato pressed against the wall and gripped her cross amulet so hard, it left marks in her palm.<p>

* * *

><p>The Geofront was a massive complex, the dome itself was six kilometers wide in most directions, and nearly a kilometer tall at the highest point. In addition to that, there were extensive underground facilities and outlying buildings in addition to the pyramids Central Dogma and Terminal Dogma. The former of which was NERV headquarters. Ducking into the lower levels, Shinji lead the other boy deeper into the structure. They were near the outside walls though, as windows let in faint light from the interior Geofront flood lamps.<p>

Damn pilot was stronger than he looked, he nearly carried him with one arm. He wrenched his arm free and struggled to untwist his shirt from around his neck. "Ikari? Where the hell are we?"

The corridors were dark. All of Japan was conserving its power for the operation above ground. Somehow Shinji had found a head lamp without Toji noticing, casting a warm gold light wherever he faced. There was no way that suit had any pockets though, so where had it come from? "NERV infirmary. I'm an intern here."

Toji blinked at that but kept pace. "Intern? You want to be a doctor or something?"

The pilot shrugged and kept leading towards their destination. "I never really thought about it before, I've just always wanted to help people, to feel wanted."

Toji was about to ask why they were in the infirmary, when he spotted the nameplate on the door. A private room in the Geofront hospital.

Suzuhara M.

Shinji touched a finger to his lips. "She's probably asleep, so we'll have to wake her gently. I found her file here a few days ago, and asked to have her transferred here..." He shrugged. "I owed it to you for my mistake."

Caught up in his sister being in the _Geofront_ because the new kid transferred her... That almost made him miss the fact that the pilot's head lamp was a burning gold disc hovering above his eyebrows. "Shinji... Man, what _are_ you?"

"Exalted. It's a long story. Her nerves are damaged, it's not something you can just fix, not without lots of surgery and rehabilitation... But I'm close to making a breakthrough."

"Huh?"

Shinji grabbed a scalpel and gauze from a nearby supply cart and cut his fingertip open. He held the bloody cut above the gauze so the other boy could see the blood drip freely. Then, the blood just stopped flowing. "I can make myself not bleed..."

His free hand curled into strange shapes, and he pressed his fingertips together. The deep cut now looked clean and held firmly shut. Not healed, but treated, without stitches or bandages. "I can treat injuries without tools..."

He opened the door to Mari's room, keeping his voice low as not to wake her. "And when I'm ready, I'm going to heal your sister."

* * *

><p>Rei woke up after seven hours of sedation, looking and acting her best. She'd been waiting in the briefing room with Misato for nearly twenty minutes now. Shinji was nowhere to be found.<p>

Misato rubbed her brow, muttering. "Of all days for him to get impulsive, he picks _today_." She stalked over a handset and terminal, slapping buttons until she set it to public address mode.

The whole Geofront echoed with her question. "Shinji-kun where the _hell_ are you?"

The intercom crackled back without delay. "Sorry, Misato-san. Something came up and we had to detour to the infimrary."

She let out an exasperated hiss, stomping one foot. "Fine! Head through junction 2-J and find the Section Two post there, they'll get you to the briefing room."

Once both pilots were ready, Misato spread her hands across the back-lit touchscreen table. The briefing room was dark aside from the glow of the console, displaying a top-down view of the forward base under construction. A holographic projector traced lines and diagrams in the air. An massive, Evangelion-scale sniper rifle rotated alongside a wire frame mockup of Unit 01. The gun exploded into component parts, tagged with its various traits and technical specifications.

She waved at the diagram. "This is the prototype positron cannon developed by the JSSDF. According to the MAGI, we'll need approximately one-hundred and eighty _million_ kilowatts to penetrate the Angel's AT field. To get that kind of power, we're going to need to tap into the power production capacity of our entire nation."

Ritsuko took up the explanation, adjusting her glasses so they were solid sheets of reflected light. "The Angel itself uses a positron weapon for the same reason we're using one too; if you have enough power, you can break through the AT field without using an Evangelion to weaken it."

The display changed again, showing a live video of the forward operating base under construction. It was four in the afternoon. and the terraced concrete structure already being rebuild and expanded. They started four hours ago. Convoys of trucks, earth moving equipment and more followed along roads as quickly as circumstances allowed. A human-shaped trench and depression was being dug out for the Evangelion-scale sniping nest.

Another wire frame of Unit 01 appeared and laid itself prone over the top down view. "Shinji-kun, you're our sniper."

He looked at the diagram and shook his head. "No."

Everyone, including Rei, stopped to stare at the boy. He kept up his reasoning. "Rei's a much better shot than I am, and this isn't something we'd need higher synchronization for, right? I have a stronger AT field, and I can react faster in the Evangelion. And I can handle pain better than anyone else here."

Misato all but floated over and scooped the pilot up in a hug, grinning widely. "Who are you, brave stranger, and what have you done with my sweet shy Shinji-kun? I like that plan. Rei, do you have an opinion?"

The other pilot blinked once, very slowly. "...No."

Misato released her victim and gave a decisive nod. "Right, then Shinij will protect Rei from the positron retaliation."

* * *

><p>The barrage lasted for nearly sixteen hours, and the Angel was unable to drop its AT field for the duration. At the same time, however, no cannon or rocket could breach the region of altered space, much less defeat the planar barrier hovering around the Angel's body. Locked into defensive mode, the Angel kept rotating its planar field to intercept incoming munitions. The city stank with the smell of propellant, melted metal and explosive smoke, and a steadily growing ring of slag, shrapnel and debris built up around the flying fortress.<p>

And every bit of pain and toil earned NERV vital seconds to put their plan into action. A little less than sixteen hours ago, a reserve NERV testing facility underwent a conversion from 'auxiliary structure' to staging area to save the human race. Now, an entire nation's worth of power infrastructure was focused into a mad, all-or-nothing gamble. Operation Yashima relied on the prototype Positron cannon, hastily modified into an Eva-scale sniper weapon.

Tokyo-3's luck did not hold however. One of the remote guns jammed, and there were no spare guns to keep up the pressure. A half-second gap in the assault gave the Angel all the time it needed to reorient itself, charge, aim and fire, destroying the _next_ emplacement in sequence. In low power mode, it began to walk its nearly invisible beam of positrons across the countryside, demolishing static guns and rail-mounted cannons.

Misato frowned and turned to Makoto. "How's our backups?"

The backups were JSSDF mechanized artillery; real people firing those weapons. "Fire bases are all set and ready, we'll have enough to keep the Angel busy during the last stage of preparation."

Misato stared at the screen, trying to read her opponent. It was down to her decision.

"Cease bombardment, we'll need everything we have for the distraction."

Ten hours ago, power across Japan cut out. If the Angel noticed this, it gave no sign. It continued to drill into the Geofront, passing the eleventh armor layer.

The operation would commence one hour before the Angel was projected to breach the Geofront.

* * *

><p>What NERV lacked in actual focused experience, it made up for in other areas. The forward base, the sniping position grew into a fully functional Evangelion launching platform. Gantries and scaffolds surrounded the two unconventional war machines. Shinji let his eyes wander over his own Eva. Misato said it had <em>bones<em> at one point, didn't she? And they tended to bleed excessively when injured. That didn't really surprise him though, especially considering his crash course in the medical sciences. Humans were machines, after all, just using different materials.

To his left, Rei sat on her gantry with her legs folded up to her chest and arms wrapped around her shins. She did not blink, only staring down and forward at her toes. The Third Child tried to _not_ to stare at her legs, he _tried._ The best he could do was only look awkwardly innocuous. Her plug suit didn't make it any easier. He felt his cheeks burn red. His mind kept wandering, and he beat back those thoughts with savage revulsion. Rei looked completely oblivious to his inner turmoil.

Something she said though a few months ago refused to leave his mind. The boy's throat tightened, but nothing ventured, nothing gained... "Ayanami-san... Why did you ask me about my 'Light of the Soul'?"

She didn't look up, content to maintain her stare. Her voice was tiny and even, lacking a lot of inflection that people unconsciously ignored. Its absence was jarring. "It is the classical definition of Absolute Territory. It refers to the space in which a person or personality can exist."

Shinji scratched the back of his head. "That sounds like something Fuyutsuki-Sensei would have said..."

"That is partially correct. Professor Ikari Yui originally conceived of the term in her development of Metaphysical Biology, alongside the Professor Emeritus."

He'd always enjoyed the Sub-Commander's work, and his mother? The bittersweet smile worked its way onto his face. Still, he had no idea where this was going. Rei continued before he could ask.

"The AT field is an expression of Absolute Territory. Human AT fields are inverted, they reflect inward, creating a container for the soul. The Evangelions and Angels can express the AT field externally, even passively."

"Passively?"

"Yes. The Evangelions normally violate the square-cube law, but with the AT field, they establish an altered space in which they can exist."

Shinji peered over the gantry edge and looked at his Evangelion. It was... Exceptionally tall, and when he started thinking about it, he realized she was right; there was no way in hell that thing could stand up, carrying all that armor. "...That makes no sense whatsoever."

Rei didn't seem to acknowledge his disbelief. "The AT Field does allow for theoretical no limits scenario. Pilot Shoryu developed a theoretical proof of the subject, branching off of Doctor Katsuragi's Super Solenoid Theory."

There were other pilots? Did Misato have a degree she never told him about? "Pilot Shoryu? Doctor Katsuragi?"

Unlike before, Rei seemed perfectly neutral with regards to his ignorance. It was refreshing compared to most of his peers at school. Everyone expected him to know everything. "The Second Child, Asuka Langley Shoryu, and Katsuragi Shiro, Lieutenant Katsuragi's father."

The two lapsed into silence as the mission clock ticked down. Below, flood lamps filled the staging area with harsh white light. Orange-suited workers pulled cables around as wide as a man's torso, while others flagged down trucks laden with equipment. The Positron cannon was slowly being assembled by massive cranes and construction equipment. If he squinted, Shinji could see Akagi-sensei directing men and machines. He couldn't see Misato, but she was probably inside the command truck on the lower level.

The quiet stretched out, before his curiosity won over. "So... Light of the Soul?"

"I was..." For the first time in the entire conversation, she emoted. She searched for a word. "Curious. Your powers could have been a literal interpretation. According to Akagi-sensei, your AT field is the same as any other human."

The ready alert sounded. The First Child stood up, and the boy was struck by how graceful she was. For a split second it looked like she was made of moonlight. She stepped into Unit 0's plug and said goodbye.

As he strapped himself into the entry plug, he thought back over their conversation. It was the most he'd ever heard the girl speak, and he had no idea what she was talking about.

* * *

><p>It was their last minute briefing. Ritsuko was surprisingly perky and upbeat. A diagram of the shield appeared in Shinji's mind. It was apparently a hastily retrofit orbital re-entry vehicle, at least part of it. Heat resistance ceramic tiles shot through with chilled super-conducting filaments. On the interior surface, massive refrigerating turbines began to spin up. The plan was, apparently, to charge the shield with protons, relying on the basics of magnetism to protect himself. A positively charged shield versus a beam made entirely of positively charged subatomic particles.<p>

That was the theory. Ritsuko, despite her cheerful take on it, explained the reality of the situation. "Shinji-kun, your AT field won't hold against a positron bombardment like that. Both sides are using the same basic weapon for the same reason, positron weapons can penetrate the AT field directly, without neutralizing it. But," Ritsuko grinned. "The shield you're holding can withstand up to seventeen seconds of sustained positron bombardment, and once most of that energy is expelled on the shield, your AT field can block the secondary effects."

Misato broke in on the communication feed, talking to both Pilots. "Alright, Rei is in sniper position and the positron weapon is charging as we speak." We're entrusting the power of Japan to the two of you."

* * *

><p>The operation would start in fifteen minutes, and Shinji found himself wishing for his SDAT. The communication system rang, and a private video window filled with Misato imposed itself on his vision. She looked haggard and morose. It was a marked change from her no-nonsense commanding tone a few minutes ago. The background was different. She wasn't at her post in the command truck.<p>

The woman pushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand, and clenched the cross pendant with the other. "Shinji-kun."

"M-Misato-san?"

"I overheard you talking to Suzuhara-kun, about your reasons to do this. To pilot the Evangelion." Her eyes were wet. "Don't say anything for a second, just listen, please?"

She squeezed the pendant tighter, and Shinji could hear something creak; her tendons or the metal, he wasn't sure. "My reason to fight... It's selfish and petty. I'll tell you tomorrow. I can't tell you to fight for human kind, that's too big." The tears started to flow for real. "I can't ask you to fight for me either, I'm not your girlfriend or lover..."

She was rambling and he was terrified out of his mind... But despite that, he knew exactly what to say. "You are my friend."

The woman sniffed, giving Shinji the chance to plow ahead. "I'm scared Misato-san. Terrified. But, I want to be worthy of all this." The gold disc lit up on his brow. "I want to be worthy of everything people put on me... You, Akagi-sensei, Ayanami-san.. My friends, NERV. My father... Everyone."

"Shinji-kun... After today, I won't ask you to pilot again. I won't make you." She let out a watery laugh. "I still want you to pilot, NERV would as well..."

Shinji turned away from the video pickup and nodded. The butterfly control yokes groaned under his fingers, but the reinforced titanium held. "It's alright, Misato-san."

"I won't run away."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Whelp, Chapter 13. I'm sure there are is a couple continuity errors or something, but we'll see how it goes. Also forgive my reference to the Order of the Chrysanthemum, there is an incredibly small amount of information on the internet, explaining how those work. By all means, anyone with Japanese military history, please send me a note with more information.


	14. Victory

An echoing shriek tore through the city, and with it, a crushing wave of smoke, dust and grit scoured down town Tokyo-3. Beyond the mere physical, stranger things rose in the wake of that psychometric wail. Small pest animals died messily, while NERV and the as a group suffered crippling migraines and bloody eardrums and noses. The keening wail broke glass and crystal well in advance of the blast wave, all the way out to the sniper position, demolishing glass and sensitive equipment. Both Makoto and Ritsuko pulled their glasses off, gaping at the ruined lenses.

Somehow the LCD screen remained intact, though split into seven sections by a spider web of cracks. "High energy reaction!"

Misato reeled and blinked blood out of her eyes. "Shit! It saw us coming! Shinji-kun!"

The positron pulse built up with almost zero delay, as if it was charged in a capacitor and waiting to fire. For all they knew it probably had been. The beam carved through the north side of Mount Hakone, and melted through the nearby low slung hills with incidental discharge. The waters of Ashinoko boiled and swept up in waves that crashed against the forward base. The shore was choked with the remains of dead fish. The physical, concussive shock wave of displaced air crashed into th concrete structures so hard that the leading surfaces of reinforced battlement cracked, and at the edges, abraded away. Below and behind in the safest relative place, the command trucks and generators rocked in the blast wave, while cables and transformers crackled in protest.

All together this took barely two seconds. The beam hadn't even reached them yet.

To those outside, it was almost perverse. The beam itself was bright, but against all expectations, not as bright as the Sun. Instead it was akin to an overcharged florescent light, an extending shaft of charged particles. The 'bright' part of the beam was itself misleading, as that was merely waste energy; positrons slamming into air molecules and transferring their energy on them, which in turn discharged light.

Time seemed to slow as the attack approached, and as it raced unerringly towards the sniper nest, it grew brighter and brighter. And then Unit 01 stood in its way. From behind the Evangelion was a solid black silhouette with its edges cast in flickering red-orange light. The great machine shoved the shield forward into the invisible, leading edge of the attack, digging in with its heels.

The beam slammed into the shield, splitting into ionizing streamers of charged air and fire. Almost immediately, the shield superheated. Ceramic tiles cracked and flaked away, even as lower layers took on the thermal strain. The superconductor array blew out almost instantly, as well as the cooling devices on the inside of the shield. That was okay though, Ritsuko had warned the pilot that would happen.

Behind him, Rei was utterly unfazed. She had already pulled the charging handle before Makoto shouted 'High energy reaction'. A fuse the size of a freight locomotive slammed into the chamber, and behind her, capacitors started filling for the final discharge. The targeting computers spat out tens of thousand lines of junk data per second, hundreds of thousands. The shield and chaotic positron deflection was wreaking havoc with everything electronic for half a mile around. The systems held, however, even split by static and distortions.

Below, in the command truck. Makoto hissed at his console. "Charging in nineteen seconds! The shield will fail in sixteen!"

Misato stared at the beam on her monitor. "Shinji-kun. We're only going to get the one shot at this. Can you hold out against that beam for three seconds?"

He didn't answer.

* * *

><p>The shield would break. There was no getting around it or last minute ploy to avoid going head to head with a charged positron attack. The AT field at best would only blunt the assault, and Unit 01's available power was dropping precipitously. Someone had tossed a countdown timer into his mental awareness, tagged with the appropriately ominous tag 'time to shield collapse'.<p>

Seconds ticked by, and Shinji found himself stepping forward into the beam. The streamers and curling wreaths of charged particles swirled around the Evangelion's limbs. Lines of carbon scoring seared fern patterns along the Evangelion's arms and armor, etching burn-tattoos with frightening ease.

The shield gave out as the timer reached zero, and the positron blast continued unimpeded, until it slammed into the Evangelion's torso plate. The seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness, while armor melted like wax, and artificial flesh sublimated layer by layer.

Throughout the command trucks, the cheerful, blessed sound of guidance lock warbled through surviving speakers and headsets. Misato laughed and shouted the order to fire.

Rei's response was immediate and unexpected. "No."

* * *

><p>Rei leaned into the eyepiece while she explained, breathing softly. The Angel remained perfectly still and centered in her reticule; it was as perfect a target lock as one could ask for under the circumstances, except for one thing:<p>

"The enemy positron beam will interfere with my own shot. Until the beam is disrupted, I cannot guarantee sufficient accuracy to fulfill my orders."

The command crew gaped, and then realized she was one-hundred percent correct. The Operations Director whirled and gave the order to save them all. Misato had held an arsenal of rockets and missiles in reserve for a reason. Earlier it was to distract the Angel so that the sniper could make an unobstructed shot. She had merely hoped to make her attack before the enemy preempted her. Every surviving emplacement within five miles revealed itself, and in a near simultaneous barrage, fired.

Hundreds of conventional missiles tipped with dedicated, 'bunker busting' and similar high-penetration warheads.

Misato's grin was savage. "Make your choice, you son of a bitch."

* * *

><p>Ramiel was confronted by the impossible choice. If either attack were allowed to strike home, its capabilities as a fortress would be severely compromised. New neurological growth within the Angel allowed it to further comprehend and adapt to the threats it faced. The conventional weapons would damage it, and possibly render it incapable of wielding its primary weapon. The <em>unconventional<em> weapon or the Beasts would most certainly counterattack, if given the opportunity.

Like Sachiel before it, Ramiel's increasing capability to understand proved to be its downfall. The positron beam clicked off with an audible snap as air rushed in to fill the vacuum. Around the Angel, light bent in alien ways as it raised its AT field to full strength. A hundreds missiles slammed into the barrier of altered space, washing over the boundary in sheets and rivers of fire, fuel and explosions.

The beam cut out with one second to spare, and Shinji, the Evangelion, slumped to its knees. Inside the plug, the pilot's chest was a near solid sheet of fading red, and the LCL was thin and soupy after boiling. The bridge crew gave the order and flushed the plug of old, stale fluid and replaced it with blessedly cool, refreshed LCL. Shinji collapsed into his seat.

The Angel was turning and twisting, bringing its defensive field to bear against the incoming missiles and artillery. That was alright though, because the Angel always rotated on an exact, perfect center axis. It had never once broken free of the reticule.

The peppy, green warbling tone of 'guidance lock' filled Rei's ears and mind. She pulled the trigger.

* * *

><p>The human-made positron beam cut through the air and boiled yet more Ashinoko boiling into the air. Less than a minute had passed since the Angel's first preemptive shot, and already the base was surrounded in the stink of over-cooked, dead fish and algae. Ramiel continued to spin, swatting down more and more conventional assaults. It finally noticed the positron beam, and with an almost frantic motion, split open and charged its own attack. It paid no heed to the remaining conventional weapons pounding into its rear faces, nearly chewing through a fourth of the Angel's entire body with explosive force.<p>

Less than a dozen yards away, the Angel's positron buildup slapped into the onrushing bolt of power, sending them both positron blasts cork screwing around each other. Rei's shot dug a twisting spiral pat through the Angel, just off center and growing wider and more chaotic as it cut into the inner torus reactor. Ramiel lost magnetic containment and vented the result of a sustained fusion reaction inside its own body. The blue crystal seemed to flare orange from within, like someone locked molten magma inside a diamond. The sniper shot exited out the back of the Angel, tearing out a massive chunk of alien flesh and venting plasma.

The mournful, chaotic shriek echoed throughout the city once more, and the MAGI refused to acknowledge the Angel had gone silent.

* * *

><p>An armory building collapsed under the psychic wail, and the command truck and numerous other, lighter vehicles were sent tumbling, even so many miles away from the Angel itself. Ritsuko was nowhere to be found among the broken windows and dislodged consoles. Makoto muscled his way back into the chair, now above him since the truck landed on it's side. Once belted back into his chair, he couldn't believe what he saw.<p>

Misato untangled herself, cut , bloody and bruised from another wrecked console. Aoba had been their driver, and he was out, dead or unconscious, she couldn't tell. "Time to recharge?"

Makoto fought gravity and cracked ribs to tell her. "Twenty seconds, ma'am!"

The woman scrambled for a headset and fumbled for transmit. "Shinji-kun! We need twenty more seconds... I'm sorry to ask this. The Evangelion can take another hit... Can you?"

The remote feeds were down, so she couldn't see how her boy was doing. In the plug, the pilot coughed, and a cloud of red mist mixed with bubbles rushed out of his mouth. "Hurts..."

She cradled the headset. "Shinji-kun."

"...I'll try."

* * *

><p>Unit 01 had no shield, and barely two minutes of power left. He thought about unfurling his AT field, but decided against it. The Angel, even weakened and listing, could probably cut through it anyway. His whole chest hurt. It wasn't just his nerves, but his actual skin was damaged and burnt, on top of another partially healed burn. His plug suit was in no better shape. Plastic and circuits had melted and flaked away in the LCL, choking the filters with toxic grit.<p>

Ahead, the Angel slumped into the city, crashing through multiple armory and fortress buildings. One entire face had been chewed to utter ruin, looking more like a bismuth crystal than anything else. Fire and thick black smoke spiraled into the air, lit by secondary explosions of toxic gasses. The drill snapped off at the base and shattered, raining shards onto Central Dogma below.

All of Japan was once more focusing every scrap of power it could into the capacitors behind Rei, and ahead of her, Shinji willed his Evangelion forward to defend her.

* * *

><p>The fortress city was abandoned, evacuated more accurately. While the civilian structures were underground, none were occupied due to various contingencies, like being able to completely disconnect a three-hundred meter square chunk of the city and send it plunging into the Geofront below.<p>

But, if you knew the right people and knew what you were doing, you could hide out in one of the civilian buildings as it retracted below ground. And you could get out into the city surface.

Above, the Angel dwarfed human sense of scale. It was itself the size of normal city blocks, and even damaged its presence was all-encompassing.

Below, a single man hauled a small armored case along on simple metal and plastic rollers. His instructions were to get as close as he could to the Angel, open the case and press the button. Everything else would take care of itself after that.

The Angel triggered its positron blast, sending paper, utility poles, trash bins, cars, and one person flying through the air. Ryoji Kaji pulled himself out of a pile of debris and tightened the strap on his helmet, groaning. "This is a terrible place to be."

Above, a missile streaked across the sky, a rather large one too, according to his casually acquainted eye. Something you fire from a base, not the back of a truck or aircraft. It slammed into the Angel and tore out another massive chunk of crystal. The eldritch invader's beam cut off with a wink, and it screamed again, it screamed like a dying god. Maybe it was. Kaji felt blood run from his tear ducts. A few yards away, a sporty white car melted into slag. All around rampant, alien destruction built in terrifying number and scale... And Kaji got off easy. He glanced at the armored case with a raised eyebrow. He got off easy.

"A very terrible place to be."

* * *

><p>Faster than anyone thought possible, the Angel righted itself, hovering even and level above the city skyline and splitting open once more. Still damaged and on fire, it charged up its primary weapon, heedless of any further conventional attack.<p>

The beam lashed out, cutting into the shore of Ashinoko and past it, up a small hill and over an old Pre-Impact highway. The beam raked over forests and more hills and all and sundry, before immolating a power transfer station, and every single conduit cable leading to the positron capacitor banks.

NERV had lost power to the cannon. They had nothing to stop the Angel with now.

Ritsuko had lost her right arm. She had been blown out of the command truck and been partially under it when it rolled over. Misato had dragged her out while work crews and EMTs scrambled over the ravaged command post. Behind her a bit less than a mile away, the transfer station lit off in secondary explosions. A medic shoved the dark haired woman out of the way and started tying a tourniquet around the scientist's arm. It was a miracle she hadn't bled out already.

Misato scrambled back to the truck and found the radio. "Shinji! Rei! Change of plans. the Angel cut our power, so we're going to hook you up to our local generators and get your batteries topped off!" She turned to stare at the generators and work crews already working to reconfigure them. Good, she actually had the assets needed to execute her plan.

"Once that's done, you're going to have to run to the city and engage the Angel before it has a chance to recover." Her voice softened, almost pleading. "I know I've asked a lot of you already today, and you've done more than I could ever have hoped... But we need you to do a little more."

In the distance, the Angel was burning, throwing out fitful, listless positron bolts into the sky. "We're winning, if you can believe that. The Angel's on its last legs, and we need to keep that momentum going, or we're back were we started... And the Angel will know our tricks next of time."

Rei gave no protest. Shinji's cockpit camera reappeared on one of the functioning screens. Still wracked by pain, he just extended held one hand out and gave Misato a shaky thumbs-up.

* * *

><p>The refit and recharge took a merciful six minutes. The Angel had started listing again, almost drunkenly, but even from here they could see it regenerating. It was like watching salt crystals grow in time lapse, slowly building up more and more bulk and structure.<p>

Ritsuko tapped a cheesy bar tune through video and still images. "See that torus structure? That's the primary weapon. We normally expect Angels to use S2 organs to fuel their capabilities... this one is using fairly pedestrian physics and engineering. It's a fusion reactor, though it bypasses a few of the hurdles we face."

The head of Project E leaned against the roof of the tossed command truck while a paramedic tried to treat her her arm. She was already doped to the gills on pain killers, and covered in dirt, cuts and bruises. Misato huddled next to her, stretching the radio headset out on its coiled cord. "This'd be an amazing thing for a paper." The scientist let out a delirious laugh. "The Angel can 'brute force' its own positron beam by using an AT field to maintain magnetic containment, that's how it fired even though we cracked the torus open."

She chewed on a cigarette but couldn't light it. "And you can bet that this thing will work to mitigate its weaknesses as we speak. Like the Third Angel developing a ranged attack after we dropped an N2 mine on it."

Makoto shouted back from inside the truck. "MAGI predict you'll be able to engage in close combat before it can regain full power, but the positron beam is still in play."

Misato nodded and relayed that to the pilots. "The JSSDF and UN forces are bringing in every spare gun they can to serve as a distraction, because so far it still can't use its AT field and beam at the same time. They'll provide covering fire, you get in close and tear it apart."

Maps and data were fed to the pilots just as much as power and resupply. Shinji too enjoyed the blessed relief of pain killers, though far weaker ones. "We're also going to split your deployment up. Ideally we'd deploy you on opposite sides, because so far the Angel's proven to only have one beam. That may change however."

The maps changed, designating a pair of dots on either side of the lake. "Shinji-kun, you'll be running along the edge of Mount Hakone. Rei, you'll be on the western shore. Hopefully the Angel won't be able to decide what to target, and if you keep moving, you can avoid sustained contact, the beam won't kill you immediately."

Ritsuko took on a stoned, liquid grin. "Of course the best plan is to not get hit at all, so..."

* * *

><p>Ramiel did not have time to fully evolve in response to the massive, impossible setbacks it had experienced. The humans understood the concept of momentum and initiative far better than it did, but that was of no matter. Its mission must be completed, or it would die trying, so that the next may make the attempt.<p>

It did not notice the human with the small armored box waiting below.

* * *

><p>The plan was simple, the obstacles were immense.<p>

Ramiel responded with all due speed, taking potshots at the two charging Evangelions, before the rush of missiles and artillery forced it to shift back to defense. The Evangelions charged along the earth and shore with long bounding strides. Each footfall compressed the ground, and on the rise, dragged streaming plumes of dirt and rock into the air.

Rei quickly out paced the Third Child, running along the western shoreline and rapidly eating up battery power. A bit more than six kilometers was a pittance to an Evangelion, though Shinji had never actually attempted to run so far or fast outside of simulations. His chest stung and ached beyond description despite the pain killers, and every time he breathed, it reminded him that his _lungs were half burnt from outside in_.

Sluggish and labored, the injured pilot guided his war machine to the fight, barely managing to dodge low intensity beams, the interceptor positron blasts. The Angel was firing as fast as its damaged body could allow, and was content to take pot shots at the Evangelions. The creature seemed to forgive itself lapsing on accuracy, because it paid no mind if its shots missed, leaving melted, explosive craters for the pilots to run over or around. The beam refocused and swat more missiles and guns out of the sky; now real threats since it was unable to raise its AT field.

Rei had ducked behind an extensible blast shield layered in ceramic tiles and other technologies, fortifying it against angelic bombardment. So protected she plugged into the nearest generator building and armed herself. Shinji however was fading fast. Even if he ensured his Evangelion could continue, he couldn't. He was finally reaching the extent of his enhanced enduranc

e and tolerance for pain. Even now his vision faded to black and blurred with weird colors.

Two minutes of power left. That sounded about right. The Evangelion's shoulder pylons snapped open, dropping a pair of progressive knives into his hands.

* * *

><p>Kaji stared up at the Angel and whistled, lighting a cigarette. "Well Katsuragi, you better have a rabbit or three in that hat of yours..."<p>

* * *

><p>Evangelion Unit 01 slammed into the flying fortress, gouging out a massive scar between the two halves of the positron charging valley. Inside the entry plug, the world was soaked in pure gold sunlight. The pilot was digging into every reserve he had just to fight down the pain, from both his own burns and the Evangelion's feedback.<p>

The Angel thrummed, and its AT field snapped back on, shoving the Evangelion away and into the air. The great purple war machine seemed to slide off an invisible slope, before the Evangelion drove one knife into the region of altered space. Its own AT field unfurled with a roaring thunderclap, and Shinji forced his own set of physical laws on the Angel. The progressive knives hummed as the pilot and machine dug and ripped at the alien ego barrier, riding with gravity and into the Angel itself.

* * *

><p>The agent blinked, puffing idly. "That'll do, Katsuragi. That'll do."<p>

* * *

><p>It hurt too much to scream. It hurt too much to <em>think<em>. All he could do was tear into the Angel and deny it any chance of hurting anyone else. He carved off great sheets of crystal flesh, opening new vents for smoke and fire to gush out. Even as the Evangelion's armor burnt away, he dug in harder, reaching with long knife-bearing hands. The progressive blade gouged into the Angel's body, and slowly, Shinji levered himself on top of the pyramid face.

The knives were reduced to slag after a few strikes, trying to punch into the energetic innards. At the same time, the Angel's keening wail spun up, followed by the cloud of glittering motes preceding a positron blast. The bloom of excited particles hovered next to the Evangelion's legs, hanging down over the charging valley... And it shook from side to side. The lambent chunk of subatomic particles bobbled back and forth, like a man shaking its head. It refused to fire.

Miles away, Misato's grin was manic, and all the more frightening cast in the green glow of broken monitors. "That damn thing can't target that close! I knew I was right! Rei! Forget ranged weapons, try and jump on the thing while Shinji's got it pinned!"

Rei acknowledged and moved into position.

* * *

><p>Now seemed a good a time as any to complete his mission. Kaji let out a cheerful, tuneless hum as he pulled open the armored case, revealing a strange apparatus. It was mostly brass and copper pipes, with thin wires leading into a titanium clamp. That clamp in turn secured a small cylinder of flawless black volcanic rock. The rock was about the size of a soda can, mirror smooth and polished to a glossy shine.. A green button blinked brightly, waiting for a finger to press it. Kaji obliged.<p>

Just as Shinji completed one final haymaker and Rei coiled for a leap, the device activated. The black rock hummed, transmitting a signal beyond human awareness or comprehension.

Above, Ramiel was gripped by several alien thoughts. The signal forced the Angel to evolve greater understanding to even comprehend the message. The signal imposed and absolute minimum of cognitive capacity. Wracked by psychometric pain it could now acknowledge as such, Ramiel was about to comprehend the concept of its own individuality, when those external thoughts resolved in terrifying clarity.

**MORTALITY**

_**WEAPON**_

_**TERMINATION**_

The damaged, crippled ruin of Ramiel shuddered, spinning so hard it flung Unit 01 from its body and into the streets with a bone-breaking crack. The angel screamed, shrieking and howling like a wounded, terrified animal. Kaji felt his ears and nose bleed, while a migraine crashed through his brain.

And then, a split second later, Ramiel was gone, having left the atmosphere in less than a second, completely ignoring air resistance, gravity and acceleration.

Shinji and Rei looked up at the hole in the smoky air.

* * *

><p>The MAGI wound maintain that the blue pattern remained in detection range for over a week; the Fifth Angel was still alive.<p>

Then, the blue pattern vanished, and NERV rushed to pick up the pieces.

* * *

><p>AN: Shorter chapter than I would've liked, but it hit all the notes I wanted to hit and it felt like a good place to stop, take stock and depressurize after such a wham-bam action-fest. No idea when Chapter 15 will hit; I've no words written and will still need to plan a few events.<p> 


	15. Boundaries

The Fifth Angel had severely taxed the endurance of Tokyo-3. Hundreds of conventional assets, turrets, missile launchers and more, were all utterly destroyed. Money, manpower and material surged towards the fortress city in an unceasing stream. As long as the Angels attacked Japan, the rest of the world would raise it up as a shield. That was fine with NERV and Lieutenant Katsuragi.

The monitor in front of her was graphical representation of NERV and its logistical web. Factories and armories in China stamped out munitions, using designs licensed from Japan and the United States. India, Australia and Siberia maintained the greatest wealth of natural resources and the easiest means of getting them to Japan, while China was occupied with arms and ammo.

It would take approximately four months to bring their infrastructure back up to full readiness, and another six month on top of that to properly repair the secondary and tertiary damage. Now, most of the hills around Tokyo-3 were barren and melted, or choked with ruins of intercepted ordnance. Mount Hakone had a visible, permanent scar carved into the eastern side, which was quickly being reclaimed into a massive freeway/Evangelion rail line. Geofront access already allowed sufficient deployment opportunities, but Misato wasn't going to say no, especially if she wasn't footing the bill.

Misato herself was mostly unscathed, decorated with a few cuts and bruised bits, none of which would leave lasting marks. She wasn't anywhere near as lucky as Shigeru Aoba, or Ritsuko. The majority of the casualties were from those in the sniper base and power relay stations. Electrical burns, shrapnel, concussive blast waves...

Two civilian shelters collapsed outright. It had taken them six days to start digging out the bodies.

But for all of that, Tokyo-3 got off blessedly light.

But that thought soured when Misato remembered that they never actually confirmed a kill on the Angel. It ran away, and then completely eluded detection. Seeing that thing run... Misato didn't have the words to express how good it felt, but it wasn't enough. They had to be broken by her hands... Or by the hands of her pilots.

She stopped then, reviewing that last thought. Her pilots. She cared about Shinji, truly, but until that last battle she lacked the sort of investment a commander has in their troops. She would point them into battle, and spend their lives if necessary... But they were hers, and she wouldn't do so lightly.

She thumbed the cross pendant in one hand, looking over the map of reconstruction. "We all have things we want, don't we..."

* * *

><p>The commander's office was dark. The floor tinted itself glossy and opaque, like polished volcanic glass. The luminescent etching and a single, incandescent desk lamp cast sickly amber light all over the chamber. Fuyutsuki loomed over the younger man's desk. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, despite his age, and the shadows and pools of light playing over his face and jacket made him look all the more devilish. "I fail to see how the Scenario holds, Ikari."<p>

The commander stepped out from behind his desk, oddly animated. He lifted and lowered his gloved hands as if he were a scale. "I see three outcomes from this situation. We defeat the Angels, we are destroyed by the Angels, or we cause Third Impact on our terms."

Fuyutsuki blinked. Gendo's disarmingly charismatic tone vanished. "It is not that simple."

A normal person, even a normal schemer, would say something like "We are in the unenviable position..." Adding flowery words to bolster their morale or that of others, ego or some other emotional affection. Gendo was not above that... But he mastered his own theatrical responses well before marrying Yui. So he did not exaggerate or emphasize. There was no grand speech with careful, exotic word choice. He merely explained with ruthless certainty.

"A scenario is a plan or process, based on the actions and reactions of all players under it. It is a goal or tool, a means to an end." He flicked his hand and a holographic display popped up, revealing photo-tagged dossiers of the Second and Third Child. Another flick summoned a transcription labeled 'Dead Sea Scrolls, followed by an alphanumeric string denoting a pair of dates. "Our understanding of prophecy comes from one source. A proven but unreliable source. Then, there are multiple prophecies in play, some that rely on other prophecies coming to pass, or others not passing. Some are mutually exclusive."

Gendo flicks through the display some more, pulling out pages from the transcription and plotting them along a timeline, marking dates and events with predictions. Near the end of the display, the timeline forks, with the marked events remaining dim, having never come to pass. To the grayed out path, he adds a note: SEELE. Below, the undefined path bears the title of SCENARIO.

He looks up from his work and offers the older man a small, self-assured grin. "A prophecy can be useful. Having one is an advantage. Relying on one is a fool's errand."

Fuyutsuki would not be cowed so easily. He waved his arm and banished the graphic, before summoning his own. Built on the strength of data from their transcription, he plotted out dates and events much like Gendo did. Fifteen markers were placed along a variable span of ten months, from spring of 2015 to the first day of 2016.

With an angry swipe, he scored a red line through thirteen of those markers, and flagged January First. "Then how is the scenario on track? If I am not mistaken, we are behind schedule by six months or more. Third Impact is supposed to occur at on the first of January! That's barely three months away."

Gendo was utterly unconcerned. "Only if you hold the prophecies as gospel. For all we know they've changed since you and I last read. SEELE has the original scrolls, and they will scramble to adapt to a constantly changing future. I will make my future come to me."

Fuyutsuki looked the other man in the eye. "I would like to know the source of your confidence."

"Yui."

* * *

><p>Ritsuko signed herself out of the hospital a day after the Angel attacked. She left as soon as her arm, what was left of her arm, was fully treated. She fled to her apartment and her cats. Three days after that, Misato and Maya, and of all people, broke through her door. Broke into her apartment. Misato had jimmied the lock with her NERV ID of all things. The doctor was still on pain killers, so she was only doped. Otherwise she'd have raided a liquor store on the way home.<p>

Haggard, limp and drawn out, the scientist tried to lever herself off her couch, but slumped, needing a second arm to get upright. She cursed into a pillow before trying again. "Get out."

Maya fretted, cradling a tablet computer against her side while the other lieutenant dominated the apartment. Misato planted her feet and crossed her arms over her chest. She fixed herself firmly in a 'take-no-shit' stance. "No."

The scientist just stared at the other two women. The rage and fury visibly drained out of her body. She sagged back into the couch and buried herself under nearby pillows. Maya took a small step forward. "Sempai, please..."

Misato tried to grab her friend, to hold her steady and give her something to focus on. It wasn't working very well._ Well, at least she's handling trauma better than I did_. "Where's this defeatism coming from? You're stronger than this aren't you?"

Akagi was the picture of resignation. She collapsed onto her couch like a puppet with its strings cut. Maya and Misato had seen crippling injuries before, people with amputated limbs... It was hard not too after Second Impact and the subsequent wars and catastrophes. But seeing someone they knew, now suddenly visually 'off balance', it hit the uncanny valley incredibly hard. Humans adored bilateral symmetry.

One bloodshot eye twisted up to glare at Misato, while Ritsuko groaned face down into her pillow. "I should be angry. I should be like you, Katsuragi. Damn the consequences, charge off into the maw of hell, kill them all for what they did to me..."

_Scratch what I said about handling it better, at least she's talking._ "Ritsuko! This... Why are you acting like this? You could build another arm couldn't you?"

She sat up and clawed at her thin T-shirt, tearing open one sleeve to show the bandaged stump. Her arm ended at the tip of the deltoid and was rounded and smooth. Miracles of modern medicine. "I could, but I don't want to. There's no point anyway. My arm's gone, a broken tool, used goods. I can't even type anymore."

She flopped on her back and threw one arm over her brow. "I'm already spent... We've been at this for nearly a year, and we're only on the Fifth Angel. Ten more are coming, at least... And I'm already burnt out."

Misato had just about enough of that shit. "Ritsuko."

Her tone snapped the other woman out of her funk. "Katsuragi?"

"I saw the first Angel with my own eyes as my father was melted in front of me." She tilted her head to one side. "Oh yeah. I was at ground zero for Second Impact."

Ritsuko's eyes narrowed, one pair of eyelids twitching madly. She let out a wordless growl of frustration. "...Dirty pool."

Almost instantly the uncompromising Misato vanished, and the cheerful, gutsy woman returned. She hauled her former college roommate up off the couch and into a fast, gentle hug. Both their ribs weren't in the best shape, after all. "Look, you'll get through this and I'll be there for you, So will Maya. Right Maya?"

The bridge operator looked rather poleaxed, but snapped out of her stupor with a perky sound. "Of course!"

Misato grinned with a no-nonsense nod. "There you go. Also Maya had some news?"

The other woman nodded, flipping the tablet open and pulling up some files. "Research and Development made some breakthroughs. They've been on your desk for a week or two now, but..." Ritsuko was in no position to see them. Maya had a summary anyway. "We've managed to filter out all the incidental effects regarding Shinij-kun's powers... This means there are some mark 1 prototype sensory equipment waiting for the next round of tests."

Ritsuko's mind seized on the prospect of new research and breakthroughs. It was not her field, but aside from the Sub-commander, there were no other experts in Metaphysical Biology.

* * *

><p>The NERV infirmary looked more like a prison at that moment, with all the armed guards posted around their rooms. Nurses and orderlies were escorted by no less than three Section Two Agents at all times, even for the most mundane of tasks. Their stay in the Central Dogma hospital facilities was mostly a formality.<p>

Gendo hadn't decided if they'd be more useful alive or dead, after all.

The two civilian teenagers were kept under lock and key for nearly two weeks now, after the Angel had been defeated. Orders generated above Misato's pay grade worked their way through the hierarchy, until the they fell under the hospitality of Section Two.

Toji just leaned back in his bed, arms folded behind his head and fingers laced together. "Kensuke."

The other boy didn't look up, intent on a portable game or something he smuggled in. He let out a nonverbal grunt.. The other boy took that as a sign the geek was listening. "You think we're in deep shit?"

Now Kensuke did respond, but continued to focus on his toy. "Black Hole Deep."

He'd learned about black holes before, and Kensuke explained it more than a few times. Toji honestly just didn't absorb that kind of information very well. Regardless, he got the context. "...You're a weird guy, 'Suke."

Kensuke's voice took on that slow, 'you're completely out of your league' tone someone uses when pointing out something obvious. The last time Toji heard it was when the other boy explained about kill zones. "We're imprisoned by the most secretive organization on the planet. I'm allowed to be weird."

Not long later, an agent meandered in. Young, fresh-faced, easy to relate to. It was a fairly standard interrogation tactic, get the prisoners to develop a rapport with their captor. That was hindered slightly by their interrogator refusing to give his actual name. They called him Slick, in the meantime.

"So, gentlemen." Slick began their daily debrief, the third since they were incarcerated within the Geofront. "Anything new you'd like to tell us?"

Kensuke sighed. "No, sir, nothing new. We were brought into the Geofront because Lieutenant Katsuragi cleared us."

Slick leafed through some papers. "And your planned experiments regarding the Third Child and classified information?" Kensuke shrugged. "As I told the Lieutenant , I got caught up in the moment. Shinji was very quiet about the whole thing."

Another page thumbed through. "And the sexual advance towards the First Child?" The agent had to carefully control his expression, that little interlude was already making the rounds in Seciton Two as 'abso-fucking-lutely hilarious'.

Kensuke's tone was flat and uncompromising. "There were no such advances."

Slick nibbled on a pen cap and nodded, making a check mark. He turned to Toji. "Anything you'd like to say?"

The jock just folded his arms over his chest and snorted. "I got more important things to worry about than freaky new kid and equally freaky Ayanami." Toji snorted. "Look, I'm tired of this song and dance. You can't keep us like this, I want my goddamn phone call and a lawyer."

Slick gave the boy an apologetic shrug. "Unfortunately, Suzuhara-san, NERV is not the police, and you do not have any rights within the Geofront. NERV is a nation unto itself. For an indeterminate amount of time, you shall be guests of our fine facilities." He stood up and bowed. "Have a pleasant evening, gentlemen."

Slick left, and Toji glanced at Kensuke. The bespectacled boy nodded. Toji replied. "'Black Hole Deep'".

* * *

><p>Ritsuko was death warmed over. She hadn't touched up her dye job in weeks. She dove headfirst back into her work, to get her mind off things. Ritsuko wasn't a one-woman scientific army by any stretch of the imagination, she had legions of, research assistants, graduate students and more at her beck and call. Then she had the reputation and clout amongst the greater scientific community. She did not exist in a vacuum.<p>

Most people did actually assume Ritsuko just conjured up science and miracle solutions to problems. Misato most notably, though unlike most the other woman never took Ritsuko's intelligence for granted.

Instead of conjuring, Ritsuko would make the initial breakthrough, often supplemented by the works of others. That was the case with her first take on the pattern-green detection equipment. She managed to isolate the specific physical markers the Third Child exhibited when using his powers. Once it was proven possible, NERV research and development charged into the fray, backed up by the MAGI supercomputers and her own intermittent assistance. One prototype lead to another, and another, until she now had stable, working sensors laden on a cart in front of her.

She had the talent, she had the tools, now she needed data from an extensive list of sources. Control groups, people in direct contact with the Third, varying levels of exposure. The more data the better, and two more such points were just down the hall.

* * *

><p>Boredom was the theme of the day, with regard to Toji and Kensuke. Guard changes and resident nurses checked on them, they weren't injured, so most of the manpower was focused elsewhere.<p>

A new doctor came in, pushing a rolling cart laden with strange devices and dish-tipped scanner-guns. She looked haggard, with red, bloodshot eyes behind thin-frame glasses, and growing bags on her cheeks. She powered on through, efficient and poised even when tired. Toji was smitten instantly. Well, not really smitten, but he definitely liked what he saw. When she came in, he gave her his best, charming smile. (Manners like a thug, Toji did have a charming smile, his best feature according to the girls of Tokyo-3 Municipal).

The lab-coated-lady mustered up a wan smile that failed to reach her eyes. "Good evening, Suzuhara-kun, did I wake you, or Aida-kun?" Kensuke was busy with that electronic gadget, uttering a noncommittal 'no'.

Toji just leaned back, utterly cool in his own mind. She started taking some samples, waving those strange scanners around. Geiger counters pinged and squealed, other devices hummed and spat out numbers. The lady's brow furrowed, and Toji noticed her roots and eyebrows weren't blond. Dyed eh? Still good.

She seemed to notice his attention, even if she wasn't looking at him. "Something the matter, Suzuhara-kun?"

Kensuke perked up. Something about the situation just spoke to him. It felt like the humming, tingling sensation one felt before a thunderstorm really started in earnest. He looked at the woman, and noticed that she had a name tag: Akagi Ritsuko. The hormonal part of his brain registered her various traits like Toji did, but Kensuke definitely noticed she was missing an arm. Immediately, warning bells started going off in his head.

He turned to Toji and made frantic, throat-slitting gestures and an fair approximation of a aircraft carrier deck crewman, desperately flagging down a crashing wreck.

Toji paid his friend no heed. "You're a babe."

That made her sit up and look at him, blinking owlishly. She pulled off her glasses with one hand. Kensuke stopped to watch the train wreck in progress. "Beg your pardon?"

Toji folded his arms behind his head and leaned back into his pillows. "You heard me, You are a one-hundred percent, bona fide, ten-of-ten-on-a-scale-of-zero-to-smoking-hot _utter babe_."

* * *

><p>In the Section Two watch post, a few rooms down, an agent with dark skin and hair wound up in tightly bound dreadlocks, leaned back in her chair, smirking like a scoundrel.<p>

She twisted to face her coworkers, with her smirk growing all the more insufferable by the syllable. "Well gentlemen, that _fourteen year old kid_ has more _balls_ than anyone I've ever met." She held her hand out and flexed her fingers. "Now pay up, I think Akagi's about to piss herself."

An unhappily large amount of money exchanged hands.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko had collapsed on Toji's bed, laughing uproariously, tears streaming out of her eyes as she pounded her fist into the mattress. Toji knew he was on the right track, if nothing else he'd get her smiling. The boy waited until her laughing fit lulled to breathy giggles, then pounced.<p>

He raised one hand ticked points off his fingers. "Those legs in that skirt, that shirt, the lab coat. The _glasses_, the _mole_."

The scientist stumbled out of the room, still cackling. Toji leaned back in his bed like he was Gilgamesh on his throne of Uruk. Kensuke sat in awe. "Toji. You are a god among men."

"I know, Kensuke. I know."

* * *

><p>It hadn't taken her too long to reconfigure her primary workspace to one-handed operation. Shifting everything to her left side, reorienting consoles, controls...<p>

Getting used to being left-handed would take a lot more than a week. Still, the human mind and its ability to compartmentalize stepped into play: she had a problem to figure out.

A large bank of monitors flipped through looped recordings of Shinji executing his known, unique techniques. She'd need to get him in for more testing now that she had better sensors, but for now she just wanted to see if any patterns jumped out. And lo and behold, they did. She flicked the trackball and pressed a key, re-ordering the displays. On the left were all the instances of Shinji doing something without a massive light show.

Some of the clips were fairly pedestrian, like watching him staunch his own cuts with fingers and a grunt of effort. Others were combat drills, punching and kicking targets, to the point of ruin. She squinted at one loop and shifted it over to another column; at the very end she could see a faint glimmering of that disc on his forehead. Sensing a pattern, she started running through theories and permutations. Eventually she realized the session time codes roughly correlated to how intense the corona and symbolic display were.

Data points were entered, and a graph was plotted on another screen off to her left, showing a simple, parabolic curve. She initially graphed it along time exclusively, but refined it to 'Intensity by Effort'. Shinji would start low, and depending on what he was doing, the corona would build up around him. It could happen instantly, or over several minutes worth of activity. At the highest level, the light and mandala filled the training room, washing out all other light and shadows. As great as that display was, it shrank back down to the previous intensity within a few seconds.

Re-graphing the data, she started to see more patterns. There were several steps... All based on how much effort he was expending. It was all currently meaningless, or arbitrary at that moment. She lacked the base unit to make a judgment on how much effort he was putting in. Until Ritsuko knew the Calorie, Joule, or Watt, that common unit of measurement.

She banished the data set and corona to another folder, leaving her monitors filled with the remaining, specific techniques. She synchronized the time codes, and tasked the MAGI to interpolate based on human variability. Shinji rarely performed the techniques at the exact same speed or with the exact same motion. Regardless, she began to pick out patterns, so did the supercomputer triumvirate. Another monitor flicked on, showing a computer simulation of the Third Child. He was cycling through one of the anomalous techniques, persistent techniques.

She sat up in her chair and blinked, before making a note about persistent techniques versus transitory expressions. That done, she settled back into her chair and watched. On the recordings, training dummies exploded into sand and wood ruin, punctuated by a flaring burst of golden light. The camera didn't track it the same way a human eye did. She slowed down the playback.

The pilot punched, and the flash of gold broke out. A part of his normal, incidental coronal display appeared for an instant. The glowing outlines of additional arms flashed out from his shoulders, frozen and accentuating his real strike. They weren't solid shapes of light, but instead wire traceries; invisible limbs defined by their contour edges. Whorls and lines cut into the shoulders down to the wrist. Each flickering burst was a slightly different pose, hands held up for interception, folded into fists, flexed as if blocking, or straightened hand-spears.

She blinked and played it back. Again and again. Each strike was simplistic and brutal, but all the more honest for its simplicity. She found herself reading the attacks. Each strike, even against mere training posts, were telling her it was a foregone conclusion. Not destruction, but victory.

Her eyes narrowed, and she slapped the stop button. That shouldn't be telling her anything. There shouldn't be a symbolic language transcending her own cultural understanding. She shouldn't be able to look at a punch and see it as anything other than a punch, even if it's executed exceptionally. Hitting something should not promise_ total victory_.

She looked at the recording and the deceptively serene look on the boy's face. "...Just _what the hell _are you, Third Child?"

* * *

><p>Shinji was quick to fall asleep and reached full wakefulness just as rapidly. He knew the Geofront well enough to know the sunlight hitting his eyes was reflected and diffuse, and threw one arm over his face. Whenever he woke, he got into the habit of acknowledging the time. It was a strange little quirk, a small mental flex, and he just knew the exact time down to the second. It was nearly ten in the morning. He worked his jaw and tried to fight off the flannelmouth feeling of being drugged. He hadn't been that badly hurt, right?<p>

Something shifted in the light, sending him bolting upright. "You are awake."

Rei sat in a nearby visitor's chair with a small red book opened in her lap. She looked just the same as always; school uniform, bob haircut and red, unblinking eyes. One of the windows was cracked, casting a shadowy line across the floor. Outside, chunks of blue crystal from the Angel's shattered drill littered the Geofront forest and outlying hills. Construction equipment and work crews bustled in the distance, tearing down the remains and hauling them away in massive trucks.

Rei closed her book. "It has been one week since the Angel attacked. Do you remember it retreating?" The other pilot nodded, so Rei continued. "The MAGI refused to declare the Angel destroyed, and the detection system showed intermittent contacts for six days. Yesterday, the 'bogey' vanished." She cocked her head to one side. "Hyuga-san used that word. I do not know what it means."

Her gaze never wavered, it was unnerving. She stared at whoever she was talking to. An expression somewhere between eye contact and not. "You were recovered with extensive sympathetic burns to your torso and internal organs, and related scalding from superheated LCL. Surgery was not required, but NERV physicians put you in a medically-induced coma. Your enhanced healing allowed you to recover quickly."

Shinji just let the explanation wash over him. One detail stood out though, completely unrelated to the battle. "Aren't you disobeying orders?"

Her expression didn't change at all. She didn't even blink. "I am. The Commander does not track me constantly."

The conversation ended. Shinji couldn't find anything to say for several minutes, and Rei was content to match his silence. But after a while, Rei spoke once more. "I would have protected you, if it were my mission."

He looked up, blinking. Something about her lack of expression told him not to say anything more. The silence stretched again, until she said "Thank you."

A smile worked its way over the boy's face, and a new, welcome feeling curled up in his chest. Being needed, appreciated. It was a drug and he was addicted. But that surge of euphoria faded, and he thought back to the battle, or just before it.

Going a bit red, he ducked his head, but his eyes lifted to match hers. "Ayanami-san... You shouldn't say goodbye so much. It's like you're going to go away forever." He gave her a weak smile. "It's too sad."

She lapsed into a third span of silence. This time her expression changed, visibly contemplating. "When the Angel vanished, we were victorious. I did not know what to feel."

Shinji looked up. Emotions weren't his strong suit, and his academic knowledge was cursory at best. His growing collection of books only touched on psychology as it related to Metaphysical Biology. "What to feel?" He echoed.

Rei's face shifted back to that flawless, ivory mask. "I am ill-suited to expressing myself, and understanding the feelings of others."

Shinji leaned back in his bed. "Feeling... I would've felt happy."

"Happy." Rei repeated. She fell silent again with her hands folded in her lap.

* * *

><p>People died fighting the Fifth Angel. Others lived while death might've been a mercy. Shigeru Aoba was unconscious and scarred for life. Ritsuko had lost her arm. Hundreds, thousands of other people Shinji never met were suffering.<p>

Misato had come to check him out of the hospital. She'd been surprised to see Rei, but hadn't objected. Instead once Shinji was dressed, she scooped the both of them into a massive hug. They froze up in her arms almost immediately. Rei blinking more in a few seconds than she did during a whole day, and Shinji bunching up his shoulders and ducking his head. Misato ushered them out of the recovery wing and headed out to the rail station when Shinji planted his feet and said he'd be staying.

Now Shinji felt something he'd never known before, not even since piloting the Evangelion. Need, aspiration, the desire to achieve. To live for purpose.

"I'm not going to go back home when I can do something here and now." He waved to the rush of critical cases and in-house injuries following the battle, still flowing in even now. It could've been worse, everyone knew. Misato relented, and Shinji got to work.

* * *

><p>Post-crisis, Lieutenant Katsuragi was not an easy person to pin down. But, finally, circumstances aligned, and Rei managed to corner the older woman.<p>

Outside of her apartment, of all places. The Operations Director stared numbly at the blue haired girl standing next to her apartment door. She shifted her bag of groceries in one arm, before balancing it on a thigh to grab the handle. The whole time, she never broke eye contact with the pilot.

Finally, she summoned up the drive to speak. "Rei, what are you doing here?" She gave herself a mental slap. "I mean, what can I do for you?"

Rei's expression did not change. "I require your help."

Rei invited herself in and took off her shoes, before helping Misato put away her groceries. The younger girl worked with methodical, unerring precision. Not machine-like, but extremely regular with deliberate motions. It took Misato a second to realize the girl knew where to put everything, as if she had lived there the whole time. She even avoided PenPen's fridge, something Shinji blundered about several times before adapting.

Rei had never been in Misato's apartment before.

Denied a menial chore to buy time to think, Misato forced herself to focus on Rei's actual request. "You need my help? For what?"

"I am suffering intense discomfort and hormonal imbalance. I need your help to find appropriate supplies."

"Discomfort? Hormones?" For all the time Misato knew the girl, she never once mentioned being in pain after nearly dying. This was just plain wierd.

The pilot nodded, her voice was whisper quiet and tiny. She spoke in longer sentences than Misato was used to, but she figured it was hard to be terse about some things. "Prior to Operation Yashima, I was on a drug regimen that regulated by body chemistry. I decided to stop taking the drugs that suppressed 'unnecessary aspects of my physiology.'"

Her inflection changed as she quoted something, before flattening back out. "These aspects included my menstrual cycle."

Misato blanched, and desperately wished for an Angel to attack right then. "I... I'm not going to have to give you the Talk, am I?"

Rei's expression did not change at all. Not a single hair moved out of place. "No."

The older woman nearly collapsed, knees going weak before she held herself upright. She let out a long, shuddering breath of relief. "Whew... Okay." She'd never put her car keys down. Giving them a quick toss, she waved for the pilot to follow her. "Alright, we'll get you sorted."

"Thank you."

* * *

><p>Shinji did not sleep, and barely ate. After the second day, the Geofront infirmary got used to his near constant aura of solar light and hovering display of mandala and ethereal arms. It was a small blessing that no civilians other than Mari Suzuhara were treated there, but at the same time, the NERV medical corps pushed all of their manpower outward into Tokyo-3's hospitals and tent cities. This left the NERV facility severely understaffed.<p>

The pilot worked twenty four hours a day, throwing his power at any problem he could care to name. His mistakes were few, but cut all the worse for their infrequency. It was then that he first started realizing the limits of his power, that functional point in where he had no more arete to summon. When that happened, he moved to other, less strenuous tasks, allowing himself to regain his strength. He filed reports, checked charts, and read books from his growing collection.

Even so he felt more vitalized, aware of his powers than ever before. Possibilities that had teased his mind now resolved in perfect clarity. Slumped in his tiny office after another marathon shift of treatment and care, he pulled down one of his more esoteric books and started to leaf through. This one covered acupuncture, and other forms of non-traditional or mythological medicine. It was a history book more than anything. He rubbed at his eyes and blew air past his lips, looking at the pages but not really reading.

How long had he been working, days? Nearly a week. He'd mostly been focused on nursing duties and hastily apprenticed to any skilled practitioner during touchy operations, and every time he learned a little bit more. And every time he focused his mind and will on the task, the next one came a little bit clearer. It felt like he was wearing grooves into his bone and sinew, or maybe his soul.

The ancient diagrams seemed to leap off the pages, and in that one moment, he gained understanding.

* * *

><p>She lacked the words to properly express her situation. It was a commonly held, incorrect belief that language equaled thought. Most people after learning a language did think in that language, forming words and concepts based on their primary means of communication. But thought transcended language. Rei lacked the language to describe her thoughts. The closest she could think to name would've been '<em>discomfort'.<em>

If she had the words, and appropriate sardonic wit, she would have thought: If this is what it means to be human, to hell with it.

Instead she simmered in discomfort. Now she knew, objectively, precisely what was going on. But there were particulars she did not know of. She ran through the list of options, summarily discarding the male half of NERV, with the exception of Sub Commander Fuyutsuki. Akagi-Sensei was immediately discarded as an option. Maya as well, for her apprentice relationship to the former. The tertiary bridge crew were all low ranked, and lacked discretion.

That left Lieutenant Katsuragi.

* * *

><p>"I need a volunteer."<p>

Doctor Takamichi blinked. He'd found her in her office, much larger than his and with a single, wide window out into the Geofront forests. They could see the artificial lake from there. Shinji almost never asked for anything. "Shinji-kun? You need a volunteer... For what?"

He raised his hands, and that disc flared above his brow. She'd gotten used to it since he first demonstrated, but every time it snapped on, she had to suppress the urge to jump. He didn't notice. "I can heal them. I can heal all of them. Of everything. I know it. I just need to try."

His conviction seemed to shake the walls. The doctor gave him a helpless shrug. "There are moral and ethical reasons I can't just give you access to a patient to try experimental techniques on. I'd at minimum need patient consent or authorization from next of kin..." Every obstacle she listed chiped away at his resolve, but he stood tall and wasn't going to let this go yet.

Takamichi grinned. "You're amazing, and you've already saved dozens of lives, but you aren't actually a proven expert of medical matters..."

Shinji looked like he was about to argue, which in itself was just downright unheard of. But Takamichi raised one thin finger and smiled. "Of course, I can help you regardless."

* * *

><p>Shinji felt like slapping himself in the face. He'd missed the obvious.<p>

Lab rats. A small cage of six rodents. White and cute and most likely doomed... But for now he'd take their potential sacrifice in stride. Plus if he was right he'd not actually hurt them.

Takamichi and the Dean of Medicine crowded into the small side lab while Shinji fished out a rat from the tank. Both were briefed on the known aspects of his powers, so he didn't feel any issue with explaining. "You've seen me treat people without tools, and I can just touch people to know what's wrong with them."

A scalpel sliced off the rat's tail, and the small creature squealed and bit at his bare hand, but couldn't rip his skin. The doctors held back their shared grimace, but gave him the benefit of the doubt; that's what rats were for. Though Takamichi would tell him later they had sedatives and anesthesiology for a reason. Shinji's free hand folded into mudra before pinching the severed stump of the tail. The bleeding stopped immediately. He tossed the severed tail into a biohazard bucket.

He'd declined from three-shift duty today so that he'd be fresh for the demonstration. He'd never done this before, but it felt as easy as breathing. The rat squirmed in his left hand while his right again folded into complex hand signs, and the display of light-traced limbs and iconography spiraled out behind him to fill the room. Takamichi and the Dean pulled wrap-around welding glasses over their eyes and leaned in.

The rat's tail was growing back. Slowly, but still coming back. The dean let out a breathy sound of disbelief. "Cellular regeneration?"

Shinji nodded. "Something like that, I can... Restore rightness to things. It's just... I am the Way of the Right, Righter of Ways?" He shrugged. "It's easier and harder on rats I think. I don't think a human would heal as fast." He let out a sappy laugh. "I can actually heal people. Not just treat, heal. Really heal."

* * *

><p>It was dark by the time Misato and Rei left the grocery store. Late enough that the older woman wouldn't let Rei just walk home like the pilot had planned. So she packed the teenager into her car and several plastic bags of things that Misato deemed 'necessary' for a growing teenage girl. This included among other things more clothes than a school uniform, a random selection of comics and pulpy romance novels, and junk food.<p>

Lots and lots of junk food.

The cicada were out in force, late into the fall-endless summer of Tokyo-3, and the orange street lights were bright and frequently spaced. The streets around Rei's apartment were empty, so Misato had no trouble parking. The whole time driving, Rei did not once comment on the extreme nature of the older woman's ability to steer.

Her only reaction was to very deliberately tighten her seatbelt.

That wasn't to say that Misato was a bad driver. Just that Misato was bad at driving in any situation that didn't involve 'stunts' of 'combat'. In addition, Misato refused to stop talking, happily nattering away about her teenage years before Second Impact, and then the good times in college.

To those who knew her, really knew her, Misato was a study in compartmentalization. In combat, she was implacable and hyper-focused. Now, Rei, for all of her mental fortitude could just not keep up with the older woman in full ditz mode. The director was so wrapped up in her rapid, one-sided conversation that she didn't notice the stains on the walls or doors. She didn't notice the hanging wires and broken fixtures, or the mould covered ceiling panels. Or the animal corpses huddled in corners and around split-open garbage bags. She didn't notice the smell until she opened the door to Rei's apartment, and was nearly knocked over.

All the bags dropped from her hands, and it took nearly everything Misato had in her to not bolt outright. It was a further struggle to not get violently sick. Sweat, decay and the stench of dried blood filled her nose.

Rei swept on past her, picking the bags up and setting them on one counter. Misato stared at the dirty dishes in the sink, and was distantly relieved to note she didn't buy anything perishable for the pilot. Any further thought violently derailed when Rei began to disrobe.

"R-Rei! What the hell are you doing! Your door's still open!" She turned to kick it shut, but once it slammed into the frame, it bounced back out. The lock was broken. The older woman bit off a vile string of grammatically incorrect German expletives, before lapsing back into Japanese.

Rei didn't seem to notice the other woman's apoplectic fit "Getting ready for bed. I have class tomorrow."

Misato took one look around that apartment and put her foot down, metaphorically as well as physically. Her shoe broke through the floorboard. "The hell you're not. Get dressed and pack your uniforms, you're going to stay with Shinji and I."

* * *

><p>The Third Child descended on the NERV infirmary like a storm. Sickness and infection eluded his capability to treat, but physical injuries did not. The broken and maimed in the battle were healed. Bones were set straight and perfect, as if they had never been broken. Shredded muscle and broken nerves were made whole, and still more miracles were coming.<p>

Shigeru Aoba was the first person he treated that he also knew personally, even if not very well. The man was in a drug-induced coma, much like Shinji had been, but his injuries were far more mundane, having been rolled around in in the cab of a truck. Pins fixed broken bones together while visible chunks of muscle had been lost due to blood poisoning and lack of speedy treatment. His long hair had been shaved back to stitch his scalp together, after a cracked skull had been addressed. That last injury partially contributed to his lack of consciousness.

Shinji had the advantage over every surgeon in the world, in that he never needed to cut his patient open to treat any ailment. Aoba's room was flooded with sunlight for hours, peaking in intensity as the Third Child grappled with more and more damage. But, inevitable as the sunrise, Shinji stumbled out of the room.

"He'll be fine in a week."

* * *

><p>Suzuhara Mari was asleep when Shinji began to treat her. The teenager wreathed in a burning column of gold and purple woke her, but she was not afraid. She couldn't feel her nerves knitting back together, or her spinal column shifting back into its rightful, strong and straight position. But she knew she was getting better. Knew it deep down where dreams came true.<p>

She looked up at Shinji and smiled that little-girl smile. Her voice rang with absolute, childlike certainty. "When I grow up I'm gonna to marry you."

He mentally nodded to himself at that, gingerly guiding himself away from the unwanted thought as he had from the girl. Forever.

* * *

><p>Shinji was running out of people to heal. He also was starting to confront the actual limits of his new technique. He'd dubbed it 'The coaxing thing to heal people.' He could not yet heal people in the sense of 'restore vitality to their body.' Instead he restored whole working function. It was a strange, muddy sort of understanding. An injury bled away life and vitality and energy, which usually had the logical consequences like bleeding, broken bones, torn muscles and damaged nerves. He wasn't being literal about 'life force' though.<p>

A cut was a cut, and it bled, and if a cut was bad enough, it became its own... Thing, for lack of a better term. An actor, an aspect? A mark on the victim that existed alongside the injury. The wound would heal, and the patient would live on, healthy but possibly reduced, and the scars would stay. But Shinji could deal with more than mere scars.

Each time he willed his hands to move, every time he chanted and named the various chakra, he grew more and more aware of what he was doing. Like he told Misato nearly two weeks ago, he was moving parts of his soul around... Or moving parts of the world through his soul. He wasn't so sure anymore, but he was learning, more and more of what to do and how to do it.

He wiped sweat from his brow and let out an exhausted sigh. The patient, some NERV technician in the wrong place at the wrong time, would make a full recovery. The infirmary was full of people with similar, miraculous stories.

The pilot... The Exalt stared at his hands and felt his lips curl into a smirk. "I'm going to have to start naming all these tricks soon."

* * *

><p>It had been nearly ten days since Misato had last seen Shinji, outside of passing glimpses and quick phone or intercom calls. Ritsuko had become even more reclusive, diving into research and development. At the same time though, the scientist seemed to be doing better.<p>

Repairs were on track, along with personnel assignments and the like. The important, effective, visible aspects of her job were all taken care of. Today though, Misato had to deal with one of her most loathed tasks: Paperwork.

This particular sheet was troubling. It was a request to break several secrecy and non-disclosure agreements, relating to the NERV 'Special Phenomena Research: Section Green'. She wondered where he found the form. It broke her heart to reach for the 'request denied' stamp.

She wasn't looking forward to explaining why.

* * *

><p>For the first time in Shinji's life, he felt like he understood the concept of teenage rebellion. It was the first time he felt anything like what most people said he should be; willful, testing boundaries and subverting authority.<p>

Fuyutsuki Kozou apparently kept in touch with his inner teenager, and managed to appear as if by magic in the pilot-intern's tiny office. Misato had denied the boy official sanction to leave the Geofront, but couldn't actually tell him why, as all those orders came from her superiors. To the point that she turned a blind eye to his plans.

Fuyutsuki had not. "Shinji-kun."

"Fuyutsuki-sensei..." The boy was packing supplies into a doctor's bag, of all things. It must've been an antique. "I'm going out there to help people."

The old, grandfatherly man let out a long sigh of resignation. "Shinji-kun... I'm sorry, but we can't let you do that."

The pilot stood up with a jolt, hands at his sides and curled into fists. "Then tell me why. The Angels have never noticed me, and they don't seem to be watching us. I can go into the hospitals, heal everyone, and be done."

Fuyutsuki shook his head, temporizing. "It's not that simple..."

"And you're still not telling me why." The old man sighed, letting pilot's stare bore into his brow.

He didn't stop the boy.

* * *

><p>Armed guards, Section Two agents, technicians and maintenance crew stepped out of his way. He did not glare or summon his coronal display. But everyone who watched the Third Child march down the halls and ride the moving floors and escalators gave him a wide berth. It wasn't fear, because as he passed, heads bowed in quiet respect. He'd saved their lives in the Evangelion or the operating table.<p>

The last gate leading out into the Geofront was blocked by one man. His amber tinted glasses refused to catch the light, allowing everyone to see his eyes.

Even now this man terrified him on a level he couldn't really name. He willed his hands to relax. "Father."

The Commander had one hand in his pocket, the other hanging loose. He was utterly unconcerned facing his son with nothing but air between them. "You have done well here, for everyone. NERV is in your debt."

Shinji nodded at the closed door behind the older man. "There's still more I can do out there, Father."

Gendo conceded the point while making one of his own. "There is. But I cannot let you use your powers outside of the Geofront. Not like that."

"Why not!"

The Commander waved to a pair of seats bolted to the wall. He sat down, but didn't force the boy to do so. "NERV is part of a worldwide organization called SEELE, or the 'Committee on Human Completion Project: Instrumentality'."

He leaned over, planting his elbows on his thighs and lacing his fingers together in front of his mouth, much like he did while sitting on the tactical bridge. "Your mother, Professor Akagi's mother, and I were all part of this group early on."

Shinji did not sit, but listened carefully. A small part of his mind was noting how strange it looked to look down on his father, and see him from the side. The older man continued. "Initially we were part of GEHRIN, a biotechnology think tank. The various engineered staple crops like corn and rice were genetically tailored by our group, to handle the post-Impact climate changes. SEELE funded GEHRIN as part of a long term plan."

"SEELE's goals are rooted in an artifact discovered nearly seventy years ago; the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of those scrolls are in museums somewhere. Most of them are just papyrus, lambskin and parchment. SEELE kept the important ones. Those scrolls, among other things, chronicled the history of our world and prophesied the future. This is not the first time the Angels have waged war against Mankind."

Shinji fought to keep himself stable. His father was talking and the sheer scope involved refused to resolve in his mind. Aliens from another dimension, now ancient conspiracies and prophecy? "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because SEELE can see what happens in Tokyo-3. You understand that when using your powers, the corona around your body is visible for miles, yes?"

"...Right."

"So, I will not let you out into the greater population, no matter how much good it might do."

Gendo pushed off the bench and stuffed both hands into his pockets, walking past Shinji and back into the Geofront tunnel network. He did not speak over his shoulder, but Shinji heard him anyway.

"You should not feel troubled over this. Your efforts here have allowed the civilian agencies and NERV personnel to act in your stead. You saved lives here, and they saved lives there."

* * *

><p>AN: Whelp, Chapter 15. Longer than normal to make up for the short 14. Hopefully it will satisfy your ghoulish appetites.<p> 


	16. Renewal

It had been nearly two weeks since Shinji woke up. He'd not set foot inside Misato's apartment once during that time. It was funny, at one point _Maya_ of all people cornered him and let him know that Misato was wrung out with apprehension, wondering if he'd ever come back to her home. The idea was preposterous. He wasn't going to walk away from the first place he felt welcomed in for nearly a _decade_.

His hand hit the door once before it swished open with Misato standing behind it. Relief was the only thing he could put to name on her face; euphoric relief. The pilot let out an embarrassed grin, hunching up into his shoulders and tilting his head forward. Still, he looked up at the woman, his guardian and friend, mumbling the customary greeting.

He was crushed in a massive hug before he hit the second syllable, lifting him bodily and nearly pushing him to the railing. Misato breathed out 'Okaeri' in a whispered rush, pressing her cheek against his.

Shinji successfully resisted passing out.

* * *

><p>Free of his roommate, Shinji padded inside. One eyebrow lifted, before glancing back at the dark-haired woman. She matched his stare with a good-natured glare, one eye twitching. Finally, she ground out a flat, expectant "What."<p>

"It's... Mostly clean." He allowed, grinning slightly. He looked back into the living room, somewhat surprised to see cheap, space-saving economy furniture, like what college students used. clothes hung on hangers, most notably. He glanced at Misato. "Did you get a pay raise...?"

She opened her mouth to answer when Rei walked by in nothing but a towel, heading to the bathroom. Misato choked back a laugh and slapped the Third's shoulder, as he sputtered. "I had Rei move in. I've been trying to teach her about modesty but..." She gave him a completely unapologetic shrug. "She's only been here a week."

* * *

><p>Rei was quiet as a ghost and nearly as hard to pin down. She ate and slept in the apartment, but it was hard to say if she <em>lived<em> there. Fortunately for the other two occupants, Rei was frighteningly fastidious. She seemed to not not care about _herself_, but avoided imposing on anyone else to a fault. Misato had taken Shinji aside one afternoon to explain what she saw in Rei's apartment. It did not compare to being there.

But for all her... Otherness, he was starting to get used to Rei. And she was starting to get used to them.

Shinji found Rei that day in the living-room, now turned bedroom. The First Child held something in her hand, and it took the boy a moment to realize it was nail polish. He was about to say something, but cut that thought off before it started. Regardless, he shifted enough that Rei noticed.

She seemed to look right through him. "Lieutenant Katsuragi bought this for me. What do I do with it?"

Shinji had no immediate, eloquent answer. He panicked, furiously shaking his hands and head. She just blinked once, slowly. Not a single hint of judgment or derision... Or much of anything, really. It was... Kind of nice. At the very least he could imagine she wasn't mocking him. Thinking about it, she _probably_ wasn't mocking him anyway... He gave himself a mental shake. His mind was wandering.

He rubbed the back of his head. "It's something girls use to make themselves look prettier. You paint your finger and toenails with it... You should ask Misato about how to do that though."

Silence stretched on after that. It wasn't the same sort of comfortable, playful silences he felt around Misato. This was almost eerie, uncomfortable, but not unwelcome. Having gotten over his initial panic, he finally started noticing things, like the girl not wearing her school uniform. A blouse and thin pleated skirt wasn't especially unique, but it was different.

Shinji couldn't help it, a comment tumbled out. "You... You like nice, today."

She stiffened, slightly, and a tiny hint of red appeared on her cheeks. He wasn't sure why, but Rei... He wasn't afraid of her, or afraid of his reaction to her. He thought about it a bit more, and suddenly it hit him. He recognized that she was _attractive_, he wasn't actually_ attracted to her._ It felt like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. Still, he meant what he said, and it seemed to have an effect on her. She looked down at her hands, tightly folded in her lap. The bottle of nail polish squeaked in her grip, before the cap popped off, dumping a gout of glittery pale pink liquid over her fingers and skirt. She looked at herself, then her hand, and Shinji could see the faintest hints of a frown.

He reached for her shoulder, but she slapped him away, slamming her arm into his wrist so hard it nearly gave him a sprain. He bit back the scream that wanted to get out, cradling his wrist as it throbbed. For a split second, Rei's face was twisted up, hostile, not quite furious but more than angry. But as fast as it appeared, it faded, shifting into a painfully awkward look of shame.

For the first time since he'd know her, her voice rose past a whisper. The stutter was incidental. "I-I am sorry!"

Shinji just grit his teeth and waved it off. "I know! It's okay... Did I do something wrong?"

Rei turned back to stare at the polish coating her fingers, before grabbing the bottle sealing it. Her voice went back to being perfectly flat and even. "No. I am experiencing mood swings."

"Oh..." That threw off his train of thought. "Well, you should wash up? That stuff will stick if it fully dries."

She seemed to contemplate this before nodding once. Rising smoothly, she began to take off her skirt. The boy squawked and fell over, babbling. She stopped for and stared, before her face twisted up once more. She grabbed a pair of pants and ghosted off to the bathroom. Shinji just sat where he fell, trying to work out what happened.

She came back a few minutes later, with her skirt fisted up in one hand. "I do not know what to do with this."

"Wash it...? Here, I'll show you."

He moved up to the kitchen sink and started to work out the still-moist polish. Most of it had already set though, so he'd need to break out the remover. It wasn't the first time he'd cleaned this kind of thing. Rei watched him intently. Not just what he was doing, but other things, like his expression.

Finally, she spoke. "You are better at being human than I."

"Ayanami?"

She tilted her head to one side, like an inquisitive cat. "You are a better human. You act and think freely. It appears to be easy for you."

Shinji didn't answer immediately. He just kept scrubbing. Finally though, he responded. "...I don't think I'm a very good human. Even before the... Thing." he waved his hand at his brow. "I'm not normal." The words started bubbling up in him, for once he didn't feel debilitating fear. "A lot of people says that they want to be normal... They want to conform to some ideal."

He lifted the skirt up out of the sink. It was mostly clean. "I think I can take care of the rest of this... Later." He set it aside and sat down. Rei just kept staring at him. "I'm not normal... I don't want to be _too_ normal... but I'm afraid and weak. For most of my life no one's needed me." He raised his hands, giving the other pilot a watery smile. "I can heal people, and I can pilot the Evangelion... I like being needed for those things..."

"You are very much human." She insisted. "Your flaws are not your own." He looked up at that.

"You were crippled." She stared at him. "I was made unfinished."

* * *

><p>With a start, Shinji realized he skipped at least a week of school, beyond being in a medically induced coma. When he entered the classroom, the every student there stood and bowed to him. Horaki thanked him for fighting, and kissed his cheek.<p>

A second later, she deafened him in one ear for not collecting his missed handouts and assignments.

Shinji had just taken his seat when Toji slammed the door open. He stalked over to the pilot's desk and stared down. He hauled the other boy out of his seat by the collar. The athlete stared at his victim with narrow eyes and a scrunched up mien of concentration. As fast as the dark cloud if ill-omen appeared, it vanished, and Toji crushed the other boy in a bear hug, spinning around and shouting!

Something inside Shinji's chest creaked ominously. "Hr-grk-l! C-Can't... Breath!"

The laughing teenager didn't notice or care. "My sister's walking! She's a pain in my ass! She's healed! I will name my first born after you!"

The pilot managed to get an arm free, and tried to get his friend to let him go. "Th-That won't be necessary..."

Toji ended up deafening him in his _other_ ear.

* * *

><p>How long had it been since he'd gone up to the roof? After his early experiments, Section Two had hauled up a half dozen or so do-it-yourself sheds, pooling the parts to make one larger enclosed space. Ritsuko and the Sub-Commander politely tore a strip out of Misato, and her paycheck, for her lack of forethought. If half of what his father told him about what was at stake was true... He shook his head.<p>

Thinking about SEELE, and the sheer scope his father worked at. Everyone at NERV was dealing with matters beyond his comprehension. A bit less than a year ago he was just mustering up the willpower to ask for advanced cello lessons, then he was summoned to Tokyo-3. Then the Angels attacked, and _then_ he _Exalted_. He wasn't oblivious, they _knew_ he could pilot before he showed up. That's why his father needed him.

The Exaltation came out of nowhere. In a way that was comforting; for once, everyone else was as just as clueless as he was.

The sheds were fairly basic, and filled with the materials he'd gathered in the evenings before falling into a twenty-hour training schedule. None of it was weather proof, so he couldn't keep books out here for reference. He looked around a bit more, before he saw something completely new, unexpected and out of place.

The sunglasses, earpiece and under-arm shoulder holster marked her as Section Two. The shimmering, pale-gold bikini and and exposed, dark skin marked her as resoundingly woman.

_Why is there a section two agent sunbathing on my roof!_ Another thought crashed into the first. _Why am I constantly being surrounded by terrifyingly beautiful women!_

The woman caught his eye and stood up, putting a book away and walking over. He realized with a start that he _had_ seen her before, in the infirmary halls and around Terminal Dogma. He could count the number of people he'd ever seen with skin like that on one hand with fingers to spare. Her hair was bound in dreadlocks, and somehow the bikini made her look _more naked_.

It took him everything he ever learned teasing and being teased by Misato to not just bolt outright, but the agent grinned as she approached. "Ikari-kun. I'm one of your primary agents on watch. Call me Deja."

She wasn't planning on saying anything about his obvious discomfort. "I'll be here to keep an eye on you and the Lieutenant, and to make sure no one messes with your lab." She nodded at the combined shed complex. "I hope you don't mind me taking advantage of the location." That grin widened. "Hardly anyone would remember me as anything but a pretty woman enjoying the sun, even if they saw this." She showed off her gun and holster.

Shinji was still trying to get his breathing under control. "O-Of course... I mean, thank you, I-uhm..."

Her little alcove was a shady spot, expanded with a crank-down awning. New retrofitting patched her into power for a mini-fridge and oscillating fan. Shinji normally barely noticed creature comforts, but he had to admit it looked pretty inviting. Still, terrifyingly beautiful deadly secret agent lady with a gun looming behind him.

"Lemme give you the basic tour of your new facilities," She waved for him to follow along. "Here are the basic rules: You can't do any experiments outside of those sheds without permission..."

* * *

><p>Everything was together. Not organized at all, but together. Notebooks in a sealed plastic bag, the remaining lump of gold from his gift to Misato... He thought back on that and boggled. It was a complete lucky break, to the point that he had no idea how he made it work, just that he made it work. That whole time he'd been experimenting, nearly delirious. There were tools and things he didn't even remember <em>buying<em>. There was no way he made that tiny forge and crucible. He couldn't have melted the gold without it.

He leafed through his notes and found that most of them were in that funny language. Whenever he triggered that aura of power, those symbols and more filled the air around him, and he wasn't any closer to figuring out what they _meant_. He didn't even know what a given symbol _sounded _like.

The pilot hefted the latest additions to his collection of books, one being a history of alchemy and the related mythology, the other being a basic, general-sciences book Ritsuko recommended. He'd been in a near fugue state that month, so he needed to go back to the basics. Ritsuko was another reason he was back up here.

The head of Project E was the last and untied loose end of Shinji's medical crusade. For all his power, he was incapable of healing someone who didn't want to be found, and while his sense of direction in the Geofront was uncontested, the scientist knew how to avoid him, through distance of bureaucracy. It took Misato a few tries to worm out a reason: Ritsuko didn't want to give into hope. It was better that she get used to not having an arm than hold out for a miracle cure.

For a brief, irrational moment, the boy thought that the woman was being _incredibly stupid_, but then caught himself. He just didn't like to think of people that way. It hurt, knowing that he could heal her, but also realizing that she didn't want to be healed.

So, he went back to his apartment, with his gorgeous roommate, alien fellow pilot, and now dangerously-beautiful secret agent sunbathing on his roof. He needed to get his mind off of all of _that_ too, so he pulled over a folding chair and hit the books.

* * *

><p>After two days of experimentation, Shinji was about to pull his hair out. He'd created a list of useful substances, easily made out of household products and available materials. Simple soaps, pleasing scents and amusing little potions and powders. Most of which already existed in some way or another and made in bulk. Those were easy to understand; he was just doing by hand what most people did with industrial plants.<p>

Then he started finding the _weird_ stuff. He'd managed to get an old chalkboard up into his loft, scribbling out formula. Every so often his hands would wander into that unknown language again, and he'd have to restart. His free hand was coated with a thick paste of chalk dust and sweat.

The problem was that Shinji needed ingredients that _didn't exist_, and he couldn't even think of the word to explain the pictures in his head... It wasn't memory though. It was like looking at a hole in a puzzle and rebuilding the picture based on the negative space, or seeing the open spot in an electron shell. He was re-deriving the basic sciences, aided by the framework the book provided and his own experiments.

He scratched his head and frowned, smearing chalk into his hair. Everybody would look at him crazy if he told them he knew a way to brew life-extending medicine.

* * *

><p>He wasn't any closer to replicating his first success with Misato's pan, but he'd managed to reformulate the theories that allowed it to happen. The gold... Held a charge, but it wasn't right. Not yet. Most of it was falling in line with long debunked concepts like contagion and sympathetic resonance. It was... Old science, old <em>magic<em>.

Shinji sat back in his chair and thought about the scientific method... And how useless it was probably going to be. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be Ritsuko.

* * *

><p>Whenever Shinji took over the kitchen, Misato loomed in the doorways, like clockwork. He gave her an apologetic shake of his head, having pulled her special pan out from the cabinet. "Not now."<p>

He laid the pan out on the table and started tapping it, hard. It rung and hummed with each strike. Misato pulled up a chair and leaned next to him, resting one hand on his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

Heat crept up his neck, but he focused on his hunch. "I'm trying to figure out how I made this..." He kept tapping, running his fingers along the edges and tracing the gold whorls and bands. It looked like Damascus steel. For a second, the metal seemed to jump into his hand! An invisible spark crawled along his palms, and the golden disc burst out into view, filling Misato's apartment with light.

Shinji sighed, and the light faded after a few minutes. He looked over at Misato. "I could tell..." Blinking rapidly, he shifted, pulling Misato into his chair and pushing her hands against the pan. "Listen! I mean... Feel it, just run your hands over the metal... You should be able to feel something..."

She did as he instructed, running her hands over the edges. He started to talk, and she let his voice wash over her. It was mostly goofy things she learned in anthropology and humanities. Mysticism and the like. She couldn't just discard it outright though, they proved Souls were real after all. Who knew what else was out there?

Then, she felt it. A spark of... Something on the pan, inside it. The pan fell out of her hands with a heavy clang, leaving an ugly gouge her cheap wooden tabletop. "I-I do feel something!" She looked up at her roommate. She squints at him, her lips moving to form an unvoiced 'what...?'

He shrugged and gave her a helpless grin. "It's magic."

The woman blinked. "It's magic. _You're_ magic." _I'm not but I can feel it._

He nodded, a full smile working its way across his face. "I'll need permission to show Toji and Kensuke... I have an idea and I need them to help me, please?"

Misato sat back in her chair, letting out a bemused sound. She glanced back at the pan and then her own hands, still tingling. "I'll see what I can do I guess..." She trailed off, before giving the pan another sidelong look. Turning back to Shinji, her expression turned hopeful; "Dinner later?"

He grabbed his house keys and some grocery money. He'd need some ingredients. "Sure, how about beer-battered shrimp?"

Shinji did not see the look on Misato's face, or realize what dark and sinister powers he was toying with.

* * *

><p>It was as much good trade craft as anything else. Gendo and Fuyutsuki both cultivated their own loyal contacts within NERV, and SEELE. The older man had far more weight in the ancient conspiracy, but mostly in an advisory role. Still, he was a spry old geezer, and had a trick or two up his sleeve.<p>

The MAGI were only computers in a loose sense; they didn't have hard drives or anything for data storage, not in bulk at least. They had access to servers and slaved data centers where they stored and reviewed data, but their own structure was designed to _think_ and made decisions. When NERV used the supercomputers to look up information, they were basically asking through the MAGI.

That was a boon and a bane in one. The MAGI did not have actual personalities, they weren't true artificial intelligences. But at the same time, they were curious and insightful, and prone to flights of fancy. Hence functions like the Conspiracy Buffer, dedicated allotments of processing just for their 'imagination'. It kept them entertained and allowed their operators to focus the great machines on other tasks. Fuyutsuki exploited that. The buffer was full of inane theories. Routing his search through the buffer was as good as saying 'the MAGI were playing paranoid spy games again'.

So the old man did not fear for his life in that regard. His trail was well hidden. That left the next problem: Where to review the data in peace? He first had to deal with the Section Two watchers that Gendo made sure were always near by. Then he had to distribute his own allies for security. To the first problem, he fell back on an old bit of wisdom: All men are equal in the privy.

The Geofront had extensive facilities such as a steam room and multiple baths, along with several indoor pools. No one begrudged the old man a long soak after an equally long day signing forms and keeping the bureaucracy of NERV going. No one encroached on his privacy.

To solve the second problem, Fuyutsuki ensured all of Gendo's loyalists were on the old man's guard duty. Keeping them close meant he knew where they were at all times, in this case, outside the baths. His own resources? Squirreled away for another day.

This particular bath he chose because it had a large bay window taking up most of the angled outer wall, letting reflected sunlight in for a pleasant illusion of open sky. Half of the fortress city was retracted for continuing repair. No one paid it any mind when the old man flicked out a pair of sunglasses, set his watch to one side, and soaked his aches away alongside a book.

No one paid any mind to the fact that he was reading _his glasses, _not the book.

* * *

><p>Shinji successfully escaped being ravished by his guardian, though he knew her well enough to know she was joking. Mostly. Still it <em>terrified him<em> on multiple levels, which lead to him avoiding her for as much of the day as possible. Thinking about it like that was too negative, so a small, wry corner of his mind instead rationalized it as 'There is only so much Misato a man can take at any one time.'

At least he spent his time in seclusion constructively. He was running into more blocks than not, but he hit a breakthrough with hand-made inks and small note cards. With a bit of concentration and the right materials, he could, just by touch, draw the ink into the card and shape it in whatever pattern he cared to name. Any pattern, any _color, _even with the basic black ink he started with. The designs faded to gray with time, but he found he could influence it by thought alone.

He knew enough about the physical sciences and causality to understand that _willing things to happen_ and ritual behavior were... He sighed and put the experiments away for now. He reached for his cello and started to practice, Deja seemed to enjoy his playing at least.

* * *

><p>Misato came through for him a few days later, securing clearance for Toji and Kensuke to be part of Shinji's experiments. When the trio finally crested the stairway made their way to the rooftop lab-sheds, Shinji realized he forgot something. He forgot to warn his friends about Deja. Fortunately Deja had been warned well ahead of time, which was probably why she dressed in her sun-bathing disguise.<p>

Toji just gaped, staring at the agent, then at Shinji, then back at the agent, whirling between the two of them. Kensuke just massaged the bridge of his nose. The woman slinked over, and Shinji could recognize it as over exaggerated flirtation. His panic and aggravation quickly overwhelmed his normal anxieties. _Why do adults go out of their way to mess with me?_

Toji just seized up with a guttural, choking cough. "It's... Just... Not... Fair!"

"Ikari-kun. Boys." She crooned, smiling and flicking her sunglasses to her brow. She pulled a wad of bills from _somewhere_, before stuffing the money into Toji's limp fingers. "Your cut." She explained.

That brought the other boys up short, and managed to shock Toji out of his funk. It was fortunate that he didn't think to put on his macho act, it would've ruined the moment. Deja cocked one hip and grinned. "Your little stunt with the good doctor helped me pay off my car. I had a little extra, so I figured I'd share the wealth."

Shinji shook off his discomfort and echoed, "Stunt?"

Deja's grin just grew wider, and Kensuke's face fell into his palm. The agent let out a short laugh before giving a surprisingly good impression of Toji's Osaka region accent. "'Your legs in that skirt, the labcoat, the glasses, the _mole.'"_

Toji turned beet red, but the other two boys broke out laughing. Kensuke took up the tale. "Yeah, that doctor lady came in to run some tests on us before we were released. Casanova here decides to speak up, and somehow it works. He's going a mile a minute and she starts laughing so hard she cried."

Shinji wasn't quite following. "Doctor lady?"

Deja broke in. "He means Professor Akagi, she wanted to gather more data for some experiment."

Shinji's face fell at that, and he let out a soft 'oh.' The two boys blinked, and nudged him to explain. The pilot let out a rough sigh and scrubbed his scalp. "I can heal people, your sister wasn't a one-time thing. But Ritsuko-Sensei won't let me. She thinks I can't heal her." Toji looked confused, so Shinji elaborated. "Her arm was destroyed in the last Angel attack."

That sent Toji for a loop. "She only had one arm?"

Kensuke felt his mouth drop open. "You didn't notice?" The other boy shook his head. Kensuke thumbed his chin, which would've looked less silly if he had the facial hair to pull it off. His eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers. "Oh! Her right sleeve wasn't pinned up or anything, it just hung loose. She only used her left hand to do things."

Toji just shrugged. "I just thought she was a southpaw. She was hot."

That got everyone laughing, and Deja smirked. "That is the most charmingly oblivious thing I've ever heard a guy say."

She stretched languidly, while the other boys just stared, enraptured. Shinji just screwed his eyes shut. "Anyway, we had cameras in your rooms, and the other Agents and I had a good read on your character. I put some money down on you doing what you did..."

* * *

><p>Shinji sat down in one of the folding chairs, exhaling loudly. "This is going to sound crazy, but I'm going to teach you magic."<p>

Kensuke fiddled with his glasses. "Magic like, pull a rabbit out of a hat?"

The pilot shook his head. "Magic like, Shinto talismans and shaman rituals."

Kensuke already cribbed to the fact that Shinji was different, beyond being an Evangelion pilot, so he just nodded, going with it for now. The dark-haired boy pulled out, of all things, a frying pan from he workbench behind him. "I made this a few months ago, and I have no idea how I did. But, I figured out the basic principles. So I'm going to teach you that. Toji is going to be my control group. I won't teach him anything, and then we'll see if he can do it or not."

The other boy nodded. "So what are you trying to prove or disprove?"

"I'm magic, I've already proven, to Misato at least, that you don't have to _be_ magic to _do_ magic..." He scratched his head. "Honestly I'm not sure what I'm trying to do, just figure things out, learn more."

Kensuke just took a seat, ready to learn. Shinji visibly sagged in his chair, letting go of tension he didn't realize he had. "Okay, we're going to start with a lot of old, outmoded concepts. Contagion, Sympathy... What I hope to teach you looks a lot like transmutation, and it violates... A lot of things we think of as laws of physics..."

* * *

><p>It took three weeks just to get Kensuke up to speed on the basic concepts that allowed him to even attempt the procedure. When he finally succeeded, he cried tears of joy. It had taken that long to shed his preconceptions regarding the process. It violated conventional physics and causality. Black ink could not become red or green ink without adding or removing something, but as far as they could tell, that's what was happening.<p>

The other strange thing was that the ink seemed to bake itself into the paper, or whatever they happened to apply the ritual to. Once it was used, the ink was gone forever, but the marks were just as real. It baffled the two boys, along with Toji and Deja when they asked.

A bit of preparation was needed. Shinji wasn't completely ignorant of theatrics, even if he liked to stay unnoticed more than anything. He had full clearance to get into the Geofront and work his way to the Proving Grounds. Kensuke did not, and needed an armed escort. That was Misato's part to play. They'd arrive later on.

For now, he was ready to show Ritsuko their findings. It was something of an informal standing order. The scientist could see and analyze data, but Shinji had had been from day one, displaying an inherent understanding of his capabilities. It proved easier overall to just let the boy experiment on his own, than constrain him to her methodology. It sometimes produced interesting results, like now.

The scientist was secure behind armored glass and equally hardened walls, in the observation booth. It stung a little, but Shinji could recognize it as irrational, a defensive mechanism.

Ritsuko stared at the slip of paper. Then turning back to Shinji. "...That is a gross violation of the _natural order_."

* * *

><p>After half an hour of detection passes, spectrographic analysis and a few dozen other tests, Ritsuko looked just about ready to have a heart attack. Kensuke and Misato stepped into the Proving Grounds to see the blonde woman try to pull her hair out. The scientist looked over and tracked the incoming pair with a growing sense of dread. In total silence, the bespectacled boy grabbed a piece of paper, flipping it around to show it was blank on both sides. A few minutes of ritual motion and consumed ink later left her staring at another patterned sheet of paper.<p>

All things considered, Ritsuko got over her initial shock rather quickly, though couldn't help but snark at the concepts being bandied about. Ritualistic garbage. _Magic_. Shinji she could accept as breaking the rules; he'd been doing so for nearly a year. To see someone Ritsuko knew as a civilian and neophyte just... Blatantly upset her worldview... Well, she was a scientist, and reality would always be more surprising than fiction.

Still, it wasn't all aggravating. She had terabytes of new data to run through, and the new sensors were at least picking Shinji up without him having to do much. Kensuke begged off about an hour into testing, but not before asking Misato something. Shinji could've heard what they were saying, but was getting a better handle on filtering things out. A Section Two Agent escorted the boy out of the Geofront.

Eventually, Misato tried to cajole the bottle-blonde out of her hole and to the nearest NERV cafeteria for a cup of coffee, but the other woman wasn't having any of it. She knew when Misato was wheedling. "Did he put you up to this?" Pointing at the Third.

"Ritsuko, shut the hell up." Misato marched right up to the glass and nearly started pounding on it, but settled for raising a clenched, shaking fist. "You've been my best friend since college, and you're stronger than this. You're stronger than _me_. You don't lose anything by letting Shinji try. I believe in him, and we both have seen him do some amazing things... Have you really given up on hope?"

"What's there to hope? Everything he's done so far has fallen within acceptable limits of human healing and recovery. Yes he can bypass the need for tools, which is _amazing_ and normally _impossible_ but blatant regeneration? I refuse to believe that as possible. We only have _his_ word that he can do it. " She sighed, rubbing her eyes. "I don't mean anything against you, Shinji-kun, I'm just a scientist, I can't afford to _hope."_

Ritsuko just bowed her head. "I'm sorry Katsuragi. Your pep talks just aren't going to work this time."

The dark haired woman just tapped her foot, folding her arms across her chest. "Can you look me in the eye and say you don't want your arm back?"

Ritsuko just stared the other woman down. The muscles in her throat twitched madly, until finally, she looked away.

Misato _grinned_. "Alright then." She held up a remote control for all to see. The operations director smiled at her charge. Ritsuko knew that smirk, that smirk never bode well for anyone, especially her. The lieutenant pressed a button. The three, thick armored glass windows that divided the Proving Grounds from the observation chamber slid into the floor with a low, smooth hum. Nothing stood between Shinji, Misato and Ritsuko. And Shinji was an Olympic-level grappler and ground-fighter.

That smile grew wider as she let the pilot in on a little secret. "She's ticklish around her ribs and the back of her knees. Go get 'er."

* * *

><p>The pair left Ritsuko in the infirmary, sedated and unconscious. According to Shinji, it'd take about six days for Ritsuko's arm to fully heal. While they were walking to the train station, Shinji couldn't help but ask how Misato pulled stunt with the windows. She withdrew the remote, showing it to Shinji. It looked obviously home made, cobbled out of a garage door opener and some circuitry.<p>

Misato winked, flashing that thousand-megawatt smile. "Maya and I tweaked the controls to those windows. I am a tactical and strategic genius, after all."

* * *

><p>Roughly six days later, Ritsuko woke up. It was night, and the Geofront interior lighting played along the walls and reflected around the dome chamber. It was close enough to moonlight that hardly anyone noticed. At her side was a table laden with (fake) flowers, get-well cards and tiny gifts, many of them cat-themed. She plucked one card from the display, turning it over. This one was from Fuyutsuki. Another card turned out to be from the Commander, of all people. Misato wrote out an IOU with an address to a bar in downtown Tokyo-3.<p>

Then she realized the table was on the right side of her bed, and that she used her right arm to pick them up. For the last five weeks, three days, ten hours and six minutes, she didn't _have_ a right arm.

"I checked before you woke up. Everything healed up fine."

She looked up and saw Shinji silhouetted in the doorway. When she first met the boy, she dreaded him growing up to look like his father... But he'd filled out so much, no where near as lanky as the Commander. You just couldn't mistake Shinji for anyone but himself. Her mouth worked, gaping uselessly, and she lifted her arms. Arms! The thought couldn't fully form. It was _impossible_. Some far off part of her mind railed at the blatant denial of evidence.

Shinji was still talking, saying he had pictures of the healing process; he thought she'd like to have that for research purposes. At that point she just wasn't hearing him. Tears pooled around her eyes, and she couldn't remember the last time she cried so hard. Her whole body shook with sobs and wracking, stuttered gasps. The teenager forgot himself and rushed over, discarding fear and anxiety.

She flailed at him, clawing at his shirt and slamming her fists into his chest and shoulders. It felt like hitting an overstuffed punching bag. The doctor bawled into his shirt, hanging on for dear life. Ritsuko's cries faded to a choked cough, still clinging to the boy. He realized then that it was bitingly cold in that room, and something told him the right thing to do about that. The golden disc on his forehead gleamed, and the column of solar fire and symbols burst out behind him, flooding the room with warm, noonday light.

Shinji thought back to what Misato said about being hugged. _When someone hugs you... Hug them back._ Six extra arms made of glowing light curled around her, and his own folded around her shoulders. Ritsuko looked then, tilting her head up to stare at Shinji. Her eyes were narrowed against the glare, but she could see him perfectly, lit from behind by his own power.

His smile was brighter than the sun.

* * *

><p>At that point Shinji had grown used to Kensuke's love of technology. So much so that he barely registered any hand-held gadget or object of interest in the geek's mind. The key here being 'hand-held'. Shinji had no idea what to do or say when he opened the door. The nerd cradled in his arms a top-of-the-line DVD player, nearly as wide as his torso. Toji loomed behind, carrying a box full of movies, with a bag of snacks hooked in his fingers.<p>

Shinji exerted a tiny bit of his power, gaining an innate sense of the time. It was ten in the morning, on a school in-service day. His opening statement as eloquent, in keeping with his extensive education and social experience. "...What?"

Kensuke just stood in the doorway, with all the charming gravitas of a father acknowledging his son becoming a man."Ikari, it is time for a wonderful thing in a man's life."

The pack mule switched roles to peanut gallery. "Kensuke, he doesn't swing that way." The bespectacled boy pointedly ignored his friend. "This time is for quiet contemplation and spiritual refinement. This time is..." He trailed off, and Misato appeared behind Shinji, folding her arms around his shoulders and resting her chin on his head, completing the statement. _"Movie night."_

* * *

><p>Rei's clothes and things were hidden away in Misato's room, and together, the four teenagers and one adult crowded around the living room television. Rei and Shinji were, initially, quite lost and confused. Even moreso when Toji, Kensuke and Misato all sat up and started singing in accented English.<p>

"_I ain't afraid of no ghost!"_

* * *

><p>"<em>Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker."<em>

* * *

><p>Eight hours in and still going strong, Shinji found himself having fully bought into the lost culture of the previous era. Another movie was retrieved, this one on a burned disc and a hand-made label. The familiar, opening guitar riff and drums blared out of the speakers. It was an icon of the eighties. Misato felt her eyes grow wet, and she slid down to wrap an arm around Kensuke's shoulders. "I remember this show! I used to watch reruns of it all the time!"<p>

Kensuke fought off the blush and fixed his glasses. "This isn't just the show. This is The _Movie."_

Shinji was lost at that point, but only twenty minutes in, he _got_ it. He understood why Misato started to cry, even if he'd only now seen the movie or the series it was based on.

"_You got the touch! You got the powwweerrrr - Yeah!"_

* * *

><p>For more than a week her head was filled with a persistent sort of buzzing, an aggravating hum of energy and... Agitation, for lack of a better term.<p>

Then, Kensuke ripped open a bar of milk chocolate. Almost immediately, the young lady felt her nostrils flare. Perception seemed to thicken and slow. In a long, deliberate turn, she faced the boy and his treat. Kensuke had surprisingly well developed situational awareness, so he felt her eyes on him almost immediately. She prowled over to him on all fours, over his legs and on top of him, and the others were struck numb sheer weirdness. Rei moved like a kitten just learning how to walk, awkward and clumsy with unsure strides. Misato was too busy snapping photos to stop the train wreck in progress.

Something told her she was violating his personal space, but that hum refused to leave her ears. She was close enough that her breath fogged up his glasses. Kensuke squirmed beneath her, trying to worm his way back and sit upright. She glanced down, and his eyes tracked along with hers. He looked back up and watched as she licked her lips.

His voice was tiny when he raised the bar of chocolate between them. "Do you... Want a piece?"

No one else got to eat any chocolate that day.

* * *

><p>Shinji shook his head to clear it. Misato leaned down to whisper in his ear. "You could've taken him, I bet."<p>

He looked at the rolling credits of _Enter the Dragon_, then back up at Misato. "I wouldn't want to find out."

* * *

><p>Kensuke pulled out from his box of movies a DVD wrapped in plastic and taped against the elements. "This is a collector's item, It was released in theaters in nineteen ninety nine, and didn't get put out on DVD until about five years later, after they reclaimed California from the impact floodwaters. This is one of the first printings before Impact."<p>

He pulled the disc out of the case and set it in the player, carefully, but not overly so. He knew these people well enough that theatrics wouldn't do him much good. He started the film and scrambled back to sit with the others. Green washed over the screen. The symbolism was a little dense at first, but the film had expert pacing. Misato gave him a playful shove when the lead actor mumbled his magnificently quotable line.

"_I know Kung-Fu."_

* * *

><p>Some movies, Shinji quickly learned, were just <em>meant<em> to be quoted at length and with glee. Either because of good writing and actors, or terrible of either. Fortunately for him, the next film was one of the good ones. Misato and Kensuke kept mumbling all the lines to themselves though.

* * *

><p>"<em>If it bleeds, we can kill it!"<em>

* * *

><p>"<em>Hasta la vista, baby."<em>

Not much needed to be said about that.

* * *

><p>Misato's apartment looked like a disaster area. Almost all of Shinji's amazing work was undone in a single evening, but he found himself not caring. He had so much fun, it was worth it. Kensuke pulled out the last movie of the night, a science-fiction horror classic that shaped the genre for years to come. He loaded the disc in the player and looked over his shoulder. With mad glee, the geek announced that in space,<em> no one can year you scream.<em>

* * *

><p>The party had died down an hour ago. Toji and Kensuke crashed out in the storage room across from Shinji's, while Rei ended up in Shinji's room. Shinji could casually ignore the need for sleep, and Misato was just that damn good. Since the Angel attack, Tokyo-3 started following a conservation strategy, scheduling times when the city's power would be redirected. At nearly two in the morning, there were almost no lights on in the fortress city.<p>

There was a cooler of beer at Misato's feet, pressed against the veranda railing wall. She tossed a can his way, saying, "You hold your liquor better than anyone else I know."

She popped the top on her own can, looking out into the darkened city. The stars were out in force, but all the constellations were different after Second Impact. "I said I would tell you why I'm here, fighting this war... It's because of my father, and Second Impact."

"My dad... Was a terrible dad really. He'd be gone for months or years on research expeditions. Basically didn't want anything to do with me and my mother, but wouldn't get a divorce, bad all around." She pillowed her head in her arms, leaning against the railing. "Finally my mom and I got fed up with it, so we made him take me along on one of his research trips."

"I was fourteen then, and at first it was pretty awesome. I mean I was a fourteen year old girl and I got to see _Antartica..." _She gave her company a wry shrug. _ "_Of course then I realized it was almost nothing but snow and ice so..."

Shinji didn't much care for beer and was still working on his first, taking judicious sips He had claimed the one reclining lounge chair, wedged into the corner of the veranda patio. She finished her can and opened another. "So then, I find out the reason my dad's there on September thirteenth, two thousand... We found the first Angel there you know. We called it ADAM. Some people called it God."

She drained her drink in one long pull, exhaling harshly. "My dad and all those idiots decided to poke _God with a stick_. So we get Second Impact."

Misato looked up at the sky, and the row of beer cans next to her grew longer and longer. "So my asshole of a dad... He doesn't even give me the luxury of hating him forever. He drags me to an escape sled and stuffs me in." The dark-haired woman fingered her cross pendant. "His skin's boiling off and he hands me this necklace and shoves me on my way. Behind him there's this giant of light, ADAM..."

"Next thing I know, I'm floating in the ocean, Antarctica's melting around me, and Second Impact's already an hour gone." She let out a wordless growl, crushing her empty can. How many beers was that now? "That's my reason. I saw that thing kill half the planet and it made me mute for four years. It took away my father, even if I didn't like him then. I want my dad back. I want those four years back."

She turned and gave Shinji a mad, drunken grin. "Revenge..." She let that word out in a slow, throaty purr. "It's my reason, I'll raise you as my shield and sword in that fight until they're all _dead_ or I go out trying. It's a good reason, works for me!"

She prowled over to him on hands and knees, crawling over his legs and pinning him to the lounge seat. "So do you have a reason yet, Shinji-kun? Have the Angels taken away anyone you've loved? Is there anything, anyone you want in this world...?" Her lips were close enough that he could feel them brush against his cheek.

She hummed, drunkenly, into his neck. "Shinji-kun... do you like me?" She shifted over, and now they were pressed nose to nose and agonizingly close. "Do you... want me?"

Shinji did the only thing he could do in that situation. He ran.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Well, Chapter 16. In all life, a little rain must fall.


	17. Impetuous

It was nine in the morning. Grass grew, birds chirped, and Akagi Ritsuko was practically glowing. The scientist rarely dressed up for work. Misato on the other hand cultivated her image as a 'traffic stopper'. She drew attention like iron fillings to a magnet. Ritsuko on the other hand saw no need to pander to the masses and revel in her sexuality. Today was an exception. She set aside her normal zippered vest and lab coat for a form-hugging designer blouse with open shoulders and snug sleeves, and long pants that clung to her thighs and flared at the ankles. Technicians and research aides boggled as the project leader strode by with two whole arms and a rich, winsome smile.

She stepped into the command center, not one hair out of place or brown root showing. The Commander was on the lower primary level, while Fuyutsuki stood next to him, rifling through a folder. The scientist slinked up towards the bearded man and reached up to fix his tie and collar. She walked on and took a seat at her normal console. Fuyutsuki loosened his collar and cleared his throat with utmost tact, while Gendo allowed one eyebrow to rise.

* * *

><p>Misato couldn't remember the last time she had a hangover, and she didn't have one now. She was terribly thirsty though. She sat up and blinked, having fallen asleep outside on the veranda wasn't unheard of, but definitely not comfortable, especially on her stomach and the badly angled lounge chair. With a shuddering groan, she pushed her shoulders up but kept her hips pressed down, drawing out a satisfying series of pops from her neck and spine.<p>

Thinking about last night brought a smile to her lips. Good movies bridged the generational gap, and she had a camera full of embarrassing moments just waiting for the perfect time to strike. All would bow before her strategic acumen! Still, as the night wore on, her memories got fuzzier and fuzzier. The row of empty beer cans propped up on the veranda railing answered some of her questions.

She ambled back inside to grab some liquid lunch, but a glance at the clock said it'd be more breakfast. The boys were nowhere to be seen, though the DVD player was still hooked up. Her living room was messy to be sure, at least there weren't any obvious spills. Making her way into the kitchen, she pulled her fridge open and grabbed a can of beer. Humming softly and eyes closed, she stepped aside and nudged the drawer back into place with one hip.

She popped the top and lifted the can when her eyes open, and saw _Rei_ was _right there_ staring at her. The can fell from her fingers and Misato nearly dropped to the floor herself. "R-Rei! D-Don't do that shit! You scared me half to death!"

Fortunately, the can landed bottom first and only a little beer splashed out. A quick run over with paper towels and all was right. Once her heartbeat normalized, she took a calming swig. The younger girl hadn't moved or blinked the whole time. "Rei, why aren't you at school?"

The red-eyed girl just seemed to look through the older woman. "I decided not to go."

Misato just toasted the her. "If you get detention, I expect you to serve it... Where are the boys?"

"Suzuhara-kun and Aida-kun left at approximately eight in the morning. They informed me they would return after school to retrieve the player and movies." The present pilot tilted her head to one side by the tiniest fraction. "Section Two called to inform you that Ikari-kun was last seen heading into downtown Tokyo-3 at approximately four AM."

The events of last night's clicked together with icy clarity. Misato felt the blood drain out of her face.

* * *

><p>Twelve black, glossy monoliths flickered into view, dominating the shadowy chamber with an electro-mechanical hum. They spoke as one being with many voices, picking up after each other. The numbers and text on each slab of holographic obsidian glowed red as they conversed.<p>

"How is the analysis progressing?"

"Steadily, the copies are proving useful comparative data."

"Our primary contingency?"

"Casualties were significant, but the pre-existing damage allowed us to prosecute the target with acceptable losses."

"Excellent. Now... What of Ikari?"

"He has turned the primary MAGI against us. We can attempt a coordinated hack with the other triumvirates, but that would be incredibly obvious."

"For now we don't need to worry about the computers. Human intelligence is always superior." SEELE 01 seemed to pause, contemplating. "Theories?"

"Unconfirmed reports and behavioral analysis suggest the 'hybrid' scenario. Ikari is adapting the techniques used to make the First Child into a type of angelic super soldier." There was a brief pause before that same monolith spoke again. "However, we've received inconsistent reports to that end. All our research shows the AT field has a consistent appearance. What we're seeing from Tokyo-3 doesn't match."

"Shoryu's thesis suggests the AT field has more potential than GHERIN initially determined."

"Suggests, but does not confirm."

"Quite."

Behind the projection, Keel Lorenz leaned back in his life-support chair. He let out a sigh too quiet to be heard in the virtual chamber. "Prepare disposable assets in the Jihad configuration. I expect mission readiness in two months."

* * *

><p>Misato barely gave herself enough time to brush her hair and put on a clean set of clothes, let alone pull her uniform together. She packed Rei into her car and tore off towards the Geofront, angling to get on one of the express tram lines into the complex. She blatantly violated security, having forgotten her ID card at home, but she was unmistakable, and Rei even more so. Guards stepped aside and gates opened for her, until she finally ran onto the command center within Central Dogma.<p>

She fixed the nearest operator with a manic stare. "Makoto. Get a hold of Section Two and _find the Third Child_." The Operations Director was about to shout more orders when another voice cut into her thoughts. "Katsuragi."

Slowly, with growing dread, she turned to look up at the high balcony seat. "Y-Yes, Commander Ikari?"

Gendo usually ignored theatrics, like gesturing during conversation,but today was an exception. "I would like to know why-" He pointed at the First Child, who joined them shortly after Misato barged in. "-Rei is living in your apartment, and why I was only made aware of this _today_."

Misato paled visibly, and her voice grew tiny."I can explain everything!"

The Commander's voice was icy. "Please."

She was spared when a voice broke out from a nearby console. "Section Two to Central Dogma.."

Ritsuko leaned over to press the transmit button, though it had more in common with a cellular phone than a radio. "Dogma here. Go ahead."

The gathered officers and operators got the distinct impression he was stretching his collar out to breath. "Sending you video feed now, you'll have to see this to believe it."

The big board holographic screen snapped on to reveal a live video transmission. It looked to be shot from a rooftop, looking down on a group of achingly recognizable buildings. The important thing everyone noticed, however, were the two teenagers pressed into a mostly secluded corner. Maya was the first one to get past her shock, and would later never live it down.

"I-Is Ikari-kun trying to find her tonsils?"

Almost immediately the bridge dissolved into a roar of cheers, shouts of disbelief and general exultation. The loudest was Misato. For a moment, she forgot the knot of twisted guilt and stress coiling in her. She just laughed, hooting and hollering. "Way to go Shinji!"

But then the calm reasserted itself, and Misato felt her mind spin into gear. "...This makes no sense, not after last night..."

Only Ritsuko was close enough to hear her. "Last night?"

Misato blanched and waved her hands frantically. "It's private, I'll explain later, just... That's _weird_."

* * *

><p>The door to classroom 2-A slid open with a sharp crack, unseating itself. It was ten in the morning and school was in session. Framed in the doorway was one Ikari Shinji. Toji spotted him first and ambled over, blatantly ignoring the teacher and class representative. The pilot was a mess, still wearing some of the clothes from yesterday's movie night. Shinji had lost his shirt at one point, and apparently his shoes. The athlete knuckled one eye, still feeling the party ten hours later.<p>

He'd known the pilot for nearly a year now, but Toji for the life of him never noticed how damn _big_ he became. When he first showed up in Tokyo-3, it looked like a stiff breeze could knock him over. Now, he looked like a senior who spent every other day in a gym. Taller and bulkier than most of the other skinny young freshmen.

Toji found himself having to tilt his head up to see Shinji's face. "Damn, Ikari, you smell like a bad night down town... Where were you this morning?"

As he was talking, Shinji's eyes were moving, sliding left and right. Toji turned to look, but only saw the classroom. He turned back and waved his hand in front of Shinji's eyes. A vacant dopey look was fixed on his friend's face, so much so that he didn't respond for several seconds. Finally, he faced Toji, but seemed to be lost in thought.

* * *

><p><em>Night in Tokyo-3 was often cool but muggy, as the city trapped heat incredibly well. Shinji barely noticed it. He didn't notice the bits of debris littering the streets and sidewalks. If he were normal, his bare feet would've been shredded. Broken glass from bottles and car accidents could not cut him, even though he had run out into the city wearing only a pair of knee-length shorts and a baggy, limp T-shirt.<em>

_He was intent. He knew what he wanted above all else, and would find it and claim it. There was no time for deliberation or distraction. This was _his _time._

_The fortress city was not a perfect dictatorship under NERV, but it maintained incredible civil and martial control. to the point that Tokyo-3 did not have a civil police force but a paramilitary branch of NERV enforcing the law. This was both a good thing and a bad thing for a lot of reasons._

_This was good, because Tokyo-3 had the most well armed and trained regular police force in all of Japan, if not Asia. It was also bad, because, as Toji and Kensuke had learned, NERV, and especially the Geofront, was its own little country with its own laws. Although NERV was more concerned with maintaining infrastructure than routing criminals from the city, violent crime was low. A murderer in Tokyo-3 ran the risk of killing an Einstein or Oppenheimer equivalent on the eve of the Trinity Test_

_Smuggling, drugs and prostitution were another matter entirely. The legal restrictions on those were legion; the _actions_, not so much._

_Which is why Shinji found himself walking into a Yakuza den._

* * *

><p><em>Shinji slid past the startled bouncer without slowing down. Some men were milling around or playing games, and he was distantly aware of rolled up sleeves revealing intricate tattoos. Someone stepped up behind him with a cough angling to get the pilot's attention, but Shinji was busy counting girls. There were seven in all, and each a joy to behold. His eyes tracked wildly, and he just couldn't decide. If he picked <em>one_, he couldn't pick _any_ of them._

_One eyebrow lifted as he watched a woman walk by in a short, gauzy silk blouse and just enough material to count as a bikini. Any other night he'd be blushing down to his toes just thinking about that. Instead his eyes just tracked all the wonderful ways silk clung her curves The high heels seemed to make her legs go on forever, and did amazing things for her gait. _Why do I run away from this, again?

_The room fell silent when all the lovely women turned their attention on him. The gangsters were still around, somewhere. He zeroed in on the prettiest girl, wrapped around the arm of a man in a sleek, well-cut summer suit and pants. His sleeves were rolled up and collar undone. His free hand carried a _sword_ of all things, sheathed in wood and propped on one shoulder._

_The woman was dark haired and of mixed descent, he couldn't tell what though. She was exotic and, curvaceous and beautiful and her snug tank top and shorts left nothing to the imagination. She didn't have any tattoos, but she was definitely more than an employee. Every step closer made the man puff harder on the cigar clenched between his teeth, building a cloud of smoke in the incandescent lights above. Shinji was taller than the man, who looked like the boss of this particular den. The woman at his side was taller too. That was the last thought he paid the leader, before fixing the woman with a stare._

_For the life of him, Shinji couldn't think of anything to say, so he decided to act instead. Not even bothering to separate the pair, he reached out and cupped his hands around the woman's cheeks, before clumsily smashing his lips against hers._

* * *

><p>Shinji focused wholly on his friend and answered with a shrug. "Around."<p>

* * *

><p>A few yards away, Hikari all but leapt out of her seat, striding over to end the interruption and give Toji a piece of her mind. She stopped when she saw who was in the doorway.<p>

"I-Ikari-kun! you're late... And out of uniform..." She trailed off and turned a bit pink. He was most definitely missing his shirt. She only acknowledged this in an objective sense, truly. She also chose not to mention that he apparently hadn't taken a shower either. Shinji just gave the class representative a downright _strange_ look., one she'd never seen before.

She didn't have time to figure it out though, because the pilot stepped past Toji and scooped Hikari up in a dance dip. One heartbeat later, he kissed her so hard, one of her cherry red hair ties snapped.

The tableau broke almost immediately when Toji shouted. Close as he was, he couldn't help but notice something was off, beyond the obvious. He wasn't an _expert_ on kissing, but he could tell clumsy lips and teeth banging together when he saw it. He wedged one arm between the pair and twisted, sending Hikari to the floor and Ikari skidding back a half step.

He turned to help Hikari up, but she wasn't in a position to notice much of anything. Giggling listlessly, she looked up at the jock with red cheeks, one hand playing with her unbound hair. A surge of wrath and injustice ran through the athlete's gut, but he shoved that aside. This was downright weirder than any slight or violation of masculine code of conduct. Then, Toji felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

He never saw the punch that laid him out cold.

* * *

><p>The classroom emptied itself of students and teacher immediately, rushing past Shinji and out into the halls. The only people left were the unconscious Toji, Hikari, who lacked most of her wits, and Kensuke. The boy stepped up slowly and put himself between his friend and the girl with his arms up and palms open.<p>

He kept his voice calm and pleading. "Hey, Shinji, what's the problem?"

The pilot's head swiveled like a turret. "There aren't any girls here."

With that, Shinji stepped out into the hall, leaving his two friends and the class representative behind.

* * *

><p>Once Section Two had confirmed where the Third was, NERV stepped down from alert status. Observation however, continued. The agents on watch were feeling less and less enthused about this assignment as the morning wore on. Shinji scoured the halls for anything pretty and female, and with an alarming degree of success, convinced more than a few girls to find a private spot and enjoy his company.<p>

None of them were looking forward to writing reports today.

Back in Central Dogma, Ritsuko dragged her friend and operations director into one of the meeting rooms. She slapped a control just so, shunting the surveillance feed to the local projector. Once finished, she found a wheeled office chair and fell into it. The scientist kicked the chair into a slow, lazy circle. "So what happened, Katsuragi..."

Misato grabbed some of her hair and started pawing at furtively. "Uhm... I got kinda drunk and came on to Shinji."

Ritsuko's eyes bulged and her jaw dropped. Another kick sent her over and she stood in one smooth motion. The scientist raised her raised her arm to slap her friend, but stopped, glancing at her open right hand. She sighed, letting the arm drop and indignation drain out of her. "Katsuragi..."

Misato seemed to be doing a fantastic job of beating herself up anyway."I know! I mean I've mostly been flirting with him because it's to let him practice but his psych eval says he's terrified of sex and so I'm trying to help him with that-" She blanched and waved her hands frantically, shaking her head. "Not like that! I mean, talking about it and stuff!"

Ritsuko just shook her head and tabled that for now. She glanced back at the screen to catch Shinji enter his classroom and assault the pigtailed girl. "This is abnormal behavior, to say the least."

Feeling dropped out of Misato's voice as she watched the screen. The _wrongness_ was there, like shards of ice in her body. Her only defence was hollow, sardonic tone. "Definitely not Shinji-kun. I mean I had him pegged as a one-girl kind of guy..."

Ritsuko reclaimed her seat and started to spin once more. The day was starting out so nicely. She really needed a coffee now. "Well, we knew he was at risk for some sort of episode, though we figured it'd be something more based on his father than, well, sex."

Misato shrugged. Ritsuko shrugged back offering "Power corrupts?" as her only answer.

The phone rang; the section two agent was back on the line. "Lieutenant, Doctor, uh... We've got a problem."

The pair turned back to the screen. The view had moved outside. Now Shinji was standing in the school quad with his hand up a girl's shirt and mashing his lips into hers. Ritsuko could tell he was more than halfway to full coronal display.

* * *

><p>Her name was Yuki, and she was prettier than fresh snowfall. She had a boyfriend too, and everyone in school knew it. That didn't stop Shinji.<p>

He didn't talk to her, at least not with words. Instead he played with distances and touch, taking her hand, kissing her knuckles. All of it awkward and off-balance, but endearing in its own clumsy way. Still, the attention was flattering, and she couldn't help the giggle that worked its way through her. He was handsome, fit and visibly imposing. Hardly anyone seemed to notice at first, but with him shirtless and seductive? Well, nobody commented on the speed of the change. They commented on everything else.

The seventeen year old girl shook her head to clear it. Fun and exciting as this was, she _did_ have a boyfriend. "I-I'm sorry, Ikari-kun, but I'm just not interested in you that way."

She was about to pull free when he yanked on her arm, spinning her around. It didn't hurt, and her yelp was more of surprise than anything. She first standing, and then a half-second later she was held in an impossibly low dance dip. Was he holding her up with just one arm?

Real fear hit her like ice water, and suddenly the unsavory rumors ran through her head. He was a pilot, and he fought horrible monsters. Police and regular soldiers had nightmares about war, so did civilians caught in the middle. Was he going crazy? Adrenaline focused her mind at once, and she squirmed in earnest, pushing against his chest and trying to wriggle free. Until now he was mostly just smiling, sunny, distracted sort of grin like she saw on young men, or her boyfriend when they were alone.

She gave one final push and started to beg. "Please.. Ikari-kun... I don't want this. Please, let me go."

Finally, that distant look of lust shifted to one of intense disappointment. He pulled her upright with an effortless tug and shuffled past her. Yuki blinked, but held on to that feeling of euphoric relief. On the one hand she did want to help the pilot, but on the other, she was still scared, both of him and for him. She took a few steps back and was about to say something, when another group of girls walked down the hall.

Immediately, Shinji perked up and that dopey grin returned in full force, and he set off in pursuit. Yuki just stared.

* * *

><p>In the afternoon, things began to get progressively more complicated.<p>

Far too many girls were wrapped up in the moment to really think about what was going on. Some had raided the teachers lounge for couches and cushions, on their own volition. Others broke into the kitchen to find snacks or make their own. In general most of the young ladies saw it all as a game. On one level, they all knew this was strange and wrong, but for the moment, they were just having too much fun.

Shinji sat in the middle of his growing entourage, reclining on on a ever increasing pile of girls and cushions. Each lovely young lady was one he had convinced to stay at his side. Everyone else who resisted his charms fled at the earliest possible convenience. A pair of sandals hung from his toes, though he wasn't sure where they came from. His attention was focused entirely on a lovely brown-haired girl crawling across his chest.

Some young ladies found fans or similar props and stood nearby, adding a pleasant breeze to the scene. Others carried trays of snacks, and at least one girl stood behind the center of their attention, feeding grapes into his mouth one at a time. Two more girls clung to his legs, one on each side and nuzzling his thighs. Another cluster of girls formed into a band, playing softly in the background.

More students pulled their uniforms apart, tugging their skirts down on their hips and leaving many many buttons undone. The most daring removed their undergarments, while others just went topless outright. With such easy access, it was fair to say Shinji got to second base quite often.

Hormones sang in full force, and everyone in that cafeteria suffered from a disturbing lack of common sense.

* * *

><p>The situation was rapidly getting out of hand. Section Two was primarily concerned with the security of the pilots, not their preferred methods of blowing off steam or spending their time off duty. The organization had ties to the other security branches within NERV, like those focused on maintaining operational secrecy in both general and specific. The pilot had already outed himself with the coronal display earlier that morning, but hopefully, they still had time for damage control.<p>

Still, it was a race to the inevitable. They knew based on Ritsuko's research that it was only a matter of time before Shinji exerted himself enough to create the fully realized, miles-tall display. They'd all seen footage of the boy lighting the _whole Geofront_ during one of the tests. Their only silver lining so far was that the pilot was keeping indoors, which would hopefully limit exposure. New orders were created at the upper echelons of Section Two, filtering down towards the supervisors and handlers, before reaching the actual agents.

Misato rarely felt guilt, but usually the things she did were only petty grievances. Teasing and harmless at most. She paid for the batteries and all the supplies stolen during that first Angel attack, after all. But now she just _knew_ she was the one responsible for this, somehow. She broke Shinji.

Ritsuko was being far more detached, almost clinical. "Does Shinji know much of classical history?"

Misato just made a helpless gesture. "More than me, he's reading constantly these days."

The camera angle wasn't the best, but they had a decent view. They couldn't call it anything else. The Third Child built an ahistorical harem in less than ten hours. Ritsuko cupped a butane lighter to the cigarette held between her lips, but stopped.

She again contemplated her right hand, before palming the lighter. "I wonder if he's aware of the parallels to Caligula."

* * *

><p>A nondescript white van all but split open to reveal a collapsible table, myriad consoles and three agents connected to headsets and microphones. A floor plan and topographical map of the high school were stuck to the outside door with magnets. More operatives and NERV employees broke out of the woodwork from nearby Geofront gates.<p>

Section Two kept a modest compliment of agents around the high school, and the arms and armor to equip them. For something like this, they needed a specialist, and more than a few volunteers. And there were times Deja hated looking good in a bikini. Fortunately, her co-workers were amazingly professional during a crisis. That was one of the reasons why she was only _mildly_ upset when they proposed the plan.

The lead agent overseeing that plan was a no-nonsense man with steely, white hair and moustache. "We need him out in the quad, so our snipers can get a clear shot." She knew he meant tranquilizers.

Deja just stared at the bits of fabric and soft leather on the table. They were mocking her, the clothes were mocking her. She looked back up at her superior officer. She didn't raise her voice, but her tone grew sharper and sharper with each syllable. "So you want me to dress up in a sarong and _fishnet_?"

"You'll still be armed." He pulled out an unloaded air pistol and a magazine of tranquilizer darts. "That and your own sidearm."

Deja just pinched the bridge of her nose and undid the clip holding her dreadlocks together. She didn't have enough time to do much else to let her hair down. "Let's just get this over with."

The agent handling the radio pointed to taped off area shielded by a sheet. "You can change there, and hurry, our snipers are in position."

* * *

><p>To their credit, the only visible reaction Section Two had, with regards to their designated bait, was a respectful lifting of sunglasses. Not one man or woman whistled or let out a cat-call. Deja padded across the quad in bare feet, with the trailing end of the sarong whispering against her ankles. She had a holster under each arm, but those did more to enhance her fishnet top than anything else.<p>

She lacked normal sunglasses, but still had her earpiece. She called out one of the newer agents, who had a reputation for being tech savvy and well connected. "Ichiro,"

His voice sounded higher than normal on the radio. She could imagine him blushing. "Y-Yeah boss?"

The agent stepped up an inclined footpath laid with concrete tiles. "You're recording this right now."

The young man's response took three seconds. "Yeah."

She struck a quick pose, leaning against a nearby railing. She felt fingers for hundreds of yards around spasm on camera controls. "If this gets out, I want eight by tens, and a modeling gig in two weeks. Six figures minimum, American."

She was back and moving, as if nothing had happened. "O-Of course boss, anything you say."

The dreadlocked agent kept walking; the cafeteria had nice big bay windows, and she was an incredibly obvious target. Her shoulder blades itched. "Oh I'm breaking so many laws right now... Public exposure, sexual assault on a minor with a side of statutory rape..." NERV may have been the law, but knowing that didn't make her feel any better about it. The rest of the school was evacuated already, so she didn't have to worry about voyeurs.

Finally, she got close enough to the cafeteria-turned-harem to see and be seen. The girls noticed her first, and it was hard to see inside due to the glare of the midafternoon sun. Her earpiece let out a faint crackle before their overseer whispered. The target was on the move.

Shinji stepped out of the nearest doorway and just _stared_. Most other times, Deja would've found that intent sort of look flattering, or even endearing... Here it just made her skin crawl. Still, she fixed a smile on her face and cocked her hip. The boy seemed to be struggling with some internal conflict, splitting his focus between the cafeteria windows and the nearly-naked agent.

A stiff breeze kicked up, enough to send her heavy dreadlocks tumbling around her shoulders. On the tactical net, the snipers cursed. They had a clear shot, but now they'd have to wait for the wind to die down.

* * *

><p>The carefully planned operation went to hell when the unexpected happened. A black, massive, wide-bodied muscle car vaulted the curb and quite literally tore one of the NERV vans in half as it plowed through and into the school grounds. More vehicles broke the cordon and filled the air with shouts and gunfire. Section Two was shoved badly out of position, and scrambled to play catch up. Deja was on her own.<p>

Both agent and pilot turned to face the racket, and were greeted by three vehicles fishtailing onto the school quad. The big black muscle car clipped a basketball hoop, knocking it down with a clang. The beastly vehicle only suffered some body work for its trouble. Almost as one, doors and panels slid open, dumping a dozen or so thugs into the school grounds. A short, angry man stomped out. When he spotted Shinji, his face twisted up in fury, and waved his wood-sheathed sword in the air.

Deja kept her cool, and Shinji seemed to be content to stare at her chest no matter what else was happening. As long as he kept still she didn't much care. Still, the question worked its way out of her throat. "Do you... Know these guys?"

* * *

><p><em>The Yakuza lady shoved him away with surprising strength, and the mostly one-sided kiss broke with a wet pop. She looked <em>furious_, but more because she was fighting off a smile, even as she wiped at her bruised lips with one bare arm. Shinji marked that as a success before turning to the next girl. This one had silky black hair done up in Hikari-esque bunches, and a delightfully small tube-top and shorts combo._

_Any further thought was terminated when a hardwood baseball bat slammed into the back of his head. It hit the boy so hard it shattered, raining out in a cloud of splinters and shrapnel. Once the violence started, the girls fled, running deeper into the gambling den._

_That finally got his attention. "You made the girls run away."_

_The thug dropped the bat and reached for his pistol, a little snub-nosed, large caliber revolver. He didn't care how bad a gun it was, he could draw it in less than a second. That was all the time Shinji needed. The pilot stepped into the man's reach. He didn't punch or kick, he just swung his shoulder into the man's collarbone hard enough to break it. The gun fell from limp fingers. Another shove sent the man sprawling on his backside, one shoulder laying limp._

_Shinji heard more guns click, and he for the moment wondered where they all came from, but he answered his own question almost instantly: Yakuza. He had no idea how badly he offended them either, but at the moment, he just plain didn't care_. They made the girls run away.

_One time, Shinji caught bullets with his bare hands. Since then they never tried to test it, with good reason. Two more shots rang out, and Shinji's hand raised to meet them, scooping them out of the air and flicking them away from his fingers like water. Everyone and everything seemed to move with such terrible slowness; he could watch bullets exit muzzles, and see brass fly into the air. What he shots he didn't dodge, Shinji just slapped right out of the air._

_One punch, two punch, three and more, in barely thirty seconds, nine armed criminals were laid out broken on the floor. He turned, aiming to head deeper into the den for more girls, when he heard a throatier, more ominous sound. The low, mechanical weight of a larger weapon._

_A single second seemed dragged out forever, utterly consumed by explosive sound and guttering strobe lights. Shinji felt his back riddled with impacts, strikes sinking into his skin but falling back, or outright bouncing away from his hip bones and spine. The air was choked with smoke and the sharp stench of gunpowder. The back half of his shirt was shredded beyond repair. The boy turned around , stepping into the small pile of spent bullets at his feet. The last thug before the boss cradled a submachine gun in his arms. The man and weapon shook like a leaf, and he fumbled, trying to eject the magazine._

_Shinji just took one step forward. The man bolted, knocking a closed door off its hinges and screaming out into the early morning. The boss was the last one left, sitting in a puddle of urine. The girls were long gone, so Shinji resumed his search._

* * *

><p>Shinji managed to muster up the attention to answer Deja's question. "...I don't think so."<p>

* * *

><p>The pilot and agent were spared any declaration or speech. The crowd of Yakuza only had blood on their minds. Chains, baseball bats and guns were the order of the day. Deja twisted slightly, widening her stance and getting ready to bolt. She reached for her firearm, but Shinji stepped in front of her.<p>

He turned his head enough to glance at her sidelong. "Don't worry. I'll protect you."

She didn't dignify that with a response. She just drew her weapon and racked the slide. He didn't seem to notice. "After this, do you think we could..."

Deja forced the dark look away from her face and put on a sunny smile, all the while thinking; _This is payback, isn't it. Karma for showing off up on the roof._ The woman held back a sigh and let her smile grow a bit more honest. "Maybe." A bolt of inspiration struck just then. She turned on the charm to full blast. "Of course, if those men have their way, there won't be any girls around at all."

The look that came over his face promised _pain_.

* * *

><p>Misato was beside herself with worry. She trusted Shinji as an Evangelion pilot. She trusted him <em>in<em> an Evangelion, because realistically, the thing could survive the end of the world. She however, had no idea what Shinji would do while suffering a psychotic break and facing armed Yakuza. Ritsuko, on the other hand, was totally calm. So much so the other woman called the scientist on it.

Ristuko just toasted the screen with her fresh coffee. "Shinji can lift every car and van over his head, and can punch through steel plate with his bare hands. Chains, guns and a sword won't do much."

And she was right. Shinji was an unholy terror. He jumped three yards in the air straight up, easily sailing over a chain-wielding thug. When he landed, the pilot lashed out with a kick that folded the man in half around his leg. Pivoting at the hip, he tossed the thug into one of the nearby vans. The man hit it so hard, it flipped over.

Misato felt her arms go limp, folding into her lap. "...Ritsuko."

The scientist was fixed on the battle in progress. "Yes, Katsuragi?"

"You know how Shinji was always really bad at close combat drills and training?"

"He lacked aggression, yes."

Misato pointed at the screen, and the growing pile of broken, bleeding bodies. "Do we really want to encourage him?"

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Section Two kicked itself back into gear. Reinforcements boiled up the stairways and low grassy hills leading to the quad. Agents vaulted rails with weapons drawn. They worked in pairs; some armed with stun guns and shock batons, others with semi-automatic pistols. Deja knelt and squeezed off one shot after another, tagging thugs in the thighs and midsection. Painful, lethal if untreated, but easy center-of-mass shots. The Yakuza lacked the organization and manpower to hold off against the two-sided assault, and were quickly overrun.<p>

The last man standing, fittingly enough, was the Yakuza boss. Bloody and mad with rage, he tossed his pistol away and drew the sword before charging at Shinji. Deja swiveled to take the shot, but was just a hair slow. The blade slashed down and cut into Shinji's head, in line with his eye. The battlefield noise faded, leaving only the boss's labored breathing. A sheared off chunk of black hair slipped down past Shinji's cheek.

The boy himself wasn't even bleeding. He shoved forward against the blade, driving the man off balance. The boss spun his arms wildly, trying to regain his footing. He raised the sword again for another strike, but a gunshot ran out, slamming into the blade and breaking it in half. An agent whistled in admiration as the weapon fell apart in the thug's hands.

Anything further was cut off, when Deja pressed a hand held tazer into the man's shoulder. He slumped to the ground, and she smiled at Shinji.

Almost immediately, the boy's attention refocused back on Deja to the exclusion of all else. "So... It's after... Aaan-Tch!" His wheedling was cut off by a sharp pinprick in his neck. An empty tranquilizer dart fell into his hands. Two more sharp pricks hit him, and Shinji felt his vision ripple.

Deja just gave him an apologetic smile. "Sorry pilot, it's time for a nap."

* * *

><p>The Supreme Commander of NERV had an incredibly well developed sense of pattern recognition. It was for this reason he handled the situation with the Third Child personally, therefore eliminating distractions.. The pilot had been unconscious for nearly ten hours, after the triple dose of tranquilizers. Now he was focused and rational, and oddly energized and up-beat.<p>

Shinji sat on the thin bench, while his father stood. "Are you aware of what happened over the last twenty four hours?"

The pilot shook his head. "Sort of. It's all murky. I haven't really had a chance to think about it."

Gendo thumbed a remote in his pocket. A projection came on, playing back the events of the day. The boy started out mortified, and got worse from there. "You apparently upset an organized crime operation, hence the Yakuza assault later on that afternoon. Section Two doesn't have video of that, however."

The video cut to where the pilot effectively forced himself on Hikari, and then slugging Toji. Shinji scrambled for the toilet. He was mostly successful.

Gendo kept going. "On the one hand, you cannot be held responsible for what appeared to be an unexpected, unprecedented psychotic episode. On the other, you have violated numerous standing orders regarding operational security. As before, you cannot be held responsible for your impaired decision-making, but we all must deal with the consequences."

The boy wiped his mouth and sat back on the floor, still green and sobbing quietly. He shrunk in on himself as the commander ticked points off on his fingers. "Damages to the school property, legal fees and counseling for the young women you seduced. Buying the silence of all involved parties..."

The video changed again, and Shinji couldn't help but stare. The.. The _harem_. One part of him thought that was the greatest thing he'd ever done. Every other part of him screamed how horrible a person he was. He started heaving again, but this time he had nothing left to give.

The man looked down at his son, and was for the moment struck by the dissonance. This boy was capable of so much, that for most people it would be outright supernatural, possibly even godlike. No one had missed the parallels to Jesus and so on. Shinji could break his father in half, but instead was completely cowed.

He shook off the feeling and continued. "You will not be punished, but you _will_ be confined to the Geofront and NERV facilities until further notice."

* * *

><p>Fuyutsuki met the commander outside of the cell. "Not to downplay the seriousness of the situation, but it occurs to me, Ikari."<p>

The younger man looked up, tugging at the cuffs of his gloves. "Hmm?"

The old professor let a melancholy, wry grin creep on to his features. "I do believe this is the first time you've grounded your son."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> When it rains, it _pours_.


	18. Consequences

It was a pleasant, early winter day in idyllic Greenland. Second Impact actually pushed the island nation higher than ever before. When Earth's axis shifted, and the nearly year-long summers began in earnest, Greenland's glacial ice cover thawed, freeing up massive tracts of usable land. It lacked the bulk production capability of say, North America, but in the post-impact, globalized world, any contribution was welcome.

so Greenland enjoyed its new prosperity, and for fifteen years was quite happy to be ignored by almost everyone.

But then one night, Greenland was changed forever.

* * *

><p>It took two weeks to restore the school to full working order. NERV's impact on the economy of the world would bankrupt small countries several times over, if not for various creative acquisition contracts. In any case, the amount of money need to fix the school was a pittance, compared to the operational budgets of the Evangelions.<p>

Money couldn't fix people, however.

The Geofront maintained enough of a sustained population to justify an infirmary and multiple cafeterias. Many of which were fully realized restaurants, save that the employees did not have to pay to eat. A small perk, and one that Misato had never noticed or used. She did however notice that Central Dogma had a fully stocked wet bar. She would've gotten drunk in the comfort of her apartment, but Rei was always there, watching her, judging.

So, Misato sat tucked away in an otherwise empty corner booth, in an equally empty bar. The bartender checked around, but didn't stop the officer from ordering. She looked like she wanted to be alone. Her eyes were sunken and ringed with black. And her hair, normally shiny and full, hung limp around her shoulders. She wiped her nose on one jacket sleeve before downing another shot.

Her quest for inebriation began with the realization that she caused all of this. She pushed Shinji too hard, and she lost control at a key moment. He was already weighed down by a dozen or more burdens, like being a pilot and their sole line of defence against extra-dimensional invaders. Her hindsight was unrelentingly perfect.

After her third drink, the bartender left the bottle.

* * *

><p>The television was nice and big, with bright, shiny colors. Normally it was tuned to a local sports channel. A slow motion replay fizzed out as signals were switched to an emergency broadcast alert.<p>

A reporter fussed with the hood of his coat, while a storm ripped at his clothes and hood. The audio was muted, giving way for the translation into Japanese. "...Unconfirmed reports of extra-terrestrial activity in Greenland..."

Misato looked up at the screen. It had switched to an overhead view, shot from a helicopter, and using night vision. A mountaintop was reduced to rubble, and in its place were a scattered cluster of trenches hundreds of yards long and nearly thirty feet deep. And each one of them had a peculiar, perpendicular line scoring through one end.

The lieutenant squinted at the screen, then took another swig of vodka. Her eyes narrowed more.

"...Meh."

* * *

><p>An eight-by-ten cell was more than Shinji felt he deserved. The walls were concrete, and the door reinforced steel. If he wanted to, he could break out any time he wanted.<p>

Nearly ten years of being a terrible, worthless human. Now he was truly useless. Circumstances denied him the ability to heal, to help. And now he knew, _knew_ he was dangerous to other people. He knew before even completing a punch, that two men were crippled for life. No one told him if any of the gangsters had died. Not knowing just made him feel worse.

The physical harm he inflicted was incidental. He assaulted nearly a quarter of his school, and could've easily killed Toji if he'd been more zealous. When he first realized that a few days ago, he couldn't keep any food down for hours. Now, he just felt disgusted with himself. He almost killed one of his first friends because _he got in the way_. Horror mixed with self-loathing in his mind, so thick he could taste it.

Shinji sat on the wall-mounted bed, staring at his hands. He idly flexed his fingers and palms, clenching and releasing as though seeing them for the first time. It wasn't a humorous metaphor anymore, these were lethal tools being used by a novice. They, and by extension he, was now a living weapon. He wasn't just _worthless_. He was _dangerous_.

* * *

><p>Kensuke spent more and more time in Shinji's lab, following the pilot's rampage. Neither the lieutenant or Deja stopped him. Shinji had a much better classical education, but Kensuke knew more about engineering principles and practical application. That led him to a hunch.<p>

The ritual magic was incredible, and implied so many things about how the world really worked... And also it didn't. Ritual magic was something long discarded, in the history of mankind, and had faded into myth and legend for nearly a thousand years or more. Religion and its rituals were meant more for the practitioner, than any listening god or spirit. In short, whatever Shinji discovered didn't actually _fit_ in any currently established model of reality.

Kensuke had a few theories, however. One was that Shinji 'brought something with him', when he experienced his change. The geek didn't have security clearance yet to know what teh change was, but it was possible. Another possible explanation was that his friend _enabled_ ritual magic to work again; it worked in the earliest history of mankind, and then faded away. Kensuke lacked the equipment to test either of those theories, or do most of the other necessary work to really unlock the mysteries. That was okay with him though; he was more interested in the applications.

The only ritual he knew had so much potential. Shinji was wrong, initially. The ink wasn't necessarily consumed, merely changed. Kensuke also learned that the procedure worked better with pre-colored ink and having already stenciled the design onto the target. From his bag he pulled out a folded diagram, and a fairly expensive calculator. This one was impressive, because it could test and analyze the function of complex circuits.

No matter what happened, the altered paper would fade to gray tones. How long that took depended on the person making the design. Today he had a crazy idea. He mixed up a special batch of ink, impregnated by conductive elements. He brushed out a copy of the diagram onto a blank sheet of paper, but wasn't too concerned about making mistakes. Blotches aside, it was a fairly good reproduction. He set the brush aside and focused on the paper and ink.

A few minutes of concentration elicited a sort of 'snap' that traveled up his hands and settled in his chest. It felt like the charged air of a thunderstorm. The design resolved to perfect clarity and inhuman straightness and craftsmanship. He waited for the ink to dry before drawing out two leads and clipping them to squares of black set against the paper's edge. He powered on the calculator and watched the screen.

The display read 'CIRCUIT OK'.

* * *

><p>Shinji never asked after her. She didn't realize he hadn't asked after <em>anyone else,<em> either, but Misato was utterly convinced she was responsible. It was her third day at the Central Dogma bar. When the bartender told her last call that first night, she nodded and found somewhere to sleep. When she woke up the next morning with a hangover, she brought her gun with her.

She appeared in the bar as if by magic, her face drawn tight by pain and stress. The lieutenant set the gun down on the bar and started to spin it with her fingers, leaving her hand unnervingly close. The bartender paled, tracking the weapon with his eyes.

Her grin was quite mad. "I want some hair of the dog and the keys to the liquor cabinet. I'll lock up after you."

The terrified man nodded vigorously and fled, leaving Misato to drown her sorrows in peace. Now she sat behind the bar, drunk out of her mind and attempting to make another impromptu cocktail. She had no idea what she was pouring, just that the bottles had pretty amber liquids inside them. Never mind that she got more outside the glass than inside.

Ritsuko found her then, just as she slammed the foul concoction back. She was too far gone to notice how much her throat burned. Misato raised the empty glass to toast her friend. Her eyes locked on the sodden sleeve of her bomber jacket. To Ritsuko, it looked like her friend was seriously considering trying to get at the alcohol.

"Katsuragi..." Ritsuko turned and squinted at the nearest clock. "It's... ten in the morning. We're celebrating Happy Hour in Sudan?"

The dark-haired woman just grinned a cheesy, drunken grin and spread her arms wide, nearly falling back on her ass. Her giggling response was tinged with delirium. "E'rry hour's 'appy ho~ur!"

Ritsuko just pinched the bridge of her nose. This was a total reversal of last time, but it wasn't the first time she'd dealt with a drunken Katsuragi. Her friend was too far gone to stop the scientist when she reached for the gun lying on the bar. Ritsuko The weapon felt too light in her hand, and the question came out despite everything. "It's not loaded?"

Misato just grinned more. "'Course not silly! I's_ hung over _this mornin', not _drunk_."

Ritsuko shook her head and fought off the wan smile. She slid the gun to the far end of the bar, resolving to pick it up later. Her friend was more important. "C'mon, if you're going to get drunk, you'll do it at my apartment, where I can keep you from destroying your liver."

* * *

><p>There was truth to the saying that time healed all wounds.<p>

It just happened, so gradually he didn't notice until that moment. He still felt miserable. but now he was restless, kicking out of bed and pacing from wall to wall. It took him barely three strides to reach one side, turn and make for the other, but it got him moving. Not matter what he did, he wasn't looking to get out. Not yet, maybe not ever. It was probably better for everyone if he stayed there, waiting for the next Angel attack.

Shinji kept pacing, growing more and more agitated with each step. Revulsion gathered up at the back of his throat, mixed with a desire to change his situation. He couldn't just _sit there_. No matter what how he rationalized it, he couldn't get away from that crushing sense of responsibility. No amount of punishment would make things right, if the people he hurt weren't satisfied.

He had to face his friends, if he wanted to look at himself in the mirror again.

* * *

><p>It turned out that Ritsuko had an a<em> amazing<em> apartment. Misato's apartment was turned away from the fortress city, looking over a small built up suburb of similar apartments and the hills of the Hakone region. Ritsuko on the other hand had a borderline penthouse with an incredible view of the fortress city skyline. Sunset outlined the high rises in a wash of oranges and rich blues and ultraviolet.

There were cats _everywhere_ as well. At least four, and all of them affectionate. Two had claimed Misato's lap, which was fine with her; she wasn't going anywhere.

The blonde woman watched as Misato looked up into her empty, up-ended wine glass with one eye. The lieutenant gave it an experimental shake. "I'm baffled as to why you haven't gotten violently sick."

Misato just held her hand out for a refill "Lo-ots of practice."

"So." Ritsuko shifted over to wrap one arm around her friend's middle. Misato always responded better to physical affection and intimacy. Before Ritsuko's hand even got past the other woman's spine, she bolted. The cats scrambled off her lap and vanished deeper into the apartment. Misato quickly dropped her wine glass and twisted her hips, wedging herself back into the furthest corner of the couch as she shoved Ritsuko away, planting the heels of her hands into Ritsuko's chest and shoulders.

Ritsuko _knew,_ then that something was dreadfully wrong, as she slid off the edge of the couch and thumped to floor. "...Katsuragi?"

Misato's eyes were wide as saucers, and she was shivering. "R-Ritsuko. I-I-"

Ritsuko raised her hands, palms out and offering slow, soothing whispers. It was mostly a delaying tactic though. She had to buy herself some time to think of something. Misato was the touchy feely one! All of that stuff came easily to her! The scientist wracked her brain. Misato's eyes filled up with unshed tears, and she had to think of something _right now._

Then, it hit her. Any other day she'd have slapped herself in the forehead.

This time she didn't just reach out, instead she just sat up on her knees and spread her arms. A heartbeat later, she was swamped with a mass of bawling, hurting human being. The pair sat there, huddled together while the dark-haired woman sobbed. Ritsuko was slowly building up a list of behaviors in her mind; Driven to excess, melancholy, intense mood swings, dramatic personality changes... Well, analysis was all well and good, but Misato needed a _friend_ more than a doctor. Ritsuko let catharsis take effect. Misato's breathing gradually normalized.

After the last of the sobs had dried up, Ritsuko tried again, pushing damp hair out of her friend's tears-streaked face. Why did you think it's a good idea to get raging drunk for three days straight?"

Misato pulled back to look Ritsuko blearily in the eye, sniffing hard. "Because it's my fault."

* * *

><p>The following morning, Misato shuffled out into the living room. She ran into at least one wall and two pieces of furniture before catching herself; she wasn't in her apartment. Ritsuko joined her a few minutes later, looking far more used to life before noon. Two pairs of eyes narrowed at the collection of empty wine bottles lining Ritsuko's kitchen counter. Last night, it had been plain to see that Misato wouldn't be going back to her apartment, so she ended up borrowing clothes from Ritsuko. It kind of felt like college again, but with more room and better air conditioning.<p>

Coffee and a call to a cleaning service was a welcome diversion into normality. Ritsuko watched her friend putter around the living room, taking her own ham-fisted approach to responsibility. Misato stowed the bottles and sorted the recycling, before picking up the bits of dry refuse left over from last night. It wouldn't be easy breaking up that guilt complex, but Ritsuko had faith in her friend's strength. The first breakthrough was always the hardest, but Ritsuko knew her friend. She was starting to, however slowly, pull herself back together.

Misato looked at her friend. She wanted to say a lot of things, but no words were coming out. Ritsuko caught the other woman in mid-flounder and simply nodded, smiling.

They fell into companionable silence then, sitting coffee at the kitchen counter and watching the seconds tick by. A while later, Ritsuko spoke up. "Katsuragi?"

Outside, through the balcony doors and over the rail, sunrise lit the fortress city in reflected golds and silvers. Solar cells and polished glass caught the light for miles around. Massive machines and feats of engineering reconfigured the city. Buildings emerged from their moorings and rose into the sky. The pair walked out to enjoy the view.

Misato leaned over to pillow her arms on the rail. "Yeah, Rits-chan?"

She could hear her friend's wry grin. "Spare me the next innuendo or double entendre."

The dark-haired woman looked over the changing cityscape and felt a smile work its way onto her lips. "Deal."

* * *

><p>It had been nearly two weeks since the yakuza attack. The small criminal group proved to be the perfect scapegoat. Those who were more directly aware of Shinji's involvement knew a bit more. It initially surprised Toji to know that Hikari had <em>NERV security clearance.<em> The lowest possible level, mostly because of her responsibilities as class representative. It struck the boy as odd; there really was no reason to give a high school student any form of clearance, especially for just being class rep... But who was he to judge NERV?

They were trusted enough to have the illusion of privacy. There were no agents or guards shadowing them, but cameras tracked their every move. Toji and Hikari walked towards Shinji's cell, standing more than an arm's length apart. Toji kept his head down and hands stuffed in his pockets, while a bundled group of boxed lunches dangled from Hikari's fingers.

They'd been avoiding each other since Shinji's episode. Toji had not once made a scene or got in trouble the whole time, and refused to talk about the bandage holding his cracked jaw together. The bandage came off a few days later, but the boy still kept his mouth shut. Hikari never called Toji out for slouching, and never had to berate him for missed assignments; he turned them all in early

The hallways of central dogma seemed to extend on forever, with only stenciled alphanumeric strings marking their progress. Hikari broke the silence first. "I admit, I did enjoy it when he kissed me."

Toji skid to a halt, nearly dragging himself out of one shoe before he recovered. A choked, angry sound died in his throat, but he refused to speak. Hikari walked around to face him. He kept his head bowed, so she had to lean over and look up to see him. "I like you more though, Suzuhara-kun."

That brought the boy upright, blinking numbly. Hikari set the boxed meals down and stepped into Toji's reach, wrapping the tall boy up in a hug. He froze for a moment, his breath catching in his lungs. Toji fought down the red in his cheeks and laid her arms around her shoulders. They stood there for a while, just content to hold on to each other.

Toji lifted his head. "Hikari, why me? Before he lost it, almost every girl in school wanted him. He's a pilot, he's big and strong, he's special..." He trailed off, looking for the right word. "He's... Better."

Hikari stepped back, letting her palms rest against his chest. She smiled. "He is better, better for someone else. Not for me."

* * *

><p>It wasn't like a prison, really. There were no hand cuffs and escorted visiting rooms, or dividing glass walls with phones between them. Toji and Hikari stepped up to Shinji's cell door and knocked. Before the pilot could reply, a section two agent stepped out of an alcove and opened it, before pointing the three teenagers down the hall.<p>

"Cafeteria's that way. Come back when you're finished." he said, not unkindly.

That brief moment of humanity cut through the tension. The cafeteria was empty, and Hikari started to set up their meal. The boxes were hand made and finely detailed, sliding open with barely a whisper. Toji, being Toji, visibly perked up when the smell of good food wafted near him. His snuffling was loud, obnoxious even, but Hikari couldn't help but giggle. They looked so carefree.

Shinji was still framed in the doorway, watching the pair laugh and flirt. His fingers curled up into fists so tightly, the teenagers could hear the tendons creak. They pilot bowed his head while his whole body began to shake. Veins and muscles bulged obscenely, and the tension seemed to build up higher and higher. Then, he sagged to the floor, like a puppet with its strings cut. His knees hit the tile hard, and Toji couldn't suppress a wince.

A scowl of concern pulled at Toji's mouth. The boy moved over to check the pilot. Hikari's hands flew to her mouth, and she was struck numb by how utterly _defeated_ the boy looked. "I-Ikari-kun?"

The pilot hunched over while a growl built up in his chest. The sound clawed its way out of his throat, howling at the ceiling. Toji slid back and threw an arm back to shield Hikari, while keeping his other hand ready , just in case. Shinji slumped down again. When he lifted his his head, his eyes snapped open, looking positively horrified. He started babbling, apologies tumbling past his lips.

A scowl worked its way onto Toji's face, and etched itself deeper with each muddled syllable. Eventually he had enough of that, and put his foot down, literally. His sneaker slammed into the tile with a clapping snap sound, not the rumbling stomp he wanted, but it was enough to get Shinji to shut up and look at him.

"Get up." The pilot nodded and lurched to his feet. Toji stalked and glared. He had to tilt his head up to meet the pilot's eyes. Hikari reached for the two boys, but Toji held up one hand to stop her. His glare never wavered. Shinji kept his eyes downcast and looking off to one side. That was fine by Toji.

Four well-folded knuckles whistled through the air, aiming to smash right into Shinji's nose. The pilot blinked, and the incoming strike seemed to slow down. Instincts and trained responses crashed together, telling him to _move_, but Shinji couldn't will himself to get out of the way. The punch slammed into his face and drove him back into the doorway, stumbling into the door frame.

His nose began to swell, while blood dripped out of one nostril. Hikari choked out Toji's name in shock, fully prepared to tear into him, but he shut down her tirade with a simple look before she could get rolling. He was done. "It's a guy thing."

Despite everything, Shinji let out a small laugh. Toji's scowl shifted to his regular smile. He reached out to help the pilot up. "We're even now. One for one."

Hikari nodded, deciding to stop fussing for now. "NERV, the doctor, Ritsuko-Sensei, she explained what happened before we came here. It wasn't your fault."

Shinji shook his head, "I knew what I was doing, I wanted to do everything..." He turned a little green then, glancing at Hikari then away. "I was a monster, when I wanted those things. I may be a monster for wanting your forgiveness."

Hikari blinked, then her face screwed up, like it did when her classmates missed assignments.. "You, are an _idiot_."

That brought Shinji up short; his jaw fell open and he_ stared_ at the girl. Toji joined in a beat later. "Man where'd you get all that bull shit? You read too much, Ikari!"

Toji dragged the pilot over to the table, putting an end to that topic. Hikari took the hint and returned to the meal, while Toji pressed Shinji into a chair and clapped his hands around the pilot's shoulders. "Now you listen here, Hikari is one of the best damn cooks in the school. She packed that tower of boxes for _two hours_ for this. I had to wake up _before noon_ while school is still canceled."

Shinji twisted around in his seat, giving Toji a bewildered look. The other boy kept ranting. "You are going to accept our apology. You are going to come back to school when NERV lets you, and we're all going to put this behind us."

Hikari beamed, clapping her hands. "It's ready!"

Shinji turned to stare at the table, laden with two hours worth of immaculately prepared food. He looked up at Hikari, whose blush made her freckles stand out just a bit more. Toji all but slammed into the seat beside him, already trying to load his plate. Hikari rapped him across the skull for that.

As he watched the two bicker, he wondered if he was worth forgiveness.

* * *

><p>It surprised Shinji, when he realized how hungry he was. Section Two provided meals, and even offered to get him take out, when they went for themselves, but he usually declined. More penance, he rationalized. Still, he was a little shocked when he ate more than half the food Hikari brought. Toji however ate his fill long before Shinji, so he at the very least didn't feel bad about taking too much. There wasn't much gossip to catch up on, since the school was still closed until all the loose ends were tied up.<p>

Toji however did have something to say. "Oh yeah, Ikari. Kensuke wanted to come down too, but he was busy. I got his number on my phone though." He thumbed the speed dial and handed it to Shinji.

He and Hikari moved off, giving Shinji a bit more privacy. "H-Hello?"

The signal was quite clear. "Shinji? Hi, it's Kensuke. I've been keeping an eye on your lab at the apartment. Deja's here too. Say hi Deja!"

Shinji could hear something that sounded nothing like 'Hi'. One eyebrow rose up, but he didn't ask.

Kensuke's tone grew wary, but that was normal. He was always ready with secret projects. "Anyway, I've made a few breakthroughs while you've been down there, but I don't want to talk about it over an unsecured line."

In a way, Shinji was touched. The other boy was doing a good job of not drawing attention to the event. Still, he had to satisfy his honor. "Listen, Kensuke..."

The geek cut him off before he could get rolling. "Meh. You weren't in your right mind, everyone could see that. If anyone in the world would have post-traumatic stress, it'd be you."

Shinji hung on the line for nearly a minute, and Kensuke was content to let the silence go on. Finally, the pilot spoke. "Kensuke... Thanks."

* * *

><p>It was not difficult to surprise the supreme commander of NERV. He was a man after all. A great many things surprised him over the past year. It was however, notoriously difficult to make the commander <em>react.<em> Which is why Fuyutsuki absolutely savored the look on his student's face.

Gendo pulled off his glasses, as if removing the amber lenses would make the words on the paper magically change. "I'm sorry, but did you say there was an Angel sighting in _Greenland?"_

Fuyutsuki tried to keep the smile off his face, he really did try, but wasn't entirely successful. "Not just a sighting, but an attack of some kind. The craters appear superficially similar to the damage the Third Angel inflicted."

The commander pulled his composure back together in a heartbeat, eyeglasses firmly in place. "The old men are taking our measure then. If it were a real Angel, our detection grid would've registered them."

Fuyutsuki conceded the point. He was their closest contact with the Committee, even though the communications blackout was still ongoing. He waved his arm and brought up the holographic table. Another pass lit Gendo's office with hundreds of news feeds, live and recorder earlier, talking about the event. Since the initial report, there had been sightings of strange shapes, accompanied by glowing red spheres, hovering in mid air. It reminded the pair about the old days in college with streaming video and viral marketing, before conspiracy and the end of their worlds.

* * *

><p>Time seemed to move faster than he expected. Section Two did their best to help him in their own way. Sometimes they brought books from his collection, the ones they knew he hadn't read yet. They made sure he had clean clothes, food. He was sure an agent would talk to him if he asked, but he didn't. Shinji didn't want to be alone, but he didn't want to be around anyone either. It was better that way.<p>

So there he sat on his bed, having set aside his latest printed distraction. He'd always been patient, hardly ever speaking up, so sitting quietly for hours didn't bother him. Shinji hadn't yet gotten around to learning meditation, but it was one of the things he wanted to learn. He wasn't a Buddhist, so he didn't necessarily intend to shed desire. But, he was raised alongside the Mahayana tradition, with cultural grounding in Shinto. Having seen photos and video of his own coronal display, he could definitely tell that it _looked_ like it came from the Hindu mythos. The intricate mandala, extra arms and open-ringed halos...

He shook his head and tried to focus, he'd been going off on tangents within his own mind for days now. The thought of 'want' set off a debate in his mind. His inner voice took on a bitter tone. _Look at where wanting got you? You wanted Misato, deep down. All those girls at school, the yakuza girls. You wanted them all. all at once and repeatedly!_

Fury pooled in his gut, forcing him to his feet and pacing again. It all came back to want. He wanted to do something, to fix his problems, be a better person, to do anything other than just sit in that damn cell for hours. Penance was fine, but he'd learned the value of _action_. He stared at his hands, and turned his awareness inward. He knew he was powerful. He had power that more than half the world would kill for, never mind being an Evangelion pilot. His hands could heal people, he could destroy almost anything he wanted.

He could want, he could aspire to greatness, he could _be better_. He wasn't worthless, he was dangerous... But did he have to be?

That thought wouldn't leave his head. Did he _have_ to be dangerous? Could he get better? Be better? He shook his head. It wasn't like before he came to Tokyo-3. Then he was listless. Everyone had authority over him, could tell him what to do and how to do it and why. Now it was different, he was respected and feared. A brief image of his friends appeared in his mind, followed by Rei and Misato. He rubbed his temples and sighed.

He just kept staring at his hands, watching his fingers bow and flex. Fury and self-loathing coiled in his gut, while wrath and anger built up in him, mixed with frustration. Toji, Kensuke and Hikari... They helped in their own way, but it wasn't enough. He never wanted anything like this to happen again. And unlike before, this time he knew he could do something about it. He had power.

Salvation had to come from within.

He leaned forward and dropped to the concrete floor, landing hard on open palms. He knew how to exercise; NERV had beaten that knowledge into him over the course of six months. He cycled through pushups and variant presses and lifts. There wasn't any trainer or master watching him now, and no Ritsuko wanting him to fulfill a benchmark or create a point of data. Now, all he had to do was get stronger.

If he was a threat, or a monster, he'd make himself into one that even Angels would fear. A hundred pushups barely made his arms warm. The boy switched positions and started doing sit ups. He had nothing but time.

* * *

><p>According to his observers, Shinji had developed what most would call a 'prison workout'. Hundreds of sit ups and pushups, leg lifts, squads, anything he could think of to train and tax his muscles. There wasn't enough room to truly practice his martial arts, but he ran through the stances anyway, reciting strategic parables with each repetition. He committed Sun Tzu's art of war to memory over the past week.<p>

He'd been at it for two weeks. Today's workout left him drenched and so overheated, the sweat seemed to waft off his head and arms like steam.

He turned to face one of the corner mounted cameras, he'd noted them his first day there. "Let me out. Put me in an Eva all day. Make me fight black belts and soldiers. Lift weights, I don't care. You want a warrior, a weapon? I'll be whatever you need. But to do that, I'll need to be out there where I can push myself."

The section two operators manning the security console looked at each other, then the screen. The pilot was moving through his stances that the monitor's refresh rate couldn't keep up. Punches and kicks were broken up into lagging bands. They'd all seen recordings of the kid going through his paces while Ritsuko was first testing him.

The agent on the left took one long, calming drag on a cigarette, blowing smoke out the corner of his mouth. "I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't want to fuck with that kid."

His partner never seemed to mind the smoke. "Agreed. I guess we'll need to kick this up the chain of command though."

Another voice broke into their conversation, that cigarette dropped into the left hand agent's lap. "That won't be necessary."

Commander Ikari appeared behind them, almost as if he were made of shadows. The smoke was now rising from the smoker's lap, but he was in no state to put the ember out. The defacto dictator of Tokyo-3 was _smiling_.

"Release the pilot. Get him what he wants."

* * *

><p>Ritsuko wisely asked Shinji to meet her in the Proving Grounds. A cleaning crew had been dispatched to Shinji's cell shortly thereafter. The scientist looked the boy over, rather impressed with his physical conditioning. Before, he was bulky, but not very well defined. Now he looked wiry and tough. "You look healthy."<p>

Before, he would've blushed and thoroughly lost track of the conversation. Now he just barely stuttered and kept his head turned, doing a remarkable job of avoiding eye contact. "T-Thanks. I didn't have much else to do but train."

"I noticed. So." She flopped into a chair and started to roll around the observation chamber. Shinji tracked her out the corner of his eye, wondering why she was acting so... Childish. She cut that thought off with a question "How are you feeling?"

Shinji had a lot of time to think about that one. Responsible. Unclean. Those were probably the wrong words. They came out awkwardly and didn't really explain anything, but then again he wasn't exactly in the mood to elaborate either.

Ritsuko didn't seem to notice his discomfort, nor the palpable cloud of guilt surrounding the boy. She planted her heel and kept her voice deliberately light. "Misato's been beating herself up about the whole thing." She watched him then, waiting to see how he'd react.

The boy got _angry_, clenching his fists so hard, tendons creaked. Misato and Ritsuko were friends, weren't they? "She shouldn't! I'm the one who did all those things."

It seemed like he still erred on the side of compassion, with a heavy dose of guilt. A surge of relief and pride for the boy ran through her; they could still fix all of this. "No, but she thinks she started your whole episode."

The boy's eyebrows shot up to his hairline, and his voice rose to match. He couldn't comprehend anyone thinking that, let alone Misato! "She should feel relieved! If we'd been anywhere near each other, I would've raped her!"

That got an unexpected reaction; Ritsuko started to _laugh._ Irritation built up in his chest and Shinji felt the beginning of a snarl come on. The scientist knuckled tears away from her eyes before answering. "I'm sorry, it was mostly just how you said that. You may be tall and strong, but you still sound and talk like a fourteen year old."

She sobered. "You didn't rape anyone. The accurate term was _seduce_, which is not illegal or usually immoral." She raised a hand to head off his argument. "I agree that you were a _threat_, your psychosis certainly suggested you could go that far, but you _didn't_, which speaks greatly of your character."

Anger drained out of him, leaving Shinji standing in place, thinking. Then, a question popped into his mind. "Why are you just... Talking about it? All the psychology books I've read usually think people won't talk openly like this."

Ritsuko shrugged, and started to roll around the consoles again. "Well, I'm a scientist, and I like to deal with facts and repeatable experiments and data. I can't here because the human mind is frustratingly subjective."

"The easiest way to explain it is this; I don't think shielding you from what happened will make this any better. But I'm not going to let you stew in your own misconceptions either." The chair slid to a stop."You are dangerous," she waved towards his hands. "You can theoretically destroy _main battle tanks_ with your bare hands, after all. But," She pulled her glasses off and smiled. "I don't think you're _a threat."_

Shinji exhaled loudly and ran his fingers through his hair; he'd need to get it cut soon. "I thought the same thing, more or less." If it came down to it he'd punch the next Angel to death...

The scientist nodded and rolled over to another console, flicking a series of switches. It'd been several month since he'd seen the Proving Grounds. Massive overhead lights snapped on. The now lit chamber was the size of an aircraft hangar, filled with equipment and all of the tools used in his early training.

"So," Ritsuko turned back to the boy, still smiling. "What can we do to help you train?"

* * *

><p>Central Dogma had numerous meeting rooms of various sizes and intended purposes. This one was a lecture hall, which Ritsuko favored when briefing her subordinates in Research and Development. Maya was actually the true head of that department, but her primary responsibility was organizational; Ritsuko made most of the decisions.<p>

Over a hundred of the most intelligent and skilled engineers, physicists, and experts in the unique discipline of artificial humans were gathered together. A holographic screen projected schematics on one wall.

"This." Ritsuko pointed the design. "Is a prototype humanoid robot. For those of you who remember Boston's 'Big Dog' project, it was split off of that."

She clicked a remote control, and the projection changed to an artist's concept sketch. The apparatus looked rather under built and was obviously not a production model. "We're going to take that, and turn it into something that the Third Child can beat into the ground over and over without needing to build a new one."

Almost immediately, the think tank bubbled with activity. Cliques and ad-hoc teams formed almost instantly, with people turning to their neighbors in order to brainstorm. Ritsuko just stood there smiling, with her arms folded across her chest.

* * *

><p>"This is getting out of hand."<p>

There were Angel sightings happening all over the world now. So much so that news networks bought new channels just to provide twenty-four hour news on the events. Every expert on the Angels outside of Tokyo-3 were being constantly plied with questions, and most of them just couldn't be answered. That was just the start of it. Protest, civil unrest, and now political pressure were being brought to bear.

In a matter of weeks, the human race unified more than ever before, under a simple banner: Protect us!

In Gendo's office, one could see through the side windows that the armory buildings were retracted. They looked like skyscraper stalactites hanging from a domed ceiling. The hole drilled by the fifth Angel had long since been repaired. Some rare times, like today, water vapor and heat mingled just so to create the illusion of clouds, winding through the buildings and casting shadows across the interior garden surface.

Fuyutsuki handed the other man a sheaf of papers, having already memorized the important parts. "The United Nations expects a response, and is threatening to cut our funding if NERV doesn't expand our protection envelope." He didn't bother to say such a thing was impossible; there was no way to fund such an endeavor.

Ikari leafed through the pages, grunting. "I was right then, the Committee is tightening the vice."

The older man agreed. "Even if they aren't, I'm sure they'll be exploiting this for all they're worth." He began to list threats on his fingers. "A new chance to insert fresh agents, deactivate the Dawkins protocol, interview those high school students..." He let his hands fall. "We are in an unenviable position, Ikari-kun."

"Somewhat. Contingencies are in place." Gendo tossed the reports on his desk while Fuyutsuki stood nearby, arms folded behind his back. "The UN is 'requesting' my presence at the summit. It's a foregone conclusion, however. Nothing I could say would appease them."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "I will oversee NERV while you are gone."

* * *

><p>One thought filled Ritsuko with joy and contentment. It was a euphoric sort of rapture that lifted her spirits and warmed her heart.<p>

Damn, it felt good to have an unlimited budget.

The first training dummy prototypes were just that, prototypes, and were quickly demolished in short order. Her research and development teams had fractured into multiple camps, devouring her data and generating new designs and theories based on Shinji's responses.

Initially their data was being thrown off, because Shinji's close combat attacks could destroy anything, with the only variable being how many strikes it took. One man, a material sciences expert, was almost pulling his hair out trying to convince his colleagues. They weren't having any of it. "Don't you think tank armor is a little excessive?"

"Haven't you looked at the data? He punches through _Evangelion armored plate_. We can't afford to build walking tanks for this."

* * *

><p>The head of Project E let out an impressively unladylike yawn. and now defacto head of Exalted research and development rubbed at her eyes. She was used to all-nighters by now. Ritsuko cycled through her bank of monitors, reviewing the latest run of prototypes and test sequences. New armor materials, configurations, shock absorption; the list of proposals grew, and the pile of discarded ideas grew just as fast.<p>

She slapped the controls and spread out every recorded test pass on the array of screens, and chose to not stare at any one. In each screen, Shinji was glowing with his fairly standard corona display. A punch here, and a kick there. Each time he ruined eight hours of worth of assembly and material science. Maybe_ not _trying to find a pattern would let her mind seize on it. The details built up in her mind, even as her vision blurred at the edges... Then it hit her. She twisted a dial and sent the playback into slow motion. The various prototypes weren't very diverse yet. They all used the same basic body plan and materials.

She watched the playback, then scrubbed back through the recording. There was something _right there. _And then she had it. Everything broke the same way, almost perfectly each time. There were minor differences, materials had different behaviors when they broke under strain... But why was everything breaking so much?

Maya walked in then, standing behind her teacher and superior. The younger woman squinted at the screen, but Ritsuko paid her no mind. The scientist _knew_ Shinji was alarmingly good at breaking things with his bare hands; she'd ran that cycle of tests herself months ago. But now it was actually important.

"Did Shinji-kun ever get around to naming all of his techniques?"

Ritsuko blinked, looking up at her protégé. "Naming?"

Maya nodded, adding her characteristic 'Un!' for emphasis. "I overheard him mentioning that. He was telling some soldiers his techniques had names, but he didn't know how to say them." The monitors caught her eye again, and her face scrunched up in contemplation. She cocked her head to one side, as if looking at the screens off angle would help. Apparently it did; "Do we know what techniques he uses during these tests?"

The scientist sagged in her chair and slapped both palms into her forehead. She didn't bother to drop her arms, talking past her wrists. "We never told Shinji to not use any techniques for initial testing." She looked back up a the monitors; some of the playbacks showed that 'technique of promised victory' she noticed before... And nothing else besides his coronal aura. Ritsuko slapped her forehead again.

"Not all of his technique have an obvious display."

* * *

><p>The think tank were once more assembled in the lecture hall, while their various team leads an through slides of findings and demonstrated their various innovations. One man waved a laser pointer at a graph projected across one wall. Ritsuko watched with barely withheld glee.<p>

"This was our initial projected resuts, assuming a steady development. And this, " He clicked a remote and changed the slide. "is the result we got."

Someone in the front row stood up, hands flat on their desk. "You're kidding me. He _broke_ an exponential graph?"

The smug smile was fixed on the spokesman's face. "He did indeed. He broke it _linearly."_

"...How!"

Ritsuko, sitting off to the side, took that question. "We've determined that his powers are, for lack of a better term, arbitrary. They just work." She nodded back to the original speaker, urging him to continue.

"Now, these are the projected force results." He clicked to the next slide, showing a graph and marking out numerous materials and structures. "Bulletproof glass, ceramic, steel, every single measuring plate we used was shattered on impact. The last input we received from the pressure sensors? The exact amount of force required to break it under laboratory conditions..."

The team lead paused, then went in for the kill. "... Plus a factor of 0.01."

* * *

><p>A thirty-six hour development cycle was insane. He may have lacked the education, but Shinji watched the process enough to understand that. They claimed a corner of the hangar complex for their work, converting it into something of a motor-pool mixed with a surgical theater. Ritsuko was the leading mind when it came to the Evangelions, so it wasn't surprising that the latest prototypes were taking cues from the larger machines. He kept his distance from the work crews and technicians though, for their benefit and his own; some of those contraptions <em>looked<em> dangerous.

Between test phases, Shinji kept himself busy with physical exercise. Eventually that too grew pointless. A new technique emerged from his wellspring of power. He could charge his muscles, willing himself to be stronger and hit harder than any normal man.

When he wasn't exercising, he was training with other people. He wouldn't _spar_ with them, he gladly listened to soldiers and Section Two agents teach him how to fight better. They corrected his technique and told him stories of the battles they fought or the cases they investigated. Second Impact left a long lingering history of war and crime in its wake.

Ritsuko clapped to get his attention, and the pilot turned to see their latest prototype. This one was massive and overbuilt, looking more like a headless gorilla than a man. Thick bundles of mesh-sheathed muscle wound around its arms and legs, while the body was a collection of plates and tough, springy pads. It was taller than the pilot by a fair margin, and outweighed him several times over. A cluster of thick, tied-together power and control cables wound out from its back and then up into a large gantry, above the main testing floor.

"I hope you like the Mark Four, Shinji-kun."

* * *

><p>Misato got a little bit better with each passing day. A little bit perkier, or a smile that was just a little brighter. She hadn't touched any alcohol since that night in Ritsuko's apartment. Small victories, one would say. It may have been calm in Central Dogma, Tokyo-3 was anything but. Nearly every television set and radio was turned to the Angel sightings around the world. Greenland was the first, but now Northern Siberia, Buenos Aries, Nigeria and a half dozen other places found evidence of Angelic activity.<p>

The absolute best cafeteria in the Geofront was the one on the north-eastern wall of the Central Dogma pyramid, with massive windows dominating the entire expanse. It was a three-floor, terraced structure; an architectural wonder. Normally, hundreds of NERV employees milled around at all hours, riding escalators between levels and chatting with coworkers while.

Now though, the massive hologram screens were set to news stations with round-the-clock coverage. Ritsuko glared at one while sipping her coffee. "...This is insane. We're not seeing any blue patterns. Our detection grid does cover the world."

Her friend shrugged helplessly. "I dunno, Rits. I dunno." Misato was far more concerned with tactics. The sightings unsettled her as much as anyone, but she had to pick her battles, and not borrow trouble. Instead, she turned her attention back on Ritsuko, A small smile tugged at her lips The objective, verifiable proof that she was getting better?

Ritsuko brought her steaming mug of coffee to her lips. Misato waited patiently, like a lioness ready to pounce on a wounded gazelle. "You know... If he had stayed in the apartment and came on to me... I don't think I would've said no."

One did not survive college with Katsuragi Misato without some close calls; she knew her friend far too well to fall for it so easily. The coffee did not spill, or suffer a spit-take. Instead her slurp was loud and undignified, drawing up more coffee than she wanted. She rushed to cover her mouth and swallow, then laughed out loud, tinged with indignation. "K-Katsuragi! I thought we agreed!"

The other woman just gave her blonde friend a cat-eyed smirk. "Ritsuko, that wasn't innuendo or a double entendre." She felt something break in the back of her mind. "Drat."

Misato slouched forward, pillowing her head on her arms, one cheek mushed up against the sleeve of her jacket. Ritsuko didn't push to keep the conversation going. Misato spoke up when she was ready. "It's funny. And terrible, terrifying. When he first started living with me, we had a big heart to heart about sex and sexuality. I thought I got through to him. Maybe I did, but not very far... I told him about fame and sex and everything. I told him he could even have _me_ if he was lucky..."

She played with a straw while she was talking. "I wasn't serious. I mean, I didn't expect anything to come of it, from either of us."

"Are you honestly attracted to him?" Ritsuko chose not to mention the inherent moral and ethical dimensions of that question. Her friend knew them all too well.

Misato just sat back in her chair and spun the straw through her fingertips "Ritsuko, he's _fourteen years old_. I mean _now_ he's practically built like a god, but I still remember when he was shorter than me." She tossed the straw into the garbage. "I don't care about _legal_, I care about what's _right_."

"I want to find him and tell him I'm sorry and just, undo all this shit and start over. But I don't know how to _say_ any of that. I'm terrible at being sincere."

A smile worked its way onto Ritsuko's face. That smile promised many terrible things for Misato, she just knew it. The scientist pulled out her tablet computer and started typing, though she glanced at her right hand before settling down in earnest. The grin grew wider and wider, so much so that one could see it reach for her ears.

"R-Ritsuko, you're scaring me." It was a playful tone, belying the real, if purely mundane fear of embarrassment or mischief. Ritsuko paid her no mind. She hit the enter key with a flourish.

"Well, Katsuragi. I've scheduled you to meet with the Third Child, at the end of his current training cycle. You have about a week to figure out what to say."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> A high character-drama chapter. Hopefully I did it justice.

As another note: Normally I like to practice something like 'death of the author', avoiding _telling_ people about the story... But here I have to make a vauge exception: You may not like how I've handled certain consequences in this chapter, but at the end of the day, It's not going to be about what's _correct,_ it's going to be what makes for a better story. If it never comes up when you read it, all the better.

Other than that, I hope you've enjoyed Chapter 18.


	19. Harmony

The high school had reopened a little more than a month after 'Yakuza attack'. For most of the students, nothing had changed. There were no broken windows or damaged landscaping, and no evidence of an impromptu harem having taken over their cafeteria. Extra days were added to the school year to make up for lost time.

Shinji hadn't come back to school. That was probably for the best, according to Toji, Kensuke and Hikari. The trio watched a steadily growing pile of cards and small, delicately wrapped packages piled on his desk. His locker was probably stuffed full as well at this point. The givers were at least wise enough to not leave food.

Toji let out a derisive snort, folding his arms across his chest. Another girl tried to put her gift on the towering stack, but there wasn't much room left. "Look at em'. It's making me sick."

Kensuke nodded, not bothering to look up. He was more interested in the half-disassembled camera in his hands**. **They had no idea what they were dealing with."It is something of a tragedy; you'd think he'd be a pariah now."

Hikari tilted her head to one side. "You don't recognize her, do you?"

Both boys looked up at the class representative. She flipped open a tiny pamphlet and confirmed for herself. "That's Saneda-san, a sophomore in class 3-B." Her voice dropped low. "She..." A bit of red crawled across her cheeks. "...Was with Shinji, during the event."

"Ya mean she wa-uumph!" More than a few students turned to the watch the class rep clamp her thumb and forefinger around Toji's nose. She yanked him over so they were nearly eye to eye, growling. "_Yes_. She was. Now keep your voice down!"

Warning delivered, the girl shoved Toji back into his seat, leaving him shocked numb and gaping. Waiting a few beats, Kensuke pushed his glasses up and asked the obvious question: "How do you know who she is?"

The pigtailed girl held up the pamphlet. "NERV gave me this, it lists all the... Affected girls." Nearly twenty, from freshman to seniors. There was no need to split the schools in Tokyo-3; not enough students.

He let out a soft 'oh', before returning to his camera. After a few moments contemplation, The geek spoke up again. "On the one hand that totally isn't fair. On the other, I wouldn't wish something like that on my own worst enemy."

The female third of the trio blinked, and all semblance of grace and poise were chased off by confusion. "Huh?"

Kensuke sat up and opened his mouth to explain, stopped, then closed his mouth. He raised his finger, starting again, then shook his head. That pattern repeated a few times, before he just gave up and said, "It's a guy thing."

Meanwhile, another girl marched up up to the pile of tribute, gift in hand. Those paying attention watched her hover around Shinji's desk. A moment later, she stomped the floor in a fit if pique; there wasn't any room for her contribution. She twisted on one heel and marched over to the three younger students. Everyone knew Toji and Kensuke were thick as thieves with the pilot.

"Do any of you know where Shinji-Sama lives?" She held up her gift, a small wrapped box, smelling a just a tiny bit too strongly of perfume. Toji and Kensuke slowly shook their head, while Hikari answered. "I'm afraid he can't accept anything directly. NERV orders."

The girl let out a flustered moan of dismay before heading back to the pile at his desk, aiming to try again. The two boys slowly turned to face each other, while Hikari just stared between them, utterly lost. Their voices went flat and toneless.

"Shinji... Sama?"

* * *

><p>Ritsuko knew the Commander well enough to read his body language. His tells were almost imperceptible, but she made her doctorate based on attention to detail. It was safe to say that the Commander was mildly upset.<p>

"Rei, what is the meaning of this?" He did not demand. He never needed to demand anything of Rei.

The First Child stood in front of the memory transfer machine, still dressed in her school uniform. The room was as dark and macabre as it always had been. Massive tanks of purified LCL were full of clone bodies, listless and effectively catatonic. They breathed and aged and grew, the same as Rei. Ultraviolet lamps and other beneficial radiation baths kept the clones stimulated and healthy.

The girl stated her intent without blinking, without tensing or making the slightest of motions, other than what was needed to speak. "I refuse to enter the machine."

White-gloved fingers tightened reflexively around the small pistol in his pocket. He could draw, aim and fire well before she could dodge. If he held his thumb around it a certain way, the weapon wouldn't get caught on his clothes. The tension lasted for maybe a tenth of a second, so fast that most people would miss it.

Ritsuko broke in before anything else happened, giving the commander a helpless look and a shrug. "Before you ask, there's no psychic contamination. Whatever Shinji does, it just doesn't behave like the Angels. "

She waved her right arm up and down, but unfortunately there was no handy chart or projection for her to direct attention to. "I used every sensor I had on Rei, Misato, Shinji's two friends, more than a few technicians and agents, my own arm and more." She spread her arms wide, palms out. She couldn't give him any better answer. "We may as well just admit it now; he has an Exaltation, he's Exalted, whatever that means, and it has nothing to do with the Angels, AT Fields, or personality contamination."

Grunting, Gendo turned back to Rei. "Why." It lacked the inflection to register as a question, for most people. Normally such a thing would be easy to mistake as anger, but Gendo was anything but. There was a time for deliberate, bold action, and a time for a more measured approach.

She was not shy, and held his gaze without turning away. It was better to say that she only knew of shyness in the same sense that a blind man knows color. "You cannot guarantee the ability to replace me. The resurrection system has too many points of failure." Rei rarely spoke at length, but had her moments of almost girlish enthusiasm. This was not one of them. Her voice was mouse-quiet, but intent and clear.

The gun felt extremely light, deceptively so, still, he kept his fingers away from the squeeze-safety. Gendo nodded. Rei took that as a sign to continue. "If you or Akagi-Sensei dies, the transfer process cannot be attempted. If the machine is damaged, I cannot have my memories copied. If the replacements die, I will become truly unique, irreplaceable."

Blinking rapidly, the scientist stood up straighter with her fingers gripping the sides of the console. "She's right..."

Gendo conceded the point. "So, now what?"

Rei stared at the commander, past the amber tinted glasses and right into his eyes. It was not accusing, assessing or anything emotive, it was just her way. "I will see my part of Instrumentality completed."

He stared right back, unflinching. Ritsuko looked on, bewildered and lost amidst their silent conversation. Then Gendo turned and started walking away with one hand in his pocket, as if it had never happened. There was no spoken objection, and the matter was closed. "We're finished for today, Professor."

Ritsuko just nodded, struck dumb.

* * *

><p>Misato cradled PenPen in her arms, slowly spinning through her apartment. She had cleaned it herself after movie night, and Shinji's subsequent episode. Rei helped, after a fashion, but the girl just didn't know how to well, live. Fortunately it never took more than one mistake to correct the girl. The lieutenant would rather not repeat the burnable trash fiasco, thank you very much. The pilot was still living with her at that. Thinking back on it, she did wonder why the Commander dropped the subject. She decided not to borrow trouble, she already had far too much.<p>

She hadn't realized until now, how much Shinji mattered to her. The apartment felt empty, though without Rei, it would've been much, much worse. It was nice, focusing on the girl for a while. It helped get her mind off of the other pilot and her sudden surge of responsibility. Rei ended up moving into the tiny store room across the hall from Shinji, though if she kept collecting pilots, she might have to move into a bigger apartment.

Rei was... Unobtrusive. Misato couldn't call her polite, because she just didn't seem to know how to _be_ polite. The girl knew the basic social mores and etiquette, but the context eluded her. Other aspects of young-adult life didn't register as well; her cultural and social awareness was stunted, but not absent. For example, all the pilots by NERV charter were paid a salary for their services, though most of it was secured in a trust fund. Regardless, a not insignificant amount found its way to the pilots.

When Rei moved in for real, she brought with her several overstuffed paper sack full of envelopes and half-opened mail. Most of it consisted of unpaid bills and utilities for her old apartment, which Misato thought was rather pointless. The more important part was that Rei had been receiving allowance checks for nearly _ten years_ and had not once cashed them. Since it was NERV and she still had the physical documents, it wasn't as awful a trial as expected, securing the money and setting up a bank account for the girl. At the end of the day, Rei had more money squirreled away than Misato did.

It had taken the older woman a while to piece together that much of it. Rei wasn't just _weird_, she was _damaged. _Still not wanting to borrow trouble, Misato decided to focus more on getting Rei back up to speed, encouraging her to find hobbies and interact more with people. It would be tough for the girl to get the hang of expressions though.

Misato sighed, she'd put off thinking about it long enough. She turned to stare helplessly at the calendar, bearing a date marked in red ink. She'd started to draw a heart around it, but the lines kinked up and grew jagged. Ritsuko would kick Shinji out of the Geofront for the day, hopefully so that she could apologize to him, for everything.

So Misato was alone save PenPen, talking to someone who wasn't there. "...Shinji-kun." She whipped her head side to side. "No, no. 'Shinji... I-'

She stamped her foot into the kitchen floor and bounced the penguin up in her arms, more like a stuffed animal than a live pet. "Ugh! This isn't any good!"

"Wark?"

* * *

><p>It was karma. Truly.<p>

About six months ago, Shinji gradually stopped sparing with the trainers, and stuck to dealing with punching bags. He reaffirmed that condition after his episode with the Yakuza, having seen what he could do to people he _wasn't_ trying to hurt. Most of the trainers were former soldiers, mercenaries with high standards of employment, and heroes from the past fifteen years. The unknown kind that never show up in the history books.

There was a degree of animosity, originally. These were men in their thirties and forties, not just from Japan but all over the world. They were the baddest of the badass and knew it. Then the Third comes in with a superpower suite and they're told to _train him._ There was jealousy and a bit of hazing, but the boy was both far too polite and far too oblivious to acknowledge their insults. That sort of determination was worth respect.

It wasn't all good though, Shinji, even before coming to Tokyo-3, had a sort of blind approach to life. He went forward, going through the motions and rarely deviated, often following instructions by rote. It was initially difficult to teach the boy how to improvise, which was a critical skill in combat.

Since those first training sessions, Shinji had developed a much better grasp of his powers, no longer accidentally triggering his destructive touch or ruining things and people. Once he started thinking of things in terms of stances and specific techniques, he refined his control. It made him feel a lot better about fighting people, but he never wanted to again, if he could help it.

So, karma, and animosity. The soldiers and trainers did warm up to him, but the cultural and generational gap was so large, the back-slapping and jokes were mostly lost on Shinji. Not to say he didn't appreciate the gestures though. That inclusion and growing sense of camaraderie was the first part of being paid back.

The second was a rubber-coated, steel fist smashing right into his face.

* * *

><p>The Mark-Four training platform, or 'Rilla' to the technicians, was essentially a headless, oversized biomechanical great ape. After their first several runs of prototypes, the engineers settled on a design that was <em>meant<em> to break, with lots of ablative armor and socket-style joints. Once Shinji stopped using his 'destroy everything' technique, the life-expectancy of all the prototypes shot up dramatically. Now the pilot could punch Rilla and send it flying back in pieces, and it would take maybe two minutes to re-socket the joints and hook it back up to power.

The really impressive part, however, was its control system. A prototype Evangelion operating system was pulled out of storage and had the dust blown off. Off to one side and hidden in a bunker was a close-combat master, hooked up to dozens of sensors and a special harness. Every motion the trainer made, Rilla mimed perfectly. A holographic projection of Shinji, and an omnidirectional treadmill allowed the old man to work the pilot over.

So Karma; after nearly a year of _not_ being able to fight, now they _could_.

Shinji blinked the stars out of his eyes and pushed his feet under him. The first two times he got knocked out, he could kip up almost immediately. After the third and fourth, he just got his feet under him and went back for more. All the while the research team was tracking behavioral data, his preferred tactics and reactions. They found that he had lots of peaks, throwing out incredible amounts of power and skill over short bursts, but also had a flexible baseline, a minimum threshold of effectiveness.

Most of that was interesting in a remote sort of way, but it didn't concern Shinji. He had an opponent that he could fight, something that could challenge him. It was something he could cut loose and push himself to be better.

Power didn't make him feel any better, but he'd learn how to control it or die trying.

* * *

><p>Since he started living in the Geofront, Shinji politely abhorred human contact. He had to be <em>extremely<em> tired not to pull away from people. It was telling when Ritsuko was able to throw an arm around him, pulling towards the nearby benches. "Are you sure you don't want to go to the infirmary?" She didn't bother to mention his new fixation on twenty-hour training schedules.

"I think I'll be fine." He sat down cross-legged and both hands in his lap with knuckles pressed together. To those watching him, the technicians and trainers and Ritsuko, he was meditating. His breathing was slow and steady, despite the thrashing he'd been subjected to. Stripped down to the waist, he was covered in bruises and scrapes, and he favored one leg, due to a cracked tibia.

There just wasn't a vocabulary for what he was doing, not a complete one at least. He added concepts to it, not words. They came to him in fits and starts, like that well-documented feeling of 'Eureka'. Sometimes it was like music, when he mastered a particularly tricky chord progression or fingering technique. After hours of frustration, it clicked. Here, it felt like bellows pumping a furnace. Fire and heat were close, but fell short when trying to encompass the wellspring of power within him. He breathed in, and that inner core of power cooled. When he let that breath out, the sense of arete expanded within him. It was warm and right and felt as if he held the sun in his chest.

Shinji's eyes were closed, so he only felt his corona unfurl out behind him. The Proving Grounds test hanger was suddenly lit as if it were daylight, and everyone there flicked down welding glasses without a further thought. Ritsuko watched as bruises faded before her eyes. Scrapes that wept blood curled up and scabbed over as if under time lapse, leaving dirty but otherwise whole, smooth skin.

He didn't misspeak when he tried to explain it to Misato, and later Ritsuko and the rest of the research staff; he really was moving parts of his soul around. He moved his soul, or maybe he moved the world through his soul? Maybe the world was refracted through him, like light through a glass. It felt it, in a deeply personal and intimate way. He wasn't learning things laid down before. He was the student and teacher all in one.

If he twisted that way, his skin would turn aside knives and bullets. One technique drew on his reserve to empower him. That one didn't always work, but it depended on what he was doing. Pain and exhaustion and sickness would not hold him as long as he had the strength to do so, but ask him the same when punching and kicking, and it was like he missed some vital clue or trick.

All of those things were unique to him, and he knew it. His dreams, memories, implied there could be _others_, but for all intents and purposes, he was the One and Only Exalt on Earth. When he willed himself to stand, ignoring exhaustion and the need to sleep, he did so through his own experimentation and awareness. The exception to that were his close combat techniques. They were, in the truest sense of the word, stances. It was a martial art with consistent patterns and execution. It was powered by his mind and enhanced body and soul. It wasn't punches and kicks and grapples, it was the concept of those things, elevated to a level he had trouble comprehending.

Rising as if he had never been hurt, Shinji grabbed a towel. Ritsuko pulled the camera away from her face. "Accelerated healing." She said.

Pressing the towel into his face, the boy was struck by a random thought. It hadn't really occurred to him, and he _thought_ in Japanese, so the honorific was fairly standard. He had no reason to really think about it until now. His voice was muffled through the towel. "Akagi-Sensei?"

The scientist blinked. Shinji almost never asked for anything "Yes, Ikari-kun?"

He finished wiping his face off before continuing. His tone shifted to that half-asking half-not tone people sometimes took when being hesitant. "Are you a doctor or a professor?"

She smiled warmly, visibly pleased at the question. Besides her own honest feelings of wanting to help the boy, she knew she had to be as supportive as possible. "Both. I have a Doctorate of Philosophy in Metaphysical Biology, one of Medicine in Neuroscience." She gave him a wry shrug. "I can't afford to specialize any further with my job."

Shinij blinked, and looked around the 'motor pool' section of the Proving Grounds. "...Then why are you?"

The scientist laughed; she could see what he was getting at. "Here?" She waved at the crowds of trainers and technicians. "Because I'm head of Research and Development, or the Technical Branch. You're right, I don't have an engineering degree, or any real experience with the material sciences.. I do have a lot of general knowledge though, and a secret weapon." The boy couldn't help himself, he leaned in without meaning to.

She tilted her head just so, letting her glasses catch the light of his own corona. "Delegation."

Laughter bubbled out once more, due to the befuddled look on his face. Normally Shinji was morose and sullen these days, so it pleased her to no end when his face twisted into a purely teenage scowl. It didn't last long, and he couldn't completely suppress a snicker. She laughed harder, before controlling herself. "There are hundreds of scientists, engineers, technicians, specialist employed by NERV. I can't name them all or what they're good at. I don't have to though."

Turning back to the bustle of engineering and research, she stepped up beside Shinji. Her voice grew wistful."I'm responsible for vision, I direct where our budget and manpower goes when developing Evangelion technology. I know what we need, now how to make it. I leave that to people far better than I, in that regard."

* * *

><p>There were dozens of rooms in Central Dogma, all for debriefing, meetings and research reports. Some used the relatively new holographic projectors, like the big-board displays in the command center. Others had more traditional LCD screens, or even repurposed CRT monitors. NERV had an incredible budget, but they were not above tightening their belts. The room Ritsuko claimed that day was one of the newer ones, with a central table-projector.<p>

Ritsuko looked on at the diagrams spread across the wall screens. Gendo and Fuyutsuki loomed behind her. Fuyutsuki was practically giddy; this was his doctorate after all. Gendo was far more restrained. "Doctor."

She took a long drag on her cigarette. The ashtray in front of her was nearly overflowing. A laser pointer was stuck between two more fingers on that same hand. "If it weren't so... terrifying, this would be worth a nearly endless number of Nobel Prizes."

The UN summit was rapidly approaching, civil unrest was building around the world, and the commander was starting to very slowly run out of patience. He pushed his fingertips under his glasses, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Doctor..."

"We've finally made a few breakthroughs with regards to our soul-sensing technology, after all that's happened so far." She pointed at the diagram on the left. It looked like nothing either man had ever seen before. They knew from earlier tests that the human soul was made of two parts, but this was the first time they had something like a photograph, instead of a computer-generated interpretation.

"Any generic human soul, as viewed through the new observation equipment. This one is Suzuhara Toji's, I believe." She flicked her wrist, sending the laser-dot at the two amorphous blobs. "Note the two-soul structure.." She turned to the next diagram. "On a whim, I analyzed Rei's soul pattern."

Gendo bristled minutely, but didn't say anything. "As you can see, she has three parts to her Soul, the two, normal human parts. Between them is the Lilith-supersoul that enables her unique physiology and allows the resurrection system to even work..."

She turned to Gendo, stamping out her cigarette. "I don't think this changes anything, but looking at this, I think we've never actually resurrected Rei, at all. We've only made functioning human copies, duct-taped together using Lilith's supersoul." She pulled out another cigarette and lit it. She'd deal with Shinji's stern too-young-to-be-a-doctor face later. "The memory-transfer system works, so we maintain enough of Rei that nobody can tell the difference... But if I'm right, each individual clone is in fact it's own person, has it's own soul..." She shrugged helplessly.

Gendo frowned. So much of his scenario relied on the people surrounding him being _predictable_. "Are you experiencing a moral crisis, Doctor?"

She shook her head. "My mother created those clones, that they somehow have a soul when we didn't intend for one doesn't change the fact that they aren't people in any meaningful sense." If they were human, she'd cross that ethical bridge when the time came. Until then, the clones were just near-human meat. Sick, but less so than the alternatives.

Fuyutsuki coughed. Normally he loved debating ethics, but this was already a sore topic for everyone. "So... The third diagram?"

"Fittingly enough, that's the Third Child." That monitor showed two more misty, out-of-focus blobs, with a third, slightly smaller oval sandwiched between them. "As you can see, he also has a three-soul structure, but his is much more tightly integrated." She glanced at some of her notes. "I can't say for sure if this is _better_, mind you. It's only an informal hypothesis."

Ritsuko leaned back in her chair and gave the two men a helpless shrug. The sensory equipment was still in its infancy and she hadn't yet been able to filter out the pilot's own coronal display yet. "I can't tell you if he had a normal two-soul structure before he... well, Exalted, but he's been able to sync with the Evangelion, so it doesn't seem to interfere."

"And the source of this third soul, Doctor? ADAM or Lilith?" Gendo's voice was steady and even, not a hint of wariness or uncertainty. None of them had any illusions about the origin at that point. It was mostly a formality, just eliminating the possibility.

The scientist shook her head, more to confirm it wasn't really applicable. "Neither, as far as we can tell. Unit-0 was based off of sampled tissue from the Contact Experiment, same as Unit-02, 03 and so on. Unit-01 was based on Lilith, so I used that as a comparison, the anatomy of the EVA's soul is completely different than whatever is in Shinji."

"There is one thing though, mostly a curiosity." Fuyutsuki perked up. This meeting was getting better and better.

Gendo had a sneaking suspicion. "Dare I ask, Doctor?"

She tapped a few controls and banished the first three soul patterns. Two new ones replaced them, visibly different. Their sensors lacked the resolution to truly see details, but they could tell the difference between the parts. One small, small misty image matching the one half of the soul from all of their human subjects , connected to something massive and alien. Human souls were round and misty, this soul was made of a tangle of shapes, like a symmetrical, folded protein chain.

"The souls of the Evangelion."

* * *

><p>It was a blatant violation of procedures and strategic doctrine, but the damn alarms kept going off. It was to be expected however; NERV and Central Dogma was still under construction, even after fifteen years. Construction, prototypes and engineering marvels all lead to one inescapable conclusion:<p>

Bugs.

It never really registered to Misato, or the pilots, but Gendo, Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki were all keenly aware of the many thousands of problems that sprang up daily in the Geofront. The MAGI ran above-ground Tokyo-3 like clockwork, but traffic, water and power utilities were _easy_; humans had been dealing with those for decades. The Geofront was hundreds upon hundreds of one-off systems and special requirements that all had their own unique behaviors and interactions.

The massive interior transit system for example, which encompassed all the moving walkways , escalators and elevators. That infrastructure was a living nightmare to make and maintain, and only recently had it started to increase workforce efficiency. When it wasn't breaking down, that is.

Today, the theme of the day was 'false alarms'. The MAGI reported no more than sixteen Pattern Blue events in the past six hours. Once the first alarm rang, Misato was halfway to NERV and breaking numerous traffic laws. Then her cell phone rang, telling her it was a false alarm.

Her mood wasn't at all helped by the fact that every single person in Tokyo-3 seemed to be protesting. Not rioting, because nothing had happened yet, but with the worldwide Angel sightings and increasing tension, the people who lived in the fortress city wanted it to stay that way; be _the_ fortress city. She was stuck in traffic as protestors flooded the streets without end in sight.

When Misato finally did make it into NERV, she and several other people among the senior staff wanted to kill something. It was fortunate that it _was_ quickly confirmed as a system error. All the stopping and starting had snarled their preparations, and very nearly prevented them from achieving launch-readiness. Shinji ended up sitting in the entry plug of Unit-01 for six hours.

Rei was nowhere to be found.

* * *

><p>She was free for the first time in her life... And she had no idea what to do.<p>

The Geofront was an amazingly large complex, home to numerous outbuildings, subterranean bunkers and structures cut into the very ceiling, like the tram lines and Evangelion cages. There was so much space that it was impossible to post living guards at every logical point. Cameras and sensors took up the slack, but even they weren't perfect. It was entirely possible, if difficult, to navigate the entire complex without passing by an electronic or biological eye.

Not that Rei really noticed or cared. No one paid her any mind no matter where she went. A few hours earlier, she found n empty locker room in one of the lower Evangelion cages. Those cages were used for repair and refits, while the upper cages connected to the Evangelion launch rails. When the Evas weren't in their cradles, there was no one around. That suited her just fine.

To most people, Rei came off as robotic and unfeeling, which wasn't true. She had been _suppressed_, both with chemicals and a relentless sort of apathy. Living her life that way had built up a strong resistance to change, but now Rei felt something new. She didn't have a word for it yet. An image of Lieutenant Katsuragi appeared in her mind, hazy and more an impression of the woman, than anything fully realized. She was the most human of people Rei had ever met.

Normally Rei was methodical, effortlessly sorting through her thoughts like slides in a projector. Am I hungry? Do I need to take a shower? Do I feel well? Her mind was shallow, and for all of her knowledge, was painfully inexperienced. Now, her head was fuzzy and buzzed with hundreds of impulses.

Her mind was rushing with possibilities, skewing off on tangents and being decidedly un-Rei-Like. It was _very_ much how a teenager would think, tugged in a hundred different directions. Rei lacked the social and cultural weight though, so she was only dragged in about ten or twenty. It was still far more than she was used to dealing with.

Lieutenant Katsuragi vanished from her mind, replaced by the smell of chocolate and the euphoria when it melted on her tongue. Rei felt her eyes roll back into her head, just reliving the memory. The impressions spun and merged together, until she finally could place a name to her new state of mind: Want. She desired, aspired for things. Her mind flash-froze into a rush of cool crystal; her skin flushed red and she felt her fingertips tingle.

Once she internalized that concept, her confusion vanished. Possibilities streamed through her mind and paths to achieving goals exploded along infinitely branching paths.

Rei desired nothing specific, or say exclusively material. She couldn't go fourteen years of _not caring_ and then suddenly establish an itemized list of preferences. Chocolate appeared high on her list, but the image of Misato came back, sharper than before. Professor Akagi was too cold and mired in her own faults to serve as a goal. The Commander resolved in his pride of place amidst her mental hierarchy.

She traced paths of logic and instinct to one axiomatic aspect of herself, a long dormant part of her that everyone else had, but never consciously acknowledged. It was the _will to survive._

Survival depended on the Evangelion, but then her mind flicked back to Misato, and then Aida Kensuke. Both were frighteningly resourceful in their own way, and a mark of self-sufficiency. The smooth paths of thought kinked on a tangent, wondering if Ikari would be willing to teach her how to cook. She shook her head and refocused. Raising her hands, she concentrated. Her resources were limited, and she lacked self-sufficiency. She assessed her available skills and assets. Her resources were limited, but there was one thing that made her truly unique.

The air seemed to ripple between her palms, along with a humming slash of orange light. Then the alarms started blaring.

After the sixth alert, she wondered if she should apologize to someone.

* * *

><p>Gendo's office hid a surprising amount of comfortable furniture. The man lived like an ascetic out of the office, but at work, he enjoyed his share of creature comforts. On a week like this, where everything seemed to go wrong, it was a small favor. Holographic projections filled the chamber with light and color, and only faint sound. One light-bordered window was focused on the same video that Ritsuko had been examining a few months ago. Having already looked over the report, both Commanders were biased with regards to the 'Promised Victory' technique. The ironic process already biased their observations, so they would have to take Ritsuko's word and later research at face value.<p>

Pressing the pause button, the Commander halted the playback and leaned back into his cushy reclining chair. A near-opaque image of the Third Child hung in mid-air, one arm extended in a punch. His whole body was glowing from within, it seemed, wreathed in gold, blue and rich purples, like the hottest parts of a flame and the light of the sun itself. A translucent projection of mandala and open-looped halos hovered behind his shoulders, all traced in light. That gold disc burned brightest on his head, and without a light filter, the cameras wouldn't have seen any of it.

All of those things were interesting, but one thing stood out enough for Gendo to comment. "I consider it ironic that the boy's corona makes him look like an Asura."

The other man felt a smile come on, his student was not wholly ignorant of cultural knowledge. "The Hindu demigods?" He turned to the screen and squinted. "No, not an Asura. The boy doesn't have orange skin, for one, and they only had six arms. Shinji has eight, all together."

"Interesting." Gendo grunted. "Weren't Hindu deities more powerful based on their number of arms?"

"In general yes, it was a metaphor for extended reach, along with having multiple faces. You aren't suggesting...?" He was honestly surprised, though he kept that to himself.

Gendo gave a dismissive shake of his head. "No. I am quite certain it's coincidental. It's most likely something subconscious"

Fuyutsuki was quiet for a long moment, and he felt his long-disused urge to debate rise in his chest. "I think you're being too quick to judge, considering the times we live in. We have seen something that could be God, after all."

The younger man snorted, contempt plain on his face. "God is a word, god is a _verb. _ADAM and the Angels could've been called gods in prehistory, but we call these Angels that because the Dead Sea Scrolls said as such." He glared at nothing, staring past the projections. "Men are fools, but we are at least now wiser fools. Call an Angel a Devil and we would fight it the same as before."

Was the younger man really so close minded? Fuyutsuki refused to believe so; Yui had to see _something_ in the man after all."So that means it's impossible for there to be anything else?"

Ikari snorted, as if the question was preposterous. "Of course not; the boy exists and so do his powers." He made no guess as to their origin or anything else, which was fair given what they knew.

Waving his arms, the professor tried to encompass the room, the Geofront, earth itself in his question. "So what then, you aren't the least bit interested in the potential?"

The younger man didn't even bother to look at the older. "I leave such things to a scholar, like you."

They lapsed into silence then, and Gendo restarted the recordings. This time he switched to the footage of Shinji's rampage through the high school. The whole event was filmed as best as one could hope for, with shots through windows and from the high ground. All in all it painted an interesting, if unsettling picture. The boy was apparently a natural, and young teenage girls weren't known for their sense of depth. All together, that was almost a perfect storm of conditions.

All in all there seemed to be a deplorable lack of common sense that day. The screens projected the pilot's assault on the Horaki girl. Fuyutsuki had interviewed her after the event, and found her pleasant, if surprisingly stern for a teenager. Another cut jumped to later in the afternoon, after Shinji had built his 'harem'. Ritsuko had mentioned in her report the 'Caligula' parallels.

"Fuyutsuki."

The older man just grunted, a scowl fixed on his face. He shouldn't be subjected to this at his age, it was... voyeuristic and disgusting. The boy's father was utterly unfazed. Gendo didn't seem to notice or care about his discomfort either."Based on the available information, how would you consider handling the Third?"

That shocked the sub-commander out of his thoughts. "...Beg pardon?"

"What I did not learn from Yui, I learned from you. I ask your opinion, Sensei."

He hadn't been called that in a long time. It had been almost as long since Ikari meant it. The younger man truly was a master, using honest admiration as a fulcrum. Fuyutsuki sighed and conceded the point. "From what we know, the boy has a 'grab bag' of skills and powers." He waved to the screen. "Some of them we have depressingly little data on."

"On average, he seems to be consistently better than people of equal capability and skill sets. His successes are cleaner, more efficient. He gets more done with less time and effort."Pausing to collect his thoughts, the old man thought back over the past year. "As for your question, one's mind immediately jumps to Machiavelli... I stand by my earlier comment. Intermediaries won't satisfy the boy forever."

"Perhaps not, is the reward worth the risk, however?" Gendo inclined his head, acknowledging the point. "He managed to convince two trained agents to let him out of his cell. He hasn't done anything like that since, but it is still a troublesome anomaly."

Fuyutsuki's face twisted up, like he bit into a lemon. He couldn't deny the potential. "We're not yet finding any real pattern to his powers, so it's not out of the question."

"I seem to be left with two options then." The commander almost never bothered with gestures. "I can continue to work through intermediaries, reducing risk to my part in the Scenario... Or I can reach out further to the boy, and foster loyalty." He fell silent for a moment, thinking. "If I do, I imagine I should work to cultivate his abilities further."

A quickly suppressed smile worked its way onto the older man's face. "I would lean towards the latter approach."

Gendo nodded, acknowledging the logic, but he had one thought to put in. "A king should be cautious when arming slaves, however. Rebellion is soon to follow."

* * *

><p>The following week, Gendo left for New York City and the UN summit. Central Dogma breathed a collective sigh of relief. Their Commander was incredibly competent at managing NERV. He also terrified most of the junior and technical staff by presence alone. He had no need for knee-breakers, real or imagined, a nameless, shapeless fear of him was a far more useful tool.<p>

Suddenly lacking a Commander, NERV relaxed. Men and women waved to each other in the halls, engaged in small talk, and generally did anything normal paramilitary organizations did. The Technical Branch indulged in some creative accounting, signed off on by Ritsuko. Shinji was mostly oblivious; he hadn't seen his father since that day in the cell, and wouldn't have cared anyway. His father's approval was the furthest thing from his mind at that moment. The First Child was often impossible to find, except she always returned to Misato's apartment at eight PM on the dot, every night. What she did during the day, past signing into NERV, was left up to the imagination.

Fuyutsuki may have lacked Gendo's appreciation for the long-term plan, but he far more enjoyed serendipity. For the moment, he had unfettered access to the full extent of NERV and the MAGI.

* * *

><p>Project E had numerous structures and outbuildings dedicated to all sorts of research and development. The Proving Grounds, for example, were just the newest part of a great engine of innovation. Technically, those facilities weren't officially attached to Project E. At the moment, Ritsuko pulled her friend along towards one of the more Evangelion-focused parts of the underground base; pilot prototyping. Here, pilot-scale technologies were developed and tested, though to this day Shinji had not once set foot in that part of the complex.<p>

Neither had Misato for that matter. The hallways were white and clean with warm orange lights set into the walls and walkways. It felt like a hospital, but didn't stink with chemicals."I dunno Rits-chan. I'm usually up for a lot of things, but testing a goofy prototype?"

Zeroing in on a rolling chair, Ritsuko plopped in and slid around a desk and console. The room itself looked a lot like a doctor's office, with a privacy screen, examination tables and light boards for charts. "As long as the commander is gone and there are no Angels, we've nothing else to do."

Taking her place at one wall with her arms folded over her chest, Misato played along. "Fair enough, so what are we testing?"

Ritsuko tossed the other woman a tangled blob of rubbery plastic. The dark-haired woman blinked and let it unfurl, twisting it around until it hit her. "A plugsuit?"

A purple plugsuit at that. A lighter shade than her hair but definitely matching more than the dominant white colors Rei and Shinji wore. This one was far too big for a teenager, even if it shrank down.

The scientist nodded and buried her nose in a clipboard. "A civilian model plugsuit. It's designed to be 'one size fits all', but the prototypes are still cut for gender." She reached out and poked Misato in the stomach with the back end of her pen. "Now get undressed. Lieutenant Ibuki and I have already tried it on, we need to test as many body types as possible."

Misato felt one eyebrow rise up to her hairline, but decided not to call her friend on it. Cute little Maya in this thing? Stepping behind the plastic screen, she disrobed and started to get dressed. Rei and Shinij wore these things? It was like putting on a soaked wet suit; the whole thing clung to her skin and refused to budge without significant wiggling. Rei's suit had a zipper, while this one was similar to Shinij's, having a wide collar, so it was more like a giant pajama.

When she was finished, she had to ask what was next. The suit was just hanging loosely around her neck and shoulders. Ritsuko laughed behind the screen. "You've never watched Shinji or Rei get dressed?"

"No!"

The scientist just laughed harder, before saying "Press the button on your left wrist."

She did as instructed, and the air rushed out of her suit in an instant. There was a painfully loud sound of tight rubber meeting flesh, followed by shriek one could hear several hallways away.

"O-One size fits all? I'll give you a fit! My foot fitting up your ass! Dammit Ritsuko!"

* * *

><p>As long as the Commander wasn't around, Ritsuko was going to indulge in some pet projects. Gendo had shoved a significant amount of money towards researching the boy, but Ritsuko knew it was as much a measure of control as anything, both for her and his son. She didn't mind overmuch.<p>

She was a die-hard skeptic, which was something of a mixed blessing when it came to being a scientist. Skepticism was useful for avoiding being committed to any one pet theory, but at the same time it prevented one from entertaining all possibilities. Sometimes it was just a nice way of saying someone was in denial.

Ritsuko mixed the inks the same way Shinji told her to, and observed the same ritual practices. They weren't rituals like throwing wood dust on a fire or bleeding a fattened calf. It was more like calligraphy. The ritual was the act of painting the image itself. That would've made a lot of sense to her, if she hadn't seen both Shinji and the Aida boy demonstrate the full procedure for her.

While waiting for the ink to dry, the woman had to resist every urge to close her eyes and sigh. Shinji had told her repeatedly that it wasn't completely about faith or belief in some higher power; no gods or spirits, only man and base magic. She wrinkled her nose at that thought, magic had no place in her world, even if Shinji dragged it along with him. According to Shinji, it wasn't _faith_, but there was a required component of belief in the natural law of the world. Gravity worked because people observed it working. Of course it took him several hours of stumbling through an explanation to get that far, after Ritsuko explained the anthropic principle. Not to mention that flew in the face of several centuries of post-Enlightenment investigation.

Focusing back on the design, the pattern she inked onto the index card was ugly and malformed. Her penmanship wasn't very good, so using a brush made it worse. She sighed, giving the bit of ink and paper a baleful stare.

Then the black and white design shifted to a mix of reds and blues, while the messy brush strokes straightened and grew firm and clear. The ink refused to bleed and stain the paper where she hadn't intended it to.

"...Gross _violation of the __**natural order."**_

* * *

><p>There were times Shinji wondered if he was being spoiled by his powers. Ignoring the need for sleep left him with so much extra time, he found himself exploring tangents. Odd thoughts that struck him. Ritsuko was right; his powers had no sensible progression. He wasn't a comic book hero with clearly defined strengths and weaknesses. He had a reserve of... Something, maybe magic, or willpower perhaps. Whatever it was, he could use it.<p>

Sometimes it was conscious, he summoned his powers and threw it out wildly, hoping to see what stuck. He learned how to ignore sleep that way, on accident. Other times it was even deeper than instinct; more basic than even a heartbeat. Philosophy and the Sub-Commander's own books talked about the idea of 'First Cause'. He didn't understand all the nuance or historical references, but the idea was that everything needed a cause and effect. Aristotle asked then, what came before God?

Shinji really had nothing to do with God, any god as far as he was concerned, aside from that vision. He definitely wanted to avoid thinking about _that._ Fuyutsuki-Sensei mostly talked about first causes in referring to the state of the Soul and how it came to be. It helped supplement Shinji's own understanding of his powers.

So, Shinji grappled with the idea of First Cause, because he knew things he had no way to learn of, and then learned other things based on those first things. What gave him that knowledge? What was the cause of his Exaltation? Where did it all come from?

When left alone, his mind wandered. He groaned and let his head drop, thumping hard into the splayed pages of a book. This one was fiction, purely for enjoyment and relaxation. And he couldn't stop thinking about it. He had no idea what the author was trying to say with the metaphors and allegory. Propping his head up with one hand, he let out a sputtering breath and let his eyes scan the page.

The gold disc flared out brighter, and then suddenly it became clear... Too clear. The words seemed fade away on the page, but surely that was just a trick of the light. He didn't read between the lines, he read past them. Shinji leaned back in his seat and held the book out at arms length, tilting it this way and that, as if changing the angle would suddenly explain his new insight. He imagined a man at a typewriter, haggard and stressed with deadlines, throwing down words that were nothing like what he wanted. It made no sense; how was he reading _emotions_ from text churned out by a printing press over ten years ago?

* * *

><p>Humankind was quite strange in that they could believe two mutually exclusive things at once. There were other things that marked them as unique, but this particular one was especially relevant. To cynics, humans in large groups were the worst thing to ever happen, subsuming their decision-making ability for some sort of collective thought process. Individually they were probably reasonable people, and even the groups themselves weren't <em>bad<em>, just very prone to drawing conclusions too quickly.

It was because of this, that people around the world marched in the streets en-masse, protesting their governments and the UN council. Hundreds of thousands gathered in across of Europe, while lesser but significant numbers pledged their support from the Americas and greater continental Asia. It started peaceful. It didn't stay that way.

The first riots were around NERV bases in China and Germany. Fear was easy to drive into action. Japan was the only installation with a true Geofront, but NERV in general preferred subterranean bases wherever possible. It made defending against Angel attacks easier, but it also turned every other form of warfare into bloody sieges. For good or ill, the civilian rioters weren't equipped to breach China's fabrication facility, but the ten dozen or so workers and families living on sight huddled in their shelters. The doors were meant to keep out explosions and Angels, not terrified men and women.

The United Nations had changed little after Second Impact. They served as the organizing body for surviving world powers, and decided on matters that affected the world as a whole. How effective they were was up for debate. Gendo knew that SEELE could exert pressure on more than two thirds of all the men and women in that massive chamber, and probably already had.

It wasn't to say that the UN was a puppet, not completely. It had real power, and used it as best as one could hope, considering the post-Impact world. The Americas were still an economic superpower, having only suffered coastal devastation and limited warfare. South-America was forever changed when the great rivers of that continent overflowed and carved new paths through the land. The New Amazon was still uncharted, save by satellites.

The various nations of Africa had consolidated; their lack of infrastructure ended up being a boon after impact, preventing most brushfire wars and dictators from taking root. In the following years after those impact wars, the surviving economic powers poured money into the manpower base of Africa and China. It was for this reason, among others, that the Secretary General of the UN was from northern Nigeria.

He called the meeting to order. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Gendo Ikari of NERV."

Everyone present knew his name, but the people in that giant conference room had no idea what the man looked like. In his own way, he had shaped world history much like SEELE did, but almost never never appeared on television or in print. He took his position at the podium and spoke into the microphone. His English was impeccable. "Greetings, Secretary-General, Council members."

Screens mounted in the desks of every leader and official brought up the agenda, but they all knew it by heart anyway. Fear, both mortal and political, sharpened the mind like little else. "The purpose of this summit is to determine if there is any further reason to solely entrust NERV with the duty of protecting mankind from these 'Angels'."

They were already wasting his time, but Gendo refused to let any sign of it show. They were rapidly building up to their point, but it was all a formality. The Old Men were making their move.

Another member of the council spoke up, a woman this time. She was the spokesperson for the Economic and Social Council. "Mister Ikari, due to the events in Greenland and other nations around the world, it has been determined that the extra-terrestrial invaders are no longer focusing on Japan, and by extension, Tokyo-3."

No matter what he said, they'd just ignore him. He had to play his part though, to turn a setback now into an advantage later. He shuffled a few papers at his podium, which were mostly prompts, but they gave him the right pause for delivery. "That remains to be seen. During all of these events, not one part of our detection network registered a blue pattern."

A member of the security council asked to speak, and was granted the floor. "A detection network under your exclusive control."

As expected. Gendo said nothing more.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko would set up the meet with Shinji in three days. Misato was running out of time.<p>

She was also practicing a speech in front of a mirror. She hadn't done that... Ever. Misato let out a long gusty sigh and leaned on the edge of the sink. "Shinji-kun... No, no just Shinji... aaauugh! why is this so damn hard!"

A toilet flushed behind her; the porcelain beneath her hands creaked. Hyuga Makoto ambled out, fixing his collar and utterly unconcerned. He stepped up to the sink next to the woman, not once looking at her.

Her head twisted to the left with an uncomfortable clicking ratchet noise. Makoto didn't turn at all. "I'm in the men's room, aren't I?"

"Yep."

* * *

><p>Two days of debates, and Gendo knew the answer before he left Japan. His visit only confirmed it. Discretionary power was granted to the various committees and forced his hand to break sections of operational security. NERV, or at least the surface layers of it, were now broken open to the world at large.<p>

The Secretary-General put down on record what had already been executed. "Mister Ikari, this council regrets to inform you that your UN funding will be curtailed, and redirected to other organizations and technologies in service to the defense of our world."

That was just the start of it. Gendo could already see the gears turning. Nothing he'd say now would make them listen. Anything he could offer as a concession would just make them greedier. They'd negotiate for the detection grid next, then national control of any NERV facility currently in place, then the secrets of Evangelion construction. All of these things threatened his control on the Scenario.

And sometimes, the best thing to do in the face of change was nothing.

* * *

><p>A group of old men spoke in turns with one voice, unified in goals if not thought.<p>

"How are our assets?"

"Building as we speak. Our handlers are in place and ready to initiate the operation."

"Good, Good, the UN?"

"Redirecting the budget towards alternatives."

"See that the necessary information is distributed."

"Of course, AT meta-conductive crystal, Amplification-wave theory."

NERV, and by extension Gendo, believed they held a monopoly on AT field technology.

SEELE allowed this delusion.

* * *

><p>Today was the day. Ritsuko had promised to get Shinji out of the Geofront and back to her apartment, at least for dinner. It would be fairly easy, since the Commander was away.<p>

Misato spun around the kitchen, looking for anything that was out of place. No wrappers left around, or any dirty dishes. The refrigerator was cleaned and stocked with food she knew Shinji liked, and only her rare imported beers. Those hadn't been touched for nearly two months. Doubling back, she checked the bathroom, his room, Rei's room, the living room and storage. The veranda was spotless.

Opening one final door, she gave what was inside a decisive nod; for the first time since she'd moved in, her own room was clean. Everything had to be _perfect_ for this to work.

The garbage was already taken care of, and Rei had easily agreed to give the apartment some space, though it looked like she wanted to ask a question. Even so, she went along with Misato's request and agreed to come back later on that evening. Section Two would keep her company if nothing else.

Misato slumped into a kitchen chair, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand. She had no idea how Shinji managed to clean everything so well, superpowers or no. Or just, keep a house in order. It boggled her mind. Looking at her hand, she bit off a curse; she was sweating. Dashing off to the bathroom, she wiped her face down. She wasn't wearing any makeup or jewelry, other than her pendant. She figured Shinji would appreciate the honesty. The black dress she wore the first day he was in Tokyo-3 completed the picture, cleaned up as best as she could.

Of course, she looked _great_ no matter what, but that thought lead her down awkward, unwelcome path. She shook her head to clear it, before re-brushing her hair. A sharp, two-note ring cut through her thoughts like a knife. The nerves in her hands froze, and the hair brush fell into the sink with a clatter. He was here.

Suddenly the thirteen steps from bathroom to doorway felt like a marathon. She put one foot in front of the other and made her way back on sheer willpower, but her halting steps slowed her down too much. The door slid open just as she made it into the kitchen.

The last time he opened that door after a long time away, she nearly knocked him clean off his feet. Now, every word and thought and urge just fled, leaving her stuck in place and numb.

It was going all wrong, she had figured out exactly what to say the day before, and now it was a mess! Her mouth started to run off without her, stumbling over words and syllables. She cut herself off, raising her arms out to reach for him. Shinji's legs twisted, he was going to bolt, she could tell, but not where. Towards her? Away? She'd understand no matter what he did. Fear and concern and other feelings were plain on his face. Finally, something clicked inside her. She stood up straight and took a deep breath, waiting for something.

Her eyes were wet when she opened them, but did not cry. "Shinji-kun, I'm sorry, for everything." She closed her eyes and waited.

Pulse thudding in her ears, she couldn't tell how long she waited there, listening to her own heartbeat. A wooden click made her jump, and her eyes snapped open.

Shinji leaned back with his head up and shoulders pressed against the closed door. He couldn't _not_ look her in the eyes, not after that. "It's okay."

And apparently that was that. He stood up and walked passed Misato, angling down the hall towards his room. Something screwed itself up inside her then, indignation mixed with that playful, taunting spirit she was known for. After working herself into a frenzy for so long, there was no way was she going to let him off like just like that!

She made to grab for his arm, but he he was too heavy to pull around on her own, throwing herself off balance. She waited for the awful face-plant into the hardwood floor, but it didn't come. Shinji somehow managed to pull her to him and wrapped his around her, spinning on one socked foot and landing hard on his shoulder. Air rushed out of her lungs, despite him taking most of the fall.

He rolled over, not so much with a groan, but a mere grunt. It took them both a few seconds to realize he was kneeling over her, legs on either side of her hips and their noses almost touching. Her breath caught in her throat as she _felt_ the blush work its way onto his face, and her own for that matter. He started to shake, and a Misato was sure she just screwed it up all over again. _Great job Katsuragi!_

Then she realized he was _laughing. _He picked her up and got his feet under him in one smooth motion. His shifted slightly, practically engulfing her in a massive, warm hug. Tears built up in her eyes, but didn't fall. Hooking her own arms around his middle, she pressed her face into the crook of his neck and started to laugh as well.

They weren't fixed and it wasn't perfect, but things were going to get better.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Whoo! Chapter 19. Longest chapter yet. No idea if I can keep this level of content going, but we'll see. If you don't know, I have RSI/some form of carpal tunnel, so my ability to write is highly variable. Anyway, Enjoy!


	20. Relationships

Gendo returned to a subdued NERV. The Geofront seemed quieter, more cavernous. The corridors felt emptier, and the powered walkways and escalators seemed to be just that much slower. He spent an hour silently looking over Unit-01, before taking the elevator up to the command level.

He looked down from the balcony. "Senior staff meeting in my office, twenty minutes."

When everyone had gathered, the commander asked for the report, Fuyutsuki started off, saying there was little to comment on; no Angel attacks and minimal bugs or 'false alarms'. Independent confirmation from other watch stations assured them it was a local problem. Their budget was already starting to register the impact of losing UN support. The Proving Grounds and other outlying research facilities would have to be mothballed and repurposed. As it stood, every spare bit of money had to go into the repair and deployment of the Evangelions.

Ritsuko had more to say, being the defacto handler of the pilots, outside of Misato's more hands-on approach. "The Third Child has made great strides with regards to his powers, developing an accelerated healing technique and possibly others." She waved to the printed reports, waiting for the two senior officers to skim ahead. "Research continues on further metaphysical sensory equipment. We should start seeing improvement in our own pattern detection system within the next month."

Tossing the report on his desk, the Commander turned to Misato. "Katsuragi."

He almost never stood during meetings, and seemed almost fidgety. Misato tried not to let it get to her. "Shinji has moved back in with me. Both he and Rei seem to be doing fine. Rei's usually gone for most of the day, if she's not at school, but I have Section 2 reporting to me every week with her activities. Within reason, of course." No need to invade her privacy after all.

The commander nodded once. "Very well, Katsuragi, Akagi, dismissed."

Misato and Ritsuko nodded, gathering up their materials on their way out. Gendo waved an arm, setting the floor to clear glass. Below, one of the artificial lakes stretched out in rich glittering blue. The younger man slumped into one of the cushioned chairs tucked away in the shadows. He rocked his neck back and forth, drawing out a series of pops and crackles. He was still feeling the flight back to Japan. Fuyutsuki looked unruffled and dignified as always, not even one hair out of place.

Exhaling softly, Gendo looked up at his teacher-confidant. "As we expected. The old men have tightened their grip. The UN is no longer a viable means of funding NERV."

Fuyutsuki sat down in the opposite chair. "Indeed. Which contingency were you planning on implementing?"

Jet lagged or not, Fuyutsuki could still see the gleam in the younger man's eye. That look promised a rude awakening for the Committee. "Contracts and Licensing."

* * *

><p>It was a beautiful mid-winter morning, not that Ritsuko or Shinji knew it. They were buried deep within the Geofront, and the Evangelion testing facilities. A simulation body routed the pilot's synchronization to the Evangelion, elsewhere in the complex.<p>

During his exile, Ritsuko got to know the Third Child. Initially, she wanted little to do with him. He would be his father's son, or an emotional wreck, was later confirmed. It was better, she thought, to keep things professional. Then he Exalted, and the bottle-blonde woman was suddenly thrust into yet another position of authority. There was no formal declaration or new branch dedicated to the boy's powers, just a new title added to her list of responsibilities.

Speaking for herself, she never put much stock in the idea of inter-generational friendships, though Misato seemed to take to them like a duck to water. But having worked with the boy now for nearly more than ten months, she found her opinion changing. He had his virtues and flaws, like his growing martyr complex, though it was arguably better than his previous passivity. Her nose scrunched up at that; it wasn't a very nice thought.

She leaned over and opened the line between observatory and test chamber. "It's been a while, hasn't it, Ikari-kun?"

Inside the test plug, Shinji sat with his arms folded across his chest and head bowed down, almost like he was nodding off. One corner of his mouth pulled up in a half-smile, letting a gob of air leak out. He gave a quick, low laugh. "Yeah, other than those false alarms."

Ritsuko smiled, and her voice warmed."Well, let's get a new baseline established. How's the new plugsuit working out?"

On the screens, Ritsuko could see the pilot curl and uncurl his arms. They had to finally make a new set of suits for him, even with the memory material. He had just gotten too big, too fast. Not body-builder bulky, but visibly strong and sturdy. The suit was the same white and blue as the previous design, though some of the electronics and life support add-ons were slightly different. He may have grown a lot, but his face hadn't changed much. The boy had stronger jaw, but he thankfully lacked the narrow, craggy chin of his father. A surprisingly winsome smile crept across his face. He approved, apparently.

Smiling, she rolled her chair over to the Syncrograph analysis. There weren't any other techs on duty then, it was just Ritsuko and Shinji. Taking a sip of coffee mid-roll proved to be a bad idea as she glanced at the readout. The covered thermos-mug nearly dropped from nerveless fingers, before she managed to hook the handle on one pinky finger and prevent a hot, painful mess.

Exhaling softly, she set the drink aside and gave the screen a closer look. There was no way that could be right. "...Shinji, your sync ratio is going _down."_

The intercom speakers crackled with static for long, uncomfortable moment. "...What?"

"Down. It's going down, I said." She slid over to another console and started tapping keys. She left the mic on, mumbling to herself while tabbing through menus and graphs. "No... No. No. No. Dammit no." The test continued for another hour, all the while Ritsuko grew increasingly more agitated. Shinji remained surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

Ritsuko slapped the test-termination control and started up the retrieval sequence. While Shinji waited for the cycle to complete, Ritsuko explained the results. "At our last baseline, you were at seventy-six percent sync. Now you're back down to sixty-eight."

Shinji was quiet for another long moment, before he finally asked a question. "...Akagi-Sensei... What _is_ Synchronization?"

About three things happened all at once. Ritsuko's face drained completely of color while she slapped the mute button. Then, in the process of falling out of her chair, she tried to check the room for any cameras or ways the pilot could see her. A quick check on one indicator told her he was just about to step into the shower. She exhaled slowly, perfect timing.

She got her breathing under control as fast as possible. "Synchronization is basically the process of opening up your own Soul with that of the Evangelion's. We still don't fully understand how the soul maps to our bodies, but that same mechanism allows us to use the Evangelion sort of like a suit, If your sync ratio is good, you 'connect' to the Evangelion at a more and deeper level. There's a bit more to it than that, so we'll have to get into the Metaphysical Biology..."

Her explanation continued for the duration of Shinji's shower, and some time after that. The scientist finally finished when he was in the observatory with her, looking at the same graphs she was. He only had one real question.

"So... Why is my Sync dropping?"

* * *

><p>To most people around the world, Tokyo-3 was the fortress city itself; the retractable skyscrapers and armory buildings. That visible part of city, the 'down town;, was in fact <em>tiny,<em> compared to other urban clusters. Prior to Second Impact, Tokyo-3 was formerly Hakone, a suburban tourist retreat, in the Ashigarashimo District, in turn part of the Kanagawa Prefecture.

Old Hakone became the suburbs of Tokyo-3. The fortress city became an economic boomtown, promising jobs and futures to people from all over the world. As workers and their families repopulated the city, they reclaimed and rebuilt the infrastructure left behind in the wake of Impact. While not exactly infrastructure, there was a fully functional zoo in the outlying hills of the Hakone region, just a train ride away.

It was a bright, sunny January morning. Rei felt conscious for the first time in her life. Aware of herself, awareness of herself. Since the Fifth Angel, every day had been brighter and clearer than the last. A fog had lifted away from her awareness. The train itself was modern and well lit, and not overly crowded. Families were on day trips, businessmen in light, winter-summer shirts and ties, teenagers just like her. Well, not exactly, most of them were dressed casually for the weekend or day off. Rei was still only comfortable in her school uniform.

Earlier, Two older boys from another town tried to flirt with her. She knew what they were doing, and she had no idea how to react, to respond. Knowing that she didn't know. The thought itself was fascinating. She knew enough about sexuality to understand that she was attractive, or that other people would consider her as such. A bit of red spread across her cheeks while her mind flicked from thought to thought. She was not _opposed_ to the idea of interest, or being the subject of interest, but it was all incredibly new and unexpected.

Both boys moved off after she only gave them a polite, if distant reply. It was the only way she knew how speak. On the one hand she want to try; she wanted to _want_, if for no other reason than to learn more. On the other she was glad to not have to 'dive in'. The conductor broke into her thoughts. They had arrived at her stop. Stepping out into the sun, Rei lifted her arm to shield her eyes. There were people _everywhere_. Young, old, men and women. Parents and grandparents with their descendants. Zoo employees and animal keepers patrolled the exhibits.

The zoo itself was nice, well kept and fairly modern. Her NERV ID served as an admission; a small perk. No one recognized her as an Evangelion pilot, though more than a few were interested in her unique hair and eye color. Like on the train, more than a few young men looked her way, but she lacked that desired approachability. Rei watched everyone around her, feeling like she was frozen while the world moved. She did not have a girlish laugh of joy, or that playful sort of run she observed other high schoolers had. Briefly, she wondered if she should try to emulate them, but decided against it. She had plenty of time to grow at her own pace.

Second Impact dramatically reshaped the world, and more than a few species died off before humankind could step in. On the one hand it was tragic, on the other it was natural selection at its finest. Zoos just like this one became impromptu preserves of endangered species, many of which now incapable of surviving in the wild. Ahead of her was one such species, the Siberian Tiger. It was already nearly extinct before Impact. The various information plaques and booths were useful, but they didn't compare to _seeing_.

Watching the animal, Rei cocked her head to one side. It was... Huge. She found that thought odd, considering the Evangelions, but after a few moments, it made more sense. The tigress, she noted, yawned impressively, sunning itself in the warm early afternoon. An image of Lieutenant Katsuragi appeared in her mind.

A zoo keeper walked up next to Rei, smiling warmly. An adult, but not as old as most of the ones she knew. "You kind of just want to go over there and pet her, don't you?"

Rei turned, blinking slowly. Context and something instinctual told her to nod; she did want to get closer to the tigress. The keeper let out a weak laugh. "Believe me, I'd let you in a heartbeat, if it wasn't dangerous. She's a sweetheart." He nodded to the animal. It seemed to notice the pair then, stretching languidly and prowling forward towards the rail.

Her question slipped out without thinking about it. "Why is she dangerous?"

The tigress got as close to the rail as possible, recognizing one of her humans. Her handler rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, all animals are dangerous, though not all of them are violent. Kimmie here hasn't ever attacked anyone, but that doesn't mean she won't ever." Rei just watched his face, unblinking. "The important thing to remember is respect. Kimmie and the other Siberian tigers may go extinct, or we might save them... But we should always respect them, even if we're in their cage or not."

Their conversation ended hours later, as clock bells started ringing, signaling closing time. She never learned his name, and she never mentioned her own. A brochure from the tiger exhibit was stuffed in her uniform pocket, with a phone number and email address scribbled across it, and a note, reading "If you ever want to talk about tigers again."

She hoped he was being honest, she enjoyed her time at the zoo. Section Two would find out soon enough.

* * *

><p>Before heading back to the train station, Rei stopped at the concession stand before she left. Now, she held an armload of chocolate bars cradled against her chest. Some part of her knew they'd melt before she'd get to enjoy all of them, but there were just so many. She also knew that trying to eat them all at once was a bad idea, though had never known the precise reason. Sometimes a child needed to make a mistake before they learned their lesson, others took the word of their elders and relied on their own logic. Rei knew she'd 'get sick, so she ate slowly.<p>

That worked out better in the end, really. Each square of chocolate she broke off and popped into her mouth was _delightful._

* * *

><p>January signaled the start of the warming period in a post-impact world, and only recently were actual seasons starting to regain any foothold. Snow was almost unheard of around the world, and more than a few children of the post-impact generation only knew of rain and summer sun. New Years festivals were subdued affairs, not quite generating the same sort of energy. The pouring rain didn't help either. Massive clouds of water vapor, both hot and cold, built up in massive columns around Tokyo-3. They billowed out into the sky from vents and exhaust ports, ventilating the Geofront beneath. Rain in Tokyo-3 meant thick mists and fogs in the morning and night.<p>

As far as Misato's apartment was concerned, a sense of normalcy was surprisingly easy to regain. A handmade charm was pinned to the wall next to the new, year two-thousand-and sixteen calendar. Across from it was the chore schedule. Shinji walked by it every morning when he made lunches for Misato, Rei and himself. Today, he actually _looked _at it.

Misato had redone it apparently, after Rei moved in and sometime after he sequestered himself in the Geofront. All the chores were divided among the three people as evenly as possible, over seven days. A far cry from the hilariously lop-sided jan-ken method he remembered.

Tilting his head to one side, then the other, Shinji came to a decision. A white board eraser and new marker made short work of the schedule.

Later on, after shuffling in from work, Misato's eyes wandered over to the chore sheet. She wondered what her chore for the day was. Then she stopped, struck numb by a building, gleeful surge of euphoria. She grabbed her favorite red marker and all but attacked the surface. When she was finished, she took a step back to admire her handiwork.

Shinji's name now occupied every spot labeled 'breakfast, lunch, dinner'. Misato clicked the cap back on the marker, having drawn hearts around his name. She set off to find Rei, so they could reshuffle the other chores again.

* * *

><p>It had taken him a few days to get the hang of it, and a lot of aborted experiments, but finally, he managed to succeed. Now, Shinji managed to present his gift to the lieutenant. She gaped with wide eyes, reaching out for the familiar bundle of fabric.<p>

"This is my dress! I wondered where it went..." She held it up by the shoulders and let it unfold in her hands. Immediately, she realized something was different. The blacks were _black,_ and the fabric all but shimmered. The white edging down the center and around arms glowed It looked like someone took a toothbrush and professional detergent to every inch of fabric, then re-dyed it. The scuffs and runs were _barely_ visible as well, and all but vanished when she held the dress at arms length.

Shinji was at his bashful best, almost curling his toe into the ground while a blush spread across his cheeks. Misato was too busy twisting left and right, hugging the dress tightly. "I uh... wanted to apologize for how I was acting. I shouldn't have been avoiding you, but Ritsuko said you were avoiding me too, so..."

Sobering, Misato nodded, mumbling out apologies herself. She focused back on the dress; that was easy and simple to understand. "So..?" She held it back up.

"I found a book on tailoring and clothing repairs. It wasn't that hard." Grinning wryly, one hand came up to touch his forehead. "I didn't even need thimbles, that made it a bit easier."

Six beats later, Misato threw her arms around his shoulders and _squeezed_. Blood rushed up his neck and into his cheeks, but he let out a short laugh. His friend and guardian pulled back, letting her wrists hook around his shoulders. She _smiled,_ that sort of smile that was like dawn breaking over mountains. Her thousand-watt dazzle-the-men smiles were amazing too, but he figured a man could just live off of those real, one-hundred percent Misato grins.

She dashed off in a whirl of fabric and dark shiny hair. "I'm gonna go try this on!" A few moments later, her head and one bare shoulder peeked out of her doorway. "Shinji-kun, Ah..."

Her roommate waved for her to ask. "...How'd you get my measurements?"

Shinji just gave her a flat, expectant stare.

* * *

><p>Elsewhere, that same evening, Ayanami Rei crept into the man-made forest inside the Geofront. For several weeks now, Rei had been feeling like she was being watched. Not by people, as she quite easily ignored Section Two, when they weren't directly talking to her.<p>

As she grew more aware, she teased at the problem, eventually plotting out several places where there was no 'watching'. Forming a hypothesis, Rei continued to experiment until she finally determined what she was perceiving. She was now inherently aware of the Angel Detection System. It took her several days to reach this conclusion, though _how_ she was aware of it still baffled her. The pattern detectors were passive sensors; they did not broadcast a wave of energy and listen for a reflection. It relied on a sort of acausal logic; to be aware of those, one would need to sense that they are _perceivable_, instead of being _perceived._

Inwardly pleased, she felt this was a step in the right direction towards self-sufficiency. If her awareness could extend that much, then maybe she could do other things. Inside the Geofront, there were no orbital sensors, but several ground-based detectors. Evading those was quite easy. Once she discovered a suitably large enough clearing, she began to experiment.

Her unarmed combat training was rudimentary at best, though what forms she did know were repeated with as much consistency as humanly possible. There wasn't an instinctual understanding of her powers, and did not seem to correlate to techniques, like the Third's. She tilted to head to one side, analyzing that thought. She desired to emulate Ikari, but his powers were nothing like the Angels or AT fields in general. Any common ground between them would be at the human level.

Setting that aside for the moment, she moved over to a nearby pond. It seemed to be the safest place to try manifesting.

* * *

><p>It took Misato a lot longer than Shinji thought to change into her mended dress, though having lived with her for so long, he had a fair idea of her habits. When she finally emerged from her bedroom, she looked amazing. She didn't need any makeup, but her hair was brushed and even shinier than before. She stepped up to him, hesitantly, with one arm across her middle and holding her elbow. She kept her head down, pointed at the floor, but she looked at him out the corner of her eyes, smiling softly.<p>

The word 'cute' fixed itself firmly in his mind. He matched her smile and a bit of red picked up on his cheeks. This bashful Misato was far more approachable and _much_ less intimidating. She twisted spinning on one foot so he could get the full effect. When she completed the turn, more than a hint of of her old trickster grin appeared on her face.

She took a step closer, keeping her voice low. One finger hooked into a lock of hair and started twirling it around. "So uh... how do I look?"

Shinji rapidly felt his calm evaporate in the face of that tone. Evaporate like a soap bubble in the face of a blowtorch. Oh that was _deliberate_, he just _knew_ it. It took a lot of willpower on his part to keep his breathing mostly regular. "I-I think you look fine! Great!"

Laughing, Misato started marking back points on her internal scorecard. Stifling a quick laugh, she took a breath. A switch was flipped and Playful, Sexy Misato vanished, leaving the new, understanding and patient woman behind. She waved him over to the couch, which somehow managed to remain free of beer and TV dinner remnants. "Do... I make you uncomfortable?"

He sat down next to her, nearly crushing the cushion and sending her tumbling into his lap. Letting go of the arm rest, she waited for him to answer. Inwardly she was ecstatic; he wasn't trying to stay far way from her. Still, patience was the thing they both needed right now. "Sort of... I like you, i mean, I do think you're attractive... But I think I _shouldn't_ be attracted to you. _That_ makes me uncomfortable."

"Why?"

Shinji just threw his hands up. He almost never raised his voice, but his tone grew more and more ragged as he spoke."I don't know! I just feel like I shouldn't! Like I'm not worth affection or something stupid like that." Misato looked like she was about to launch off on a crusade, but somehow managed to hold herself back. "I know that's not a sensible thing to feel, but... I don't feel like I'm worth anything." He glanced up at the blinds. Everything was shut for the night, so he called up that power and focused it. Lines of gold light traced out the six arms that hovered over his shoulders.

The whole apartment was flooded with his coronal display, but not so much as to make him hard to see. "I know more or less why this thing thought I was worthy, but I'm wondering if it... He was right. _Something _liked me well enough to give me this power..." He couldn't deny the power itself, it was part of him now. It _was_ him, for good or ill... But that didn't make it any easier.

As much as Ritsuko could tell Shinji about his powers, Misato was always the one who better understood their effect on _him. _"But it's not making you feel any better, especially since you're realizing what you can do."

Visibly perking up, Shinji nodded. That was almost exactly what he was feeling. Misato propped her chin up with a hand, and that elbow on her knee. Leaning forward, she stared ahead and continued. "You know, teenagers in general go through a similar stage in their lives. They're confronted with an entirely new level of freedom and raw potential. You're scared, because you can think about having sex, starting a family, fighting, killing or dying... It doesn't seem so far away anymore. Not like when you're a kid."

The pilot gave a weak nod, mumbling. "...Yeah."

Sitting up once more, a bit of that buoyant cheer slipped into her voice. "Well, I'm not going to tell you that's your problem. It's _like_ your problem, but the scale's different. According to Ritsuko you can tear apart a battleship with your bare hands." She slid one arm over his shoulders and tugged him closer, giving him a one-sized hug. "You're afraid of your potential, and that's normal."

The apartment was quiet for a while. They were content to listen to the one analogue clock tick down the half hour, sitting side by side. Finally, Misato shifted, stretching languidly and doing that _thing_ with her spine that utterly destroyed Shinji's train of thought. That woman was a _menace_. She also seemed to take undue pleasure in his discomfort, that smirk was _evil_.

Grinning, she fixed the boy with a _look._ "So, sex. That seems to be your big hang-up right now." She slid off the couch and onto her feet, smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress with a pleased hum. It fit her even better than before. She sobered, save for a soft, reassuring grin. She looked her roommate-pilot in the eye. "If I'm making you uncomfortable, tell me. I flirt with you to make you _less afraid._ It defeats the purpose if I just scare you more."

He scrubbed at his scalp with one hand, let out a long, harsh sigh. More angry at himself than anything. "I don't know. It's just-Everything feels wrong." Shinji raised his hands, then dropped them helplessly. "I know enough about... sex." He couldn't quite get the word out. "I mean... It's..."

Misato spared him having to stumble through it. "Really scary."

A quick nod seemed to get him back on track. The words flowed faster and faster after those first few admissions."Yeah... Am I capable of it? Would a girl even want me? Never mind Eva or this." He waved at his forehead.

Something then occurred to her, a tangent but still relevant. "What about all those massages and stuff, during your first few weeks here?"

He rubbed the back of his head, letting out a weak laugh. "I was so out of it then, It shocked me i think. I just wasn't responding normally." Blushing, he turned away from her but kept his eyes up. "Those were, are, some of my favorite memories still."

The grin that made its way onto Misato's face told him he made an incredible tactical and strategic blunder. "_Favorite_ memories you say?"

Any other night, Misato would've pressed herself against him and whispered that into his jaw, but now wasn't the time for it. Still, with a golden opportunity like that one on a silver platter? She'd be a fool to give it up _completely._ Still, better she left it alone for now, gems like that could be saved for later after all. Instead, she reigned herself in and flashed a reassuring smile. A warm tingling sense of relief worked its way from her toes and up her spine when he smiled back.

Misato laced her hands together, with both index fingers extended and pressed together. "So... lets see if I can sum this up. You do think I'm _really _attractive, but you're scared of all the urges that tell you to act on that attraction." He nodded, smiling faintly. He kept his mouth shut though, not trusting his voice. Her fingertips swung up and down as she talked through the problem. "And you not interested in me, in the sense of a romantic or sexual relationship, but your hormones demand a response."

He nodded, while blushing scarlet. Finally, after a long pause, he mustered up enough gumption to speak. "I would..." He trailed off, shrugging. She waved him on, understanding what he meant if not his words. " ...If I were older? More... Aware? All of that stuff is really scary."

Nodding distantly, she thought back over their time together. "Huh... I guess it has been kinda sink or swim, yeah?"

"Yeah." He echoed.

She sat back down and snuck an arm around his middle, giving him a warm, tight squeeze. It was so strange to be shorter than him, and have her head rest comfortably on his shoulder. Strange, but also really nice. She smiled into his shirt, laughing throatily. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on the boy's face, but he laughed too.

Tapping her chin, glancing sidelong, her catlike grin came back in full teasing force. "Hmm, when you first moved in, and set I set the rules for what you could or couldn't take advantage of, were you... Disappointed?"

A small, metaphorical chink in the dam broke, letting a tiny bit of the real him slip past his neuroses. His voice was tiny, but he couldn't _not_ smile in response to that smirk. "..._Yes_."

* * *

><p>Rei very quickly realized that she was a poorly constructed hybrid, and that there may have been several reasons for suppressing parts of her physiology. She did not <em>regret<em> the choice, however.

She did regret not doing research, or asking for help.

Summoning the AT field itself was fairly easy, though only in short durations, and with a limited surface area. She would probably never master the more esoteric applications the Angels used. Still, the planar AT field was incredibly useful. Its edge was less than that of a Planck length. The plane itself could not move through space once laid down, but she could reform it elsewhere. Manifesting the field inside a tree had predictable results.

After about an hour of experimentation, she smelled something metallic in her nose. Daubing at her lip, her fingertips were smeared with blood. She held her finger against her lip for a few minutes, waiting for the wound to close. Looking around, there didn't seem to be anything that would cause such a symptom. She didn't have any allergies, and her health was normally fine. Logically, her AT field experiments were the cause.

Deciding to hold off on further experiments, she moved on to more physical exercises. Picking a nearby, sturdy tree, she extended her arm out and hand folded up into a fist. She pressed her knuckles into the bark, then took a small step forward. Winding back and setting her stance, she pulled that arm back for one picture-perfect punch.

The unsettling crack of bone proved to be the least of her worries.

* * *

><p>If there was a word to describe 'staying after midnight' in the Geofront, that word would be 'Sucked'. There were times Ritsuko also really hated the fact that she did not have one lab in headquarters. It meant that she had to go where a given project was to monitor it, or transfer data from one set to another. A severe work flow oversight, to say the least. Maybe if she hurried, she could squeeze a remodel out of the budget, centralizing all her research facilities.<p>

A flash of electric, neon blue caught Ritsuko's eye. A reflection played over one polished wall panel slid and melted before moving to another one, and then another. Spinning in her chair, the scientist turned and kicked out into the hallway. She failed to drop her heels and stop, instead bumping into the far wall. She didn't notice.

If it weren't for the blue hair, Ritsuko would've called security. "Rei! Wha-What the hell happened to you?"

* * *

><p><em>Overusing her AT field inflicted hemorrhaging; she recognized it from other injuries she'd suffered before. Something brushed the back of her neck, but she dismissed it as a bit of sweat. She did not dismiss the crack of bone in her hands and forearms, after punching the tree at full strength. For her the response to pain was incredibly subtle, but even she couldn't hold back the wince and burning agony.<em>

_Bringing her hand to her face, she watched the scrapes and cuts heal before her eyes. She had suspicions, previously, but nothing to confirm she had accelerated healing. Then, she saw something else; her fingernails were growing, fast._

_Then she was treated to agony beyond anything she had ever felt before._

* * *

><p>The First Child was a mess; covered in mud, sticks and leaves. Dried blood caked her forearms while other smears of red stained her uniform and face. Some had managed to dry in the ends of her hair. The hair though was the biggest red flag. Rei always kept her hair in that neat, almost cute bob. Now it was <em>down to her waist<em>, shaggy and unkempt.

All of that was incidental though. Rei was hobbling down the hallway, hobbling because her feet were bare, because her toe and fingernails were _six inches long. _

Heaving herself out of the chair, Ritsuko urged Rei to stay put while she dashed back into the lab. Nearly all of them had medical supplies buried somewhere. She finally returned with surgical scissors and a first aide kit, where Rei answered her original question."Training. I did not want to aggravate my condition further." She gingerly raised her hands, and would've done something to present her feet, if not for the pain involved.

"T-Training? What kind of training were you doing?" She looked over the girl's bare arms and saw faint stains under her skin, not just on it. That was hemorrhaging. "You-you're trying to activate your angelic powers!" She didn't wait for an answer. Instead, Ritsuko pulled out a pair of surgical shears and set to work clipping down the girl's nails. They were bloody and grotesquely curled. Her fingertips were still damaged, and slowly regenerating, which just made her nails and hair grow more. A second pass with more mundane nail clippers and a file handled the rest.

Sterile gauze and disinfectant were next. They had to be careful to leave her fingertips exposed, incase any further growth occurred. Rei ended up with a strange sort of toe-less foot-wrap at the end of it.

"Rei, this is why you were given supplements, all our theories state that only Evangelions can safely express an AT field. Human souls just... Erode too quickly." She sighed and started to rummage through her lab coat pockets. Keeping Rei healthy was one of her standing orders, and she never knew what might be needed. "I don't understand why the Commander is allowing... All of this."

The pilot did not have an answer for her. One of the commander's less flattering traits was his steadfast refusal to explain _anything_ to anyone outside of his scenarios. Ritsuko finally found what she was looking for, and began divvying up pills and doses.

Staying right where she was, Rei just continued to stare straight ahead, unflinching. "The supplements have side effects. I do not like them."

Dosage gave way to confusion as Ritsuko looked up. Rei's stare did not waver. "...What side effects?"

No intonation at all. An inhuman lack of inflection. "I do not think clearly, and I suffer from apathy. I feel less alive."

Suddenly, this was starting to sound terribly familiar, one more in a large stack of awful things she knew. Ritsuko found the backs of her hands _incredibly _fascinating, having settled down into her lap.

The girl had head bowed down, and her hands folded in her lap with gauze wrapped around her fingers and toes, as well as up her arms. "...Please." Ritsuko had to have heard that wrong. She looked over at the girl, barely voicing the question. "...What?" The girl always spoke softly, but so precisely. For the first time in nearly ten years, Rei sounded _human_.

She looked up, and her eyes were almost glowing. "...Please don't make me take them."

* * *

><p>Old culture held on tenaciously, in the face of a rapidly modernizing city and society. Misato's neighborhood was a small cluster of buildings, none over twelve stories, with wide main streets and narrow alleys. For the life of him, Shinji couldn't tell when the buildings were made; Hakone wasn't one for an actual cityscape after all. Most of Shinji's grocery needs were met by a family-run store that had been in this area for generations, if not the exact same building. Most of the ground floor was dedicated to it, with apartments in the upper floors. The store was within walking distance, and carried nearly everything he could think to need for daily meals.<p>

Today though, he wondered if he, and the store, would survive Ayanami Rei.

The other night, Rei never showed up. Ritsuko had left a message saying the girl had stayed in the Geofront overnight. The next morning she showed up, looking a bit rumpled and smelling faintly of antiseptic. The biggest change though was her suddenly waist-length hair. Misato waved off the girl's mumbled explanation of 'classified', more concerned with the _opportunities_ presented.

It turned out that Misato always wanted to try her hand as a hair-stylist. Squirreled away in her room were a pair of simple shears and other odds and ends someone needed to cut hair. Rei was ushered into the kitchen and set down in a chair, and a towel miraculously appeared, draped around the teenager's shoulders. Before the older woman got started, she asked Rei what _she_ wanted to do with her hair. The girl didn't answer immediately.

All of those events led to Shinji taking the girl out into the neighborhood, in the bright midafternoon sun. Misato said it was too good of an opportunity to miss, showing of Rei's new look. Parted down the middle with short bangs framing her face, longer frames running down by her ears and past her jaw. The rest of it was pulled back, held in place with one of Misato's heavy duty clips. The fastener pulled the high ponytail back and letting the rest drop down past her shoulders. When they left the apartment, the two teenagers could hear Misato's cackling, planning a trip to the _mall_.

Rei kept her head bowed down, afflicted with a tiny, persistent blush. It wasn't crowded outside, but the people on the sidewalks and hanging out on veranda and patio couldn't _not_ notice the blue-haired girl. Shinji was walking alongside her, looking surprisingly at-ease.

He must've noticed her confusion, because he just smiled at her. "You're really pretty, Rei. And you don't scare me."

The red on her face intensified dramatically, but she did not quite smile. She wanted to, so very much, but her face wouldn't move in the right pattern. Shinji didn't seem to mind. A few minutes later, they reached the store. Since it was only a few blocks from the apartment, multiple grocery trips were a snap. Idly, he wondered if Misato would be interested in buying a bigger refrigerator, or getting a third one... Stepping inside, the pair were blasted by a wave of cool air from a ceiling-mounted air-conditioner while the door closed behind them.

An old man behind the counter waved at his regular customer, drawing the boy's attention back. The boy laughed, returning the greeting. "Hello Shiranui-san!"

"Who is this young lady?" The skin around his eyes crinkled like old boot leather, giving a short laugh. He kept talking before either teen could respond. "I don't get kids and crazy hair colors, but you're lovely, my dear!"

Holding her arms down and clasping her hands together, Rei hunched in on herself, but the pleased note in her voice said it all. "T-Thank you, sir."

Shinji bowed with one arm out, like a presenter at some grand ball. "This is Ayanami Rei, Shiranui-San, my new roommate."

Old-man Shiranui leaned back on his stool and slapped his knee, laughing raucously. "Hah! When I was your age a boy and girl rooming together... Well I'm sure you know what I'm getting at." The two pilots did, but for different reasons. Shinji let out a weak, awkward laugh, enough for the both of them. He tugged Rei along by one wrist, deeper into the store.

Away from the nice-if-loud man, Rei managed to gather her wits and start thinking instead of reacting. Shinji was in his element, having grabbed a basket from somewhere. It was already halfway full. It was strange; the Third was almost always ill at ease for some reason or another, though as Rei observed him more, she noticed he had many flavors of discomfort. Lieutenant Katsuragi's flirtation, for example, was entirely different to the look on his face when he piloted the Evangelion.

Here though he was utterly self-assured, decisive. He reached for ingredients and food items almost no deliberation, nor did he refer to the list in his pocket. She snapped out of her reverie when he asked her a question.

"We're set on tofu and the like, but is there anything else _you_ want to eat, Ayanami-san?"

"I would like for you to call me Rei... And..." She looked around the isle. The labels were almost all alien to her. "Chocolate, and everything. I want to try almost everything. Except for meat..."

She looked up at Shinji. Her face was as serene as normal, except for the tiniest hint _of something_ desperately needing to be expressed. "_Especially_ chocolate."

* * *

><p>Each step he took closer to the school seemed to drop a lead weight around his shoulders.<p>

Shinji had been gone for months now, after his rampage. Aside from their chore shuffling, Misato was a creature of habit, and that, more than anything helped Shinji get back into his own rhythm. Now though, _Rei_ had a better average attendance than he did. That itself didn't spur him forward, but the absurdity of it did start him on the way out of his funk. Eventually, he built up enough mental inertial to wake up, pack lunches for all three roommates, and leave with Rei.

Even so, Shinij lagged behind. Rei did not stay with him. By the time he reached the door to class 2-A, he was a nervous wreck. Hunched over and wracked with tension, he slid open the door.

The classroom was as good as new, and about half the students were there already. Toji, Hikari and Kensuke crowded around one desk. There was no sign of Rei, even if she arrived well ahead of them.. The other students formed cliques and clusters of friends, spending the precious time before class to do anything but work. He _could_ hear them, if he tried, but at that moment he wasn't remotely interested in eavesdropping. One of the students saw him, and Shinji waited for the shoe to drop.

"Hey Ikari! Welcome back!" Not counting his three friends, there were six girls and five boys in the classroom. Their teacher adjusted his glasses but didn't do more than greet the pilot as well. The old man turned back to his lesson plan and all was well. Then Shinji noticed his desk.

There were enough presents, packages and cards to have filled up the space on top of his desk, the seat, and cradle beneath it. The, having run out of room there, the offerings spilled out into the isles in all four directions, making it impossible to walk past the mountain of gifts. Some distant corner of his mind couldn't help but comment as well. He only had... Interacted with something like twenty girls after all was said and done. For the pile to be this huge, they would have had to have given him _several_ gifts, each.

Left staring at the pile and trying very hard to maintain his calm, he was totally unprepared for what happened next.

Something slammed into him from behind, wrapping thin soft arms around his middle and trapping one of his arms against his side. He barely moved, outweighing the teenage girl at least two times over. She laughed into his shoulders before hiking herself up to hook her chin over his shoulder. Three more girls moved into his peripheral vision, and that sense of soul-crushing dread he felt all morning was growing.

The girls that weren't attempting to climb him instead moved to surround, leaning down to pick their gifts out of the pile. They started talking, speaking quickly and over each other in honeyed tones. Not just talking, _cooing_, and _flirting_ and no matter how much Misato 'prepared' him for it, he just couldn't keep up. He couldn't even match voices to face while watching them speak, it was all just one big tangle of awkward adolescence.

Slowly but surely the rest of the classroom started to take interest. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Blood pounded in his ears and adrenaline soaked through him. This was scarier than an Angel attack!

Two things managed to save him. The first was Hikari, possessing a truly heroic level of common sense and decency. "Enough of that! Get back to your desks! Do you really think this is appropriate? Honestly!" Her voice rose with each word, somehow managing to hook all four girls by the collar and drag them off to their seats. Toji swept up behind, slapping Shinji in the back. The pilot's back was bound up tighter than bridge support cables.

Hikari helped, but Shinji was still the center of attention, until the second thing swept in. The classroom door opened, revealing Rei. As far as the students were concerned, The First Child had somehow managed to grow more than half a foot of hair in the course of one night. Standing there, she blinked once, feeling more than a few pairs of eyes on her. A faint bit of red spread across her cheeks.

Something else seemed to have happened, because now the smattering of students stopped seeing Rei as _just_ weird and creepy, and started seeing her as a _girl_. Maybe it was something about how she looked more aware, her eyes actually had that spark of interest and active thought. She moved from distant and aloof to _approachable_. Her hair was pulled up like it had been the previous day, framing her face nicely.

Almost immediately, the girls swamped Rei, gushing about her new look and showering her with compliments and interest. The boys, being fourteen, were a little more awkward and furtive, though the boldest stared with undisguised interest. Rei wasn't just _approachable_ now, she was exotic and attractive, but still vaguely creepy. More students filtered into the classroom before the first bell rang. Some girls tried to corner Shinji, but were held off by Hikari.

Other students began to crowd around Rei as she made her way to her desk. The girl was as unfailingly polite and soft-spoken as always, but Shinji could tell she was rapidly growing uncomfortable. Rei looked past the crowd of giggling girls, over to him. She nodded once, barely moving her head. He definitely owed her one now.

Feeling his heartbeat normalize, Shinji claimed and empty desk slumped down in the seat. He looked over at the massive pile of gifts and winced. He spoke, but didn't expect anyone to answer. "... I thought NERV was supposed to talk to all of them..."

Toji leaned back in his chair with a scowl and voice in total deadpan. "It didn't take."

* * *

><p>Through some unspoken, mutual agreement, Toji, Hikari and Kensuke formed a defensive screen around the two pilots. For most of the morning, Shinji, and to a lesser extent Rei, were under siege. Dozens of girls broke numerous school policies to crowd in the hallways and camp out in the field outside Shinij's classroom, most of them only there for the rumors. More than a few girls approached Rei, hoping to get closer to Shinji through her. Others just wanted to strike up a friendship, and the First's unprecedented, albeit miniscule, openness was all the motivation they needed.<p>

Kensuke laughed, saying that it was a sign of the apocalypse, but not unkindly. Most of the girls were now safely behind closed doors in detention, once the teachers and principles contained the situation. But the smartest of those young women had avoided the basic pitfalls. There were still plenty of them hovering around at discreet distances, giggling softly.

"Was it like this while I was gone?" He looked from friend to friend. Rei offered no response, but that was just Rei being Rei. Hikari, Toji and Kensuke all had varying expressions of exasperation etched on their faces.

Volunteering himself as spokesperson, Kensuke started off. "Better and worse, in ways. The girls were crafty, they always offered their gifts during lunch and before class, so nobody could use their authority." Toji just grunted, earning a glare from the ever-proper Hikari.

She broke in then, offering her own insight. "They were going to take the gifts into storage, but the principal hadn't gotten around to it. I heard there would've been Section Two involvement." It was _odd_ hearing the words 'Section Two' coming form Hikari's mouth. When she noticed the stare from the three boys, she elaborated. "NERV briefed me on the situation."

Getting back on topic, she continued. "At this point I probably know more about your situation than these two, Ikari-kun." Giving the two non-pilots a friendly glare, adding a small grin to soften the look. They obligingly heckled the class rep in return. Turning back to Shinji, she instead offered him a reassuring friendly smile. "I was briefed by Lieutenant Katsuragi," She paused to wave at her forehead, though it was clear she didn't quite know why. "She told you you'd know what that means."

He odded, numbly, but that ball of tension slowly began to relax. Hikari pressed on. "Well, NERV's done everything it can to settle things down. Most of the school was evacuated once you started glowing, so aside from rumors, there's no reason to treat you differently. The more... Directly affected..." She trailed off, awkwardly.

"Their families were bribed."

Hikari whirled on the bespectacled boy, indignant. "Kensuke!"

Toji just laughed, slapping his thighs. Shinji couldn't keep the unsteady grin off his face either. Kensuke popped another bit of sausage into his mouth, utterly nonchalant. "What? It's the truth."

The class rep sucked in a quick breath, growling past her teeth."Be that as it may..."

Shinji looked between his friends, almost silently asking for something. Kensuke was the closest he had to a confidant his own age, especially with regard to the experiments back home. Toji just gave him derisive look, but kept his voice low. "Like I know anything, just what you called yourself. Don't care either; you healed my sister like you said you would, good enough for me."

That seemed to be it then, the three most regular members of their irregular little group broke into their lunches and began eating in earnest. Rei was quiet as always, but none of them could miss her attention. They were in no hurry; she'd join their conversations when she was ready. Seeing his friends banter around him, Shinji let out a long, slow breath, as well as some of the tension gathered up in his shoulders.

For most of lunch, the five teenagers were left alone, aside from the crowd of girls hovering just out of earshot. More than a few boys skulked around as well, but they were far less subtle. It got to the point that on some unspoken agreement, Toji and Kensuke shifted over to sit on either side of Rei and _glared_ at any boy not showing the proper respect. The pilot on the other hand tried very hard to smile, but failed miserably. None of them minded.

The free period wore on in that pleasant sort of haze, where time was simultaneously moving fast and slow. Then, someone called Shinji's name. Turning, the boy was not so much struck dumb, as struck _gibbering terror_.

* * *

><p>It was a girl, and not one he actively recognized as part of his class. He did however, with surprising clarity recall that she had a <em>delightfully<em> fetching spread of freckles, just above her breasts, which he could not see right now through her shirt but very much saw in his memories, which he was most definitely _not_ thinking about and _not_ panicking. _Not at all!_

She seemed to notice his discomfort, because whatever she was about to say died on her lips, swallowed up by a weak, unsteady laugh. Hikari and Kensuke moved around to do something, anything, while Toji shifted over to slap Shinji on the back. He regretted that immensely, as it felt like hitting a wrestling mat wrapped around steel girder. Still, it got his friend breathing again.

The girl found her voice somehow, and started talking, giving a quick bow. "Ah! S-Shinji-Sama, I mean, Ikari-kun. My name is Saneda Ayumi." She seemed to calm down as she spoke. Hikari and Kensuke were in turn, rapidly losing _their_ cool. They cast frantic glances towards Shinji. Rei just observed, silent and unblinking. Toji however had the most interesting reaction; _contemplation._

Saneda took a deep breath and mustered up her courage. She'd already gotten further than she thought anyway, why not go for broke? Her smile practically lit up her face. She reigned in her cheer and turned on the girlish charm, nibbling on one curled knuckle while twisting one toe into the ground. "I was wondering, if you were interested... Maybe we could go out sometime?"

Everyone present wondered if it was possible to swallow your own tongue. Shinji seemed dead-set on proving it. His eyes nearly popped clean out of their sockets, and he somehow managed to suck in a breath, ready to shout. Moving faster than anyone thought possible, Toji's hand clamped around his friends' mouth and nose, grinning. "Sure! Shinji'd love to go!"

Shinji just _stared_ at his friend out of the corner of his eyes. He could've easily thrown Toji several dozen yards, but the conventions of the situation prevented him on that deep, unknowing sociocultural leve, sort of like watching a train wreck in progress. The human mind just refused to act. Toji just grinned right back, eyes crinkling up. He glanced up at Saneda and held up a hand, asking for a bit of time. Focusing back on Shinji, that grin took on a disturbing quality.

It was a look that said, in no uncertain terms, _Gotcha Bitch!_ "You owe me, Ikari, for breaking my hand. We never did square that properly."

Fighting past Toji's hand, Shinji managed to counter with a furious whisper. "What about your sister!"

"You did that on your own."

The pilot stopped for a beat, then two, before finally sagging down, defeated. Toji slapped his back once more, and regretted it all the same. Turning back to Saneda, the jock gave her a thumbs up. "Friday at eight, Dinner and a movie?"

That made it easy, there was only one theater of note in Tokyo-3, as far as the students were concerned. Saneda nodded to Toji before giving Shinji a smile that nearly made his heart explode. She spun on one heel, giggling and running down the hill, skirt and uniform whirling behind her. "It's a date! I'll see you then!"

* * *

><p>Shinji let his head fall into his hands. Neither he nor any of his friends cared that the lunch bell had rung twenty minutes ago. Hikari tried to rub soothing circles around his back, but it was only a small skirmish in an uphill battle against panic.<p>

Looking up, the pilot stared ahead at nothing. "I'm dead, so very, very dead."

"Ikari, Listen, about girls, and dating." Throwing one arm around the pilot's shoulders, Toji offered some sage advice. Kensuke very quietly stepped out of range. "If groceries throws themselves at you, you bag 'em. _Bag 'em up_."

"_To-jiiii_!" Hikari reached around and grabbed his ear, twisting_ hard_. Her voice rose higher and higher, shouting past Shinji, who still sat between the bickering pair. That crass, incorrigible idiot! "You don't _say_ things like that about girls! And I thought you didn't recognize her!"

He laughed, despite the class rep's determined attempt to maim him. "I didn't realize it was _that_ Saneda, she lives like three blocks away from me. She's a nice, cute girl." Kensuke managed to separate the two teens long enough for Toji to confirm he still had two ears. The tortured one practically buzzed with pain. Wincing through laughter, Toij began ticking points off on his finger. "She got the guts to ask him directly, she also was just as nervous as he was, and I know her well enough. This'll be good for him, trust me."

Hikari sighed explosively, raising one fist in a promise of pain. "If this explodes catastrophically, I am definitely blaming you."

"I will inform Lieutenant Katsuragi." Everyone turned to Rei, their jaws hanging loose. She just quietly sipped at her thermos.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> I ended up having to split chapter 20 in half, though the 'other half' is only planned, not written yet. Enjoy!


	21. Excitement

After Second Impact, globalization ceased to be, for nearly fifteen years. The world economy crashed utterly. The Internet, a great icon of that age, was expected to survive intact. It did not. Any initial infrastructure gains brought on by the dot-com bubble were swept away, lacking secure, mature technologies and stable platforms for recovery and growth.

The international network was massive, but spindly and belabored. It did not stand well alone.

During Impact and the wars that followed, the great nations of the world consolidated. Many closed their borders, holding gates shut with their armies and more. The nuclear deterrent was still in effect, even if the Cold War was itself a fading memory. Other countries great and small splintered into hundreds of successor states, eager to devour each other. Warlords sprang up like weeds across Central Asia and China. Cities burned under conventional weapons, and the earliest, infantile attempts at N2 weaponry.

The dream of the Internet died, when there was no one to mind the vast sea of information.

GEHRIN was secure in bunkers and think-tanks throughout Western and Northern Europe. Without those brilliant minds, the world would have died as slow, lingering death. Instead it lived on, diminished but strong enough to reach a predetermined end. Europe served as the primary seat of SEELE's power, but not the only seat. In the ruins of that great worldwide network, old men built a perfect fortress, one made of metaphor and shared intent.

Twelve monoliths appeared in that shared, artificial thoughtscape. As before, they spoke with one mind and many voices.

"The nations of the world are arrayed."

"NERV has been hobbled."

The monolith designated as SEELE 01 thrummed, vanishing to reveal Kihl Lorenz. The old cyborg leaned forward on his desk.

"Proceed."

* * *

><p>"You. Have a date."<p>

Misato was not often surprised. Not by Shinji at least. Thoroughly browbeaten, he still had his moments, sniping back at her slob lifestyle and flirtation. They were just few and far between. This was one of those times. Shinji sat at the kitchen table, bent over his homework while Misato stood off to one side, looking as if down was up and left was right. Better to say Shinji was _trying_ to do his homework.

His guardian and friend was being spectacularly unhelpful in that endeavor. "Yes."

Rei joined them at that point, taking a seat at the table without a word. She was the picture of elegant, if machine-like precision, holding a clay mug of tea in both hands.. She preferred the traditional style whenever possible. Meanwhile, Misato was still trying to recover from a somewhat dramatic upheaval of her world view.

Her speech drained itself of intonation."A date. With a girl."

Shinji sighed. It was very nice that he didn't randomly break things anymore. Otherwise he would've gone through far too many pens and pencils. Still, he scratched a deep mark on the page. He looked up at Misato."I didn't get much choice, Toji set everything up before I could get a word in edgewise."

She all but strangled out the last word, somehow managing to simultaneously grin and choke at the same time. "_Date_."

Every so often, Shinji did tap into that collective unconscious pool of potential that all teenagers shared, the one that governed their unique, oft-overused ability to snark. He tossed the pencil down and thumped back into his chair, sending it scraping back a few inches. "I thought we established that. _Yes_."

It seemed then that Misato finally decided on her final reaction. She settled on deafening, euphoric exuberance, which was a fancy way of whooping much like she used to after a cold can of beer. That idle thought cut through Shinji's own irritation with icy clarity. _Misato just replaced beer with me getting a date. _Before he could follow that realization any further, terrifying conclusions, Misato grabbed both pilots and tugged them out of their chairs. She spun and danced, pulling her charges into a rough-but-warm hug, laughing all the while.

"Oh this is going to be amazing! We'll have to go to the mall sometime! You'll need new clothes, Shinji-kun. Rei, I've been meaning to help you expand your wardrobe! Oh this'll be great! I think we can go Wednesday! Is Wednesday good for either of you?"

All of that was said in one long rush, with only tiny pauses for breathing. For once, Shinji was spared the cosmic mandate of somehow ending up pressed against Misato's chest. Today that honor fell to Rei. The blue-haired girl did not struggle and did not blush, though when she was finally released, she did look significantly 'mussed'.

Shinji was only somewhat envious of her lack of reaction.

Privacy was a treasure in the Katsuragi apartment, considering it was technically a two-bedroom unit housing three people. Though neither Shinji or Rei had much in the way of possessions, it was impossible to not feel a little cramped. Fortunately Rei did her part to give as much space as needed. She always went to bed at the same time, every night, like clockwork. Misato was fairly certain you could set a watch to the girl's sleeping schedule.

What all that lead to, was privacy. If Shinji and Misato wanted to talk to each other without being rude to Rei, they merely had to wait until after ten at night. Shinji had taken to supplementing any missed sleep with his powers, and the lieutenant was a night owl. The pair made their way into the kitchen and sat across from each other, much like their first night together as roommates. Had it really been almost a year now? Ten months? At this point Misato's choice of after-work dress only somewhat bothered him, the tank-top and cutoff shorts now only plagued his subconscious.

It was a mixed blessing.

Lacking a can of beer to keep herself occupied, Misato ended up talking with her hands. It was an oddly reassuring quirk, as far as Shinji was concerned. Still, this was a woman who had no sense of subtlety outside the battlefield. For the first part of the evening, her advice was straight forward and easy to understand. Most of it was simple manners like 'offer to pay', and 'hold doors open'. Those were things he had long internalized, having watched other people around him. It was odd to have someone teach him directly.

She laced her hands together and pointed at nothing in particular, her fingers swinging up and down. "Okay, so all of that? The hard part is just remembering it. The most important piece of advice I can give you, for any date, is just be yourself."

He looked over at her then, clearly befuddled. "Be myself?"

Miming a gun with her hands, she thumbed off a silent 'bang'. "Yep! You got it!"

Shinji was anywhere but 'getting it'. He scratched his scalp, thinking. "So..." Who was he, really? Shinji? A boring boy? Cute, monster? Solar or Exalt? All of those things defined him, but were they really him? Did Misato really just inspire an existential self-assessment when advising him about a _date?_ Apparently she did. All the while, his expressions and bearing changed, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, until he finally settled on something.

Misato just shook her head. Really this boy was a sweetie, but how _dense_ could you get? "No, that's being a _pilot_. Be _yourself."_

Blinking, Shinji tried again, dredging up the next nearest mental state that defined his existence. Misato just slumped in her chair. A beat later, she lunged forward, slamming one palm into the table and the other reaching for his head. Shinji had once joked it was her secret, open-handed martial art of Big-Sister-Hair-Twisting-Domination Tactic. It worked a lot better when Misato weighed more than he did. Now, she just ground the heel of her hand into his scalp, while he refused to budge.

Gnashing her teeth, she pulled away. "No! That's... Almost being an unmarried house-husband. _Yourself!"_

It went on like that for a while longer, with Shinji taking on the various faces he used in his life so far. Student, healer, fighter, teenager, scared, more. Each time Misato repeated the same basic advice; "Be Yourself!". Then, it was nearly midnight, and Shinji was at his wits end. "Okay... So. Don't be like any of those things, but still be 'Myself.'"

It spoke volumes about Misato, that she did not raise her voice high enough to wake Rei. They had no other neighbors to worry about. Still, Shinji couldn't help but wince when she exclaimed. . "_Yes!"_

Shinji stared at Misato. Then at the table. Then back at Misato again, opening his mouth to say something and then closing it, an imitation of a goldfish, if she didn't know him better. He made a few more false starts, sometimes raising one finger, then falling silent again. Misato made a note to rope him into a poker game at some point. Finally, he came up with a response"...I have no idea what that leaves."

Misato looked at the calendar. It was Monday. The date would be Friday. Four days to get Shinji up to speed.

_I could really go for a drink, right about now._

* * *

><p>Sometimes, Ritsuko wondered if the clone bodies had any sapience. She already knew they were <em>aware, <em>after a fashion. Their eyes tracked her when she moved through the tank chambers. There was nothing she could do about it though, not right now. The tanks had to be close to the Memory Transfer Chamber, both for logistical and metaphysical reasons. Caging a soul and packet of memories was a chancy proposition at best.

Now things were improving, and Ritsuko could for the moment, set aside the morality or ethics of the situation and simply bask in the success of a project. The various sensors intended to understand the Third's powers were just as effective at perceiving regular human souls as well as Rei's own soul, and that of Lilith. This lead to the newly installed devices surrounding the actual transfer mechanism.

Looking up, Ritsuko did wonder why someone designed it to look like a human brain; there was no way that could've just _happened_. Her own additions were far more utilitarian; simple off-white plastic boxes. She had considered using _black_ boxes, but here she knew the exact inner workings, there was no need for it.

The scientist turned over to Rei. "The new additions are a remote operations system." There wasn't any need to mince words. "All entry plugs from here on will have sensors designed to register your soul. Since we know for a fact that when you die, the section of Lilith's soul grafted to yours snaps back, we can use that s a trigger." She looked back at the transfer device. "It's basically a dead man's switch. If you die and the system is still working, it the transfer process should start automatically."

The teenager cocked her head to one side, and that oddly human vitality sparked in her eye. Then Ritsuko realized why it looked so strange, Rei's bursts of humanity, they came in fits and starts, and were almost never uniform. Her expressions and mannerisms were mismatched and rehearsed. If someone could smile without it reaching their eyes, Rei could have her eyes reach down to a smile.

Ritsuko shook off her discomfort and gave the pilot a wry grin. "The only way we could test it is to kill you though, I think that defeats the point." Rei nodded silently taking in the explanation. The other woman just took it as a sign to keep talking. "All we need is to update your memories on file." She slid over to the console in her rolling chair. Her face lit up, remembering something. "Oh! You might be pleased to note that we're building a second transfer facility, though with budget cuts, we have no idea when it will be done."

Finally Rei turned to look at Ritsuko. She didn't smile, but she did look _pleased._ "Thank you, Akagi-Sensei."

* * *

><p>Wednesday evening. Approximately sixty hours to Shinji's first date. He knew the time down to the hour, because <em>Misato<em> knew the time down to the second.

The mall was familiar to Shinji, as it had the best arcade in Tokyo-3, and was quite near the transit lines leading from the high school. Suffice to say, Toji and Kensuke dragged him here quite a few times after their friendship really took off. Now though, the galleria architecture looked all the more sinister, for its openness. It promised temptation and delight, and the only person who seemed even remotely calm about the whole thing was Rei.

It was worse, because Misato dragged Akagi-Sensei and Lieutenant Ibuki along for the trip. Oddly enough it would be the first time he'd ever dealt with the scientist outside of NERV, and he barely knew Maya at all. Still, it was hard not to like the young woman, especially since she was primarily responsible for monitoring his vital signs during combat.

Shinji was trapped between three women, a girl, and the largest, most well-appointed mall in Tokyo-3. His spine was frozen solid.

For a moment, Shinji wondered why Misato told the others to walk a few steps ahead of her. They stopped and turned when they heard her heeled shoe click into the polished stone floor tiles. There Misato was, standing like a super hero with her hands on her hips. Early evening sunlight streamed through the doorways and wide, food court windows, setting the lieutenant in silhouette. Everyone else shared the same thought with a groan; _She planned that._

Throwing one arm out, Misato fixed Shinji with a pointer finger. She didn't care what kind of scene she made. "You. You need a hair cut, first of all." Her arm shifted over to point out a salon. "Professional and not overly dominated by women. Perfect." Shinji was glad his hair didn't grow that fast, every other time Misato just trimmed it down for him.

As it stood, Misato was correct about the salon, and Shinji was spared abject humiliation, but it was still painfully awkward. Rei, for good or ill, soaked up the most attention however. A good half-dozen stylists just swamped the blue-haired girl, with half their number complimenting Misato on her initial job. Ritsuko and Maya just sat out on the benches, though the scientist pulled a lock of blonde hair in front of her eye and gave it a critical look.

Shinji at that point was guided into a chair and treated to a crash course in advanced hair care, which, incidentally, he did not need. They'd long since proved you needed to use actual cutting tools to really damage any one strand. Rei joined him a moment later, somehow having finished before him. Her hairstyle remained unchanged, sticking with that pulled back look Misato gave her. Now however, her hair practically _glowed_ with vitality. It was a good look.

Still, he wondered if he should read anything into that look of hers. She didn't really blame him for her being here, did she?

When all was said and done, a cheery young woman presented him a mirror. He took it and blinked rapidly. "This is how I always look."

Misato sidled up then, smiling beatifically. "Why mess with what works! Next up is _shirts_."

* * *

><p>Shirts, polo, button down, Tee and tank, his brain all but shut down halfway through their trip into the men's section of the department stores. Ritsuko was fairly sure Shinji wouldn't grow much more, but Misato felt it prudent not to splurge on boutique fashions yet. Shinji wasn't really that kind of guy, either. Aside from some casual clothes he couldn't wear anymore, all he had were his school uniforms.<p>

Well, not any more. Misato piled on box after box, loaded with new shirts, and they still had belts, pants and shoes to go. What words he got in edgewise were well placed, however, adding some things he liked along the way.

Then the rest of his brain shut down, when they crossed one isle into the women's department.

* * *

><p>Fascination was the order of the day. Rei stared at the bundle of fabric sitting on the bench. She picked one article up with both hands, pinched at the waistband. Similar to a skirt but not quite. She knew <em>what<em> they were, but as far as she knew, she'd never worn pants before. Tilting her head to one side, she contemplated the situation. Lieutenant Katsuragi had pushed three pairs into her arms, describing them as 'cute'.

This really didn't help Rei at all, because she had at best a rudimentary understanding of the word. She crossed her wrists over each other, twisting the pants around like she saw Lieutenants Ibuki and Katsuragi do earlier. How to do this, she wondered. One leg at a time? No, that would be physically impossible. Both legs at once? She did not think she could jump that high. Some small, unknown part of her wanted to scowl, but did not know the word or expression. Her _undergarments_ were _simpler_.

Finally, she did manage to put on the pants. She turned and looked herself over in the dressing room mirror, again much like she had seen other women do. She lacked the 'look' however, that often came with a self-critique or reaffirmation of one's attractiveness. Rei just noticed how snug the pant legs were around her thighs and backside. It was a look Misato favored. The girl long since understood that lieutenant had the habit of imposing her tastes on others.

She tried on the other two pairs of pants, with much the same results as the first. Leaving the pants in the dressing room as previously instructed, she decided then, that she preferred skirts.

* * *

><p>She hadn't planned for it, but since Maya was incredibly good at distracting the pilots, Misato saw no reason not to pump her friend for information. A quick scan of the nearby stores gave her an idea. An 'exotic aparrel' boutique was just what she needed. The operations director waved Maya over, telling her to keep an eye on the kids. That done, she dragged Ritsuko by the arm. A quick glance over her shoulder brought a grin to her lips; Shinij was blushing just from the idea.<p>

The pair blew past the one girl working the counter, heading into the laciest, frilliest dark corner of the store. "K-Katsuragi! Honestly!" Misato just patently ignored her, looking over a rack of bra and panty sets. She'd saved quite a lot on beer money, so splurging wasn't out of the question. Ritsuko huffed and tried not to catch her arms on anything, but her friend didn't give her much choice.

Misato shoved a bundle of fabric into her friends arms. "Dressing rooms, let's go."

This late in the evening, there wouldn't be any problem getting two stalls side-by-side. Ritsuko finally just gave up and went along with it, usually easier than trying to resist. Misato kept an ear out while she disrobed.

There was a time and a place for true guile, but this wasn't it, nonchalance only went so far. Misato's voice made the hair on the back of Ritsuko's neck stand up."You know, Rei-chan keeps telling things are 'classified', when dealing with her. Like how she grew _two feet of hair_ in one night." She frowned at the bra in her hand. Did she read the tags wrong, or was this one defective? "I'm the Operations Director. Shouldn't I know everything about my pilots?"

Ritsuko just sighed and went through the motions, though she had to admit, Katsuragi knew clothes. She twisted left and right, watching the bra hug her torso. Conversations like this were always awkward "Some things are classified for a reason, Katsuragi, you know this. Rei's situation is under our highest security. Need to know by Commander's orders." Blanching, Ritsuko held up the postage-stamp strung up between bits of silk. She tossed it aside with a scowl. _Seriously, Katsuragi?_

Misato on the other hand was slipping into an insubstantial something that would probably never stay on longer than thirty seconds. She had the figure for it, many times over. Still, it felt a little loose around the chest and hips. She tugged at the waistband with one thumb, squinting at the fit. "I assume you know then?"

Riffling through the stack, Ritsuko nodded, even though Misato couldn't see her. She held up a pair of black stockings, garters and matching belt. She'd probably give Fuyutsuki a heart attack if she wore those at NERV. "I know enough, because I need to, yes."

Another pair was tossed aside. Did this place use American measurements? Misato let out a quiet huff and tried on another. This one at least fit better, though the cut wasn't her thing. "And I don't need to know?"

The little game had gone on far enough. Ritsuko sighed and hiked herself up on the bench, peering over the edge to look at her friend. Misato looked up to see her friend there, chin cradled on her crossed wrists. "Think, Katsuragi. Use that tactical-genius brain."

So Misato did, arranging everything in her mind as if it were a battle. She needed intelligence on the situation. You usually got intelligence from infiltrators, reconnaissance and spies. There wasn't much to infiltrate at NERV, because _everyone_ infiltrated something, or so the office chatter went. It occurred to her then that her clearance was actually quite limited. She was sure massive parts of the base were closed off to her. Spies were the most likely recourse, and a spy was simply put, someone who listens.

Misato looked back up at Ritsuko, sounding out the answer, picking up momentum as she spoke. "...I don't know... Because I haven't asked?. Ritsuko nodded once. "Who should I ask?" The scientist lifted her fingers and turned her lips up, giving her friend a look that said 'How should I know?'.

Ritsuko sighed, suddenly wishing for a cigarette. Her bag with nicotine patches was outside with Shinji. "Some things I think you do need to know, but I'm not one to say"

Blinking, the scientist grinned to herself. She knew her friend well enough to know how she treated discarded articles of clothing; one corner was littered with rejects. The keepers were in pride of place on a wall hangar. This was just too good. Eyes glinting, Ritsuko smiled wider, with teeth. "I have to say, Katsuragi, you're looking well."

A new bra was cradled loosely against Misato's chest, with one strap being half-hooked on. She stopped to glance back up at her friend. That grin did not inspire good feelings. "Huh?"

Waving one bare arm down into Misato's stall, Ritsuko elaborated. "Your figure, have you been exercising more, watching your weight?"

At a loss, Misato humored her. She had no idea where this was going, especially after that discussion. "...Not that I think of? Why?"

"Oh, no real reason, I just noticed, we're about the same size now." The way she said _size_ sent all kinds of warning bells ringing in Misato's head. She looked at the mirror and let the bra drop to the floor. A quick squeeze confirmed her fears.

Shinji, Maya _and_ Rei could hear Misato's scream.

* * *

><p>Outside of the food court, there was a small, out of the way store focused on accessories marketed at teenagers and young women. Maya, for all her cheerful, military professionalism, refused to suppress her joy over girlish cute things. Rei had followed without much prompting, though she seemed to look at everything like a safari, something to be studied. Shinji sat outside on another nearby bench next to a large planter, and a much larger stack of bags and boxes. He was mentally exhausted if nothing else. Just out of earshot, Misato and Ritsuko grinned at his condition. The blonde woman let out a low, easy laugh. "He's out of his depth."<p>

"By Leagues, Rits-chan. Leagues"

Ritsuko sipped at an icy, fruit-blend beverage, content to watch her subordinate fuss with the First Child. She'd have to thank Katsuragi for this trip later, she was in dire need of something fun and normal. But before that could happen, Ritsuko needed some payback. Knocking the other woman down a peg was rapidly becoming addictive, and she had Four years worth of college embarrassments and the rest of that lingerie store to collect on. "The photos came out quite well."

Distracted, Misato didn't look at her friend. She sighed, looking back at the store with a wry grin. Inside, Maya was squealing over something cute. "All of that stuff would make me look twelve years old." Finally catching up with what her friend said, she turned, echoing. "Photos?"

Trap baited and set... Ritsuko did her level best to hide her grin. She had a lot of practice. Timing here was everything, looking sidelong at her friend. She took another sip, waiting for that initial surge of tension. Their little verbal sparing matches were often a contest of who could strike first, all other forms of subtlety spent. They knew each other so well, they could mark their reactions without even trying. "Our little test with the prototype plugsuits."

Then it clicked in her mind. She cut her own thoughts off before they got her in trouble. _Oh you bi-_ "...You didn't." Misato very nearly moved to throttle her; this was justifiable homicide, no one would convict her! Ritsuko seemed utterly unconcerned with the look of pure murder on her best friends' face. That was the sign of the really good friendships. She took another sip, not even looking at the other woman.

Draining the beverage, Ritsuko tossed it in a nearby trash can while Misato continued to work herself up. "I did, from multiple camera angles and full high-definition video. I have to say, Katsuragi, the camera just _loves_ you." Her voice was soft with a hint of dry, friendly envy, that kind of quiet tone that was somehow worse than laughing at Misato's expense. "There was no point in which you didn't look _amazing."_

She rested her chin in the palm of her hand, looking out at nothing. Misato couldn't see the smirk, and Ritsuko kept her voice just even enough. "I'm sure we could get a month's repair budget, making say, a calendar or something."

The implied compliment was lost in Misato's indignation. She had standards! Good ones! Culture and feminine dignity and Ritsuko was stomping all over that and _actually successfully teasing her_. She was past the point of actually _acting_ and firmly locked in a cycle of indignation and outrage, to the point that Shinji peered around the stack of boxes to wonder what the commotion was about.

Ritsuko smiled. _Revenge is sweet._

* * *

><p>"Are you sure you're alright, Ikari-kun?" Maya hesitated before putting a small package on the stack of boxes.<p>

It was a common visual gag in many cultures, the overburdened male following a group of females on a shopping spree. The dissonance came from the fact that this was _a real person_ carrying more boxes than they were tall. Shinji held them easily, with no visible signs of strain. His arms weren't even overly tensed.

He shifted one arm _just_ so, balancing the massive stack of packages. Bags dangled from his arms all the way up to his biceps. "It's no problem, Lieutenant Ibuki."

Misato turned out to be the voice of reason today, noting that Shinji was attracting a lot of attention. Ritsuko just waved it off. "People will just rationalize it. The more we draw attention to it, the worse it'll get."

As it turned out, Shinji was strong and easily able to carry anything the others purchased. He was strong; the tower of boxes however, were not. Maya's last addition sent ripples of change throughout the stack, shifting the center of gravity and forcing the boy to compensate. He lifted one foot and planted it, aiming for a wider stance. It was luck that he didn't just break the tile floor.

Even so, it was a foregone conclusion. The stack was going down, and all Shinji could do would be to minimize the damage. One box slid to the left, allowing more boxes to slide, until a cascade of purchases slid off the highest points and crashed to the ground! Clothes, accessories and all and sundry spilled out en masse. Dimly, Shinij thought the mess looked something like an industrial accident.

_Note to self. _He thought. _Work on balance._

* * *

><p>Misato stopped at a video rental before bringing the kids home. Why became clear when she gently pushed both Rei and Shinji into the couch and set the movie to play. It was <em>Disney's Aladdin<em>. When the film finished, Misato stepped in front of the television, arms folded across her chest and _grinning_ at her charges. Rei was impassive as always, though her eyes were dancing, ever so slightly.

She turned that soul-scanning look over to the boy."Shinji-kun?" He gave her a quick nod, at a loss otherwise. She waved an arm, encompassing the entertainment half of the living room. "That. Do that."

He stared at the screen for a long moment, while his face clouded with thought. Comprehension dawned in earnest, lighting up the boy's face with possibly one of the most winsome smiles she'd ever seen. But even as that cheered her more than anything before, some perverse, cosmic order of the universe then decided to take the wind out of Misato's sails.

"Ah... Misato-san... I don't have a magic carpet."

* * *

><p>In terms of clandestine operations, intelligence agencies and police work, being nondescript was an asset valued by all. The ability to blend seamlessly into a crowd was exploited ruthlessly. That was one of the many reasons Handler was good at his job.<p>

Handler was his occupation, title and name. He, like many other people, made a living by maintain a very specific set of skills and contacts. Those talents allowed him to gather... Resources from the various UN nations. Nothing official though, his instructions were quite clear on that; 'Concerned Citizens only'. Handler gathered the people, he arranged for their equipment and related expenses. The most important thing, however, was information.

By the time he finished his briefing, none of them would remember his face. That suited Handler just fine. He stood in front of a bare warehouse wall. A crate had been turned on one side and served as a table, laden with maps. "You will have a seventeen minute window of opportunity, once you cross into the MAGI's operational boundary. They _will_ find you; there is nothing we can do about that." He nodded to the six identical white vans. "We can, however, make it work in our favor."

* * *

><p>Today was the day. Friday, the moment of truth. Every passing minute seemed to raise the tension higher. He felt like an overstrung instrument, just one more turn away from snapping. He passed by Ayumi that morning in the halls, between classes. She smiled at him and giggled, while a group of her friends swamped her with questions. He had made it to his next class without incident.<p>

Toji and Kensuke found him at lunch, while Hikari, beautiful, wonderful, godlike Hikari ran interference for him, making sure his... Fan club kept their distance. Toji wisely kept his mouth shut, as the last time he gave advice, the class representative nearly tore his ear off. Kensuke was companionably silent, doodling in a notebook. To anyone else, it would've been scribbles, or something for a game. To Shinji, it was the work they were doing in the rooftop lab.

Thankfully, Shinji made it through the day without undue incident. He supposed that was fate; he had to deal with Misato for the rest of the evening. Oh it wasn't _too bad_, just... Misato. She combined all the worst aspects of a mother and big sister into one terrible engine of winding people up. She sat on the couch with her back to him, but looking over her shoulder. Her tone was catlike and full of mischief. "Are you sure you don't want me to give you a ride? I promise I won't tease either of you." _Much_.

He shook his head, willing his own voice to stay even. It didn't work. "N-No. Walking will help keep me calm. I think."

The mirthful, trickster smile melted away, leaving Misato's normal, warm grin. She twisted around on the couch to face better face him. "You're a great guy, Shinji-kun. You're going to go out and have a great night with a cute girl, nothing to be afraid of!" Shinji just gave her a sunken, hopeless look.

Misato's face screwed up mightily, gnashing her teeth. She rolled off the couch and stormed up to him with a rumbling growl. Rearing up on her toe tips, she planted her open hand on his head and bore down, twisting her palm into his scalp. "Don't look at me like that! You look like you're marching towards a firing squad! She's just a girl! It's just a date! You're a boy aren't you!"

Later, just as he turned the corner towards the theater, he realized Misato's teasing kept him occupied for three hours.

* * *

><p>There were no words to describe how awkward Shinji felt at that moment. Much ado had been made about how much bigger he was than his peers and most of the people he worked with. It was not an exaggeration to say he stood out, rising nearly a head or more above most people on the busy sidewalks. He wasn't big like an adult though, no, he very much was a <em>big kid<em>, with all the lack of grace and clumsiness that implied. His increased physical abilities offset it, but he felt that imbalance more than anyone.

So he hunched over as best he could, thrusting his hands into his pockets and sinking into the collar of his new button down shirt, trying not to turn red. Almost everyone else was dressed in light jackets and coats, aiming to ward off the mild winter chill. The climate changes made January wet and cool, but rarely cold. Misato refused to let him button the shirt up either. "Graphics or not, you always wear button down uniforms, be adventurous!"

He didn't have time to point out that for the past four days, she'd been telling him to 'be himself', and to take girls on magic carpet rides or not wear underwear outside of his pants. At least he now knew what she meant by 'found in a pod from outer space'.

Finally reaching the theater, awash with lights and colors and a massive throng of people. Young, old, couples and groups and just people who want to watch a film. It didn't take him long to spot his date. The boy fought off the urge to bolt and run; she had worked up the nerve to ask him out, _knowing_ what he did to her. Some part of him wanted to know _why_.

When he did see her, however, there wasn't any poetic halting of time or dramatic angles, it was just Saneda Ayumi, a girl he barely knew. She was fifteen years old, lived near Toji, and was otherwise perfectly normal. There wasn't any ethereal, unsettlingly exotic features like Rei, nor Misato's own raw sexual presence. Saneda was just cute, perfectly normal, every day cute. One thing that did stick out though, was that she wasn't wearing the school uniform. She still wore a skirt though, and had dark leggings and a cushy looking coat.

Saneda nearly jumped when she saw him, squeaking out a short laugh while her hands flew to her lips. "A-Ah! Ikari-s-I mean, Ikari-kun." She laughed again, blushing.

His mind went blank then, falling back on rudimentary social instinct. He sketched out a quick, shallow bow. "S-Saneda-san. H-hello."

The pair stood there a few feet apart while the crowd milled around them. Saneda blinked, and Shinji blinked just as much. The agonizing moment dragged on until Shinji let out a quick, involuntary cough. Saneda started laughing, hunching in on herself. "W-we're some pair," Her giggling fit tapered off. Knuckling at her eyes, she continued. "Just, awkward." Shinji let out his own laugh, and a knot of tension undid itself.

"R-Right. Saneda-san..." Some random piece of advice dislodged itself from his mind, giving him direction. "You look nice." He winced as soon as he said it, but his date just seemed to light up. "Thanks! You too... But aren't you cold?" She pointed to his thin pants and shirts.

He just gave her a helpless shrug. "No, Not really."

Silence stretched between them again, this time going on a bit longer, but at least they were smiling.

* * *

><p>The pair ambled around the theater entrance for a while longer, mostly trying to get used to each others company. Saneda was apparently a very cheerful person normally, effervescent, even. She rocked back and forth on her heels, hands linked behind her and peering around at the crowd.<p>

Shinji held a hand up to his mouth and coughed. "So..."

"So..." Saneda echoed.

Thrusting his hands into his pockets once more, Shinji tried to hide in his clothes. His date didn't seem to be handling things any better, but now he had time to start noticing her features. Her hair, for one, was brow, and cut somewhat short, hanging down around her cheeks and framing her face nicely. Twisting left and right, Shinji rolled his shoulders forward, not trusting his hands when talking. "What's next?"

She just giggled, holding her hands to her chin. The sleeves of her jacket seemed to swallow her limbs up to the knuckles. "...I don't know? Dinner... And a movie? Movie and a dinner?

"Right. Movie... uhm..." He looked around at the marquee and 'now showing' signs. Another shrug. "I thought you would've already picked a movie. I'll pay." Misato made sure to drill that one in deep. Studying the area for a long moment, his tone went flat. "...I have no idea what's playing."

Saneda blanched shortly, before laughing again. "We're so awkward, aren't we?" She shook her head before he could respond. "I thought you would've picked, I asked you out after all..." She trailed off, looking around once more. Her eyes lit up, pointing at one poster. She didn't grab him by the wrist, they weren't ready for that yet if ever, but her jaunty wave was enough lead him along.

They stopped in front of a poster in its glass-encased display box. The title was written in Chinese characters, while the image itself was suitably dramatic, showing a bare-fisted monk facing down legions of monstrous soldiers while stranger, draconic shapes filled the background.

Shinji leaned in to read the Japanese translation. It was... Suspect. "Flying House of the Five Dragon's Eye Daggers?" He looked over at his date, giving her a weak look of disbelief. "You want to watch this?"

Saneda grinned, showing off white teeth and the thin wire band of a retainer. "Why not? It looks cool!"

He looked back read the fine print. "I think its subtitled. Do you know Chinese?"

"A little, you?"

"Not enough to watch a movie."

"Oh well, subtitled films are always better."

* * *

><p><em>Fifteen thousand years ago, an ancient land rose out of misty oceans. Here Man lived and worked without fear, wielding great magic of art and industry. Then, from the depths of earth, the very land rose up in rebellion. Spirits were twisted and corrupted into base forms, their very footsteps salted the earth and turned the oceans red. The great armies of Heaven and Earth surged forth to do battle, and mankind was trapped between them.<em>

_Reduced to a pitiful handful, Mankind turned to their wise men and sages, who turned their simple magic towards war. The Earth itself rebelled. So be it, mankind said, we fight. In secluded fortresses, cut into mountain tops and high passes, the people of this ancient land forged arms and armor. Others courted godly favor, securing alliances with the ranks of Heaven._

_But all was not well, the gods betrayed man, turning away from their responsibilities and compassion. They fought for the sake of fighting, they joy of combat and their pleasures of the Heavenly City. In man's darkest hour, heroes rose to the fore._

_A young monk, an adept of those new, deadly arts, was pulled from the comfort of seclusion and enlightenment. Thrust into a war he did not want or care for, he still fought. Great beasts of earth and fire broke under his fists. His were the strikes that would level mountains and cut rivers in half. He met and gathered allies in that great conflict. An ethereal, halfblood priestess, tracing her lineage to the gods themselves. A drunken general, struck with brilliant madness and terrible melancholy. A vainglorious warrior, doomed by hubris but noble for their fire and passion._

_Those companions fought across the ancient lands, leading armies armed with spears and swords, to terrible devices of ancient, magical might. The land melted and curled under their forces, and marching troops pounded new roads with their very footsteps. They reconquered their ancestral lands, and charged into demon and godly territory..._

* * *

><p>The screen faded to black, save for a bit of Chinese and accompanying subtitles. Almost immediately, the half-full theater seemed to empty as patrons shuffled out during the break. The pair of teenagers were in the rearmost row of seats, cradling tubs of popcorn in their laps and overpriced cups of soda in the armrest. Fortunately the floors were not sticky.<p>

When the film first started, Saneda started up another giggle-fit. She seemed to find all kinds of things funny, the dialogue, the special effects, even the plot. Once the story really got going, she calmed down. Now that everyone was up and stretching, she dropped a handful of popcorn into her bucket. "Really? an old-time intermission?"

Shinji glanced at his phone, trying to suppress a small grin. "It is a three hour movie..."

"Oh, good point." Her nose scrunched up, giving the blank screen a mild, amused glare."Why do they keep acting like we only care about the guys with superpowers? I want to see more of the drunk general and the warrior!" She _pouted_, so severely that Shinji couldn't completely stifle the laugh. His date turned that glare on him next, somehow pouting harder. There was no way he could keep from laughing.

When his laughter died down, Saneda looked up at him through her eyelashes. Her expression was over done, exaggerated and almost cartoonish, but that cool, thinking part of his mind pointedly reminded him _teenager_. A beat later, it came back with _Teenage girl._ He almost didn't quite hear her question. "So... Are you having fun?"

It took him completely by surprise, but he really had been. Saneda was just... Nice. The movie was fun, and he didn't feel so afraid anymore. She dropped her blatant, demure look for a leading expression. It took him less than a second to get the hint. "...But?"

She looked back down at her knees, with an almost naughty smile. "I kinda thought you'd be... More fun?" I mean, considering the whole episode."

Shinji had tried very hard to shove that memory hard into some dark corner and lock it up. It was bad enough that he kept trying to judge her... Measurements every time she moved. Normal teenage urges or not, it still made him feel unclean. But no matter how uncomfortable he felt, she asked him a question, and she was one of the people she owed an answer to. "You... Still wanted to go out with me even though I did all that?"

Saneda curled in on herself a bit more, blushing. Shinji had no trouble seeing it in the dark. "Well, yeah, it was kinda hot."

The girl on the other hand, had no way to see how badly Shinji's face contorted. How could anyone think _that_ was at all enjoyable? At the very least it was some form of assault, if not worse! Muscles in his cheeks and throat twitched madly. His brain failed to compute so completely, that his body reacted as well. "Buh?"

Saneda just stretched, lifting her arms straight up into the air. "A handsome hero sweeps over a dozen girls off their feet, but still takes no for an answer?" She let her hands drop back to her knees with a muted slap."I mean, it did start to get kinda scary, but that made it more fun." The grin she tried to throw his way was flirtatious, but her aim was off, hitting a wall just off to his left. "Afterwards, some NERV people explained everything. They said you had an accident with some new pilot training simulator. It 'strained your mind', They said something else about something-something-biology..."

"Metaphysical Biology...!" His distorted expression collapsed into a reflexive wince, closing his mouth. She probably didn't want to hear him ramble about academics. Instead though, her face lit up, grabbing onto the memory. "Yeah! that was it, There was a lot of jargon, but the blonde lady basically said it was like radioactive dyes, it let them 'see' your soul, which was the glowy gold stuff."

Shinji just blinked. Oh, so that was the cover story. She seemed oddly enthused by the topic, or maybe he was reading too much into her tone of voice. Maybe two universities in the world taught the curriculum. The boy just let that thought die off there, capping it off with a slow, toneless, "Ah."

He didn't say anything for a while. Then; "You thought it was hot?"

* * *

><p>All but oozing out of the theater on jellied legs, the two teenagers laughed, leaning against one hallway wall. Other moviegoers milled around them, not even noticing the two kids ona date. "That... was a pretty cool movie."<p>

Saneda just smiled at him, rocking on her heels once more. "Yeah... was hoping you'd have tried to kissed me already."

Shinji froze up in an instant, so quickly, his date and anyone nearby could hear the tendons in his spine crack. Saneda blinked, letting out a quick giggle. "Wow, Horaki-san was right, you are boring." Shinji's ego was a difficult think to poke, but there, she succeeded. It had been said it with a smile though, not unkindly.

The boy untwisted, buying into the joke with a mocking scowl. He screwed up his courage and indignation, suddenly caught by the mood the same as she was. "Boring! I am not!"

The girl's grin was downright _naughty._ "Alright, prove it then!"

Shinji felt his mind click into gear. He could be spontaneous! He could have fun and not be a boring bookish person! He could! He just needed to find something... He looked around the hallway full of people, most of them walking a bit listlessly after the epic film. Time seemed to slow down, if for no other reason than to mock him. He had no ideas. There were a few ushers waiting to clean up after the show, bathrooms, other showings...

_Wait a second_. He looked up at the theater across from them, then at his phone. The next showing was about to start, and as if by serendipity, the cleaning crew just walked out. Watching the ushers carefully, Shinji waved for his date to follow him, ducking into the alcove and into the next theater. A bit dismayed but curious, Saneda followed. The poster outside the door was in English, but neither teenager cared to read it.

Shinji couldn't help but glance at it though. _What kind of tag line uses 'Grim Darkness', really?_

* * *

><p>They tried to keep a straight face. They really tried, but it was nearly impossible. Both Shinji and Saneda knew English well enough to follow the movie, ignoring the terrible subtitles. But at that point they really didn't care. Barely ten minutes in and they couldn't keep their mouths shut. The rest of the theater wasn't much better. A handful of people were scattered around, most of them glaring at the two heckling kids way in back.<p>

If they had popcorn, they would've been throwing it. Shinji was just laughing. "I thought this was a space movie? Why is there an elf!"

Saneda giggled right along with him, "I don't know! So far all I've gotten is that everyone is evil, we're just supposed to root for the least evil guys."

Poorly thought out plotting and dubious CGI effects were ridiculed at length. Finally, the bickering pair were confronted by an usher. Shinji was struck by the fact that the man was _tin_y, though obviously older than him by several years. The pilot had never cowed anyone with his size before, and wasn't about to try. Armed with a flashlight, the theater employee gave the pair a menacing jab.

* * *

><p>It was late, far too late for the dinner they had planned. The theater manager kicked them out and told them not to come back. Neither of them thought it would stick. As it was, Saneda was going to be out past curfew. She gave her date a sappy, sad look. "My dad's gonna kill me for this. I just know it."<p>

Shinji just shrugged, at a loss for anything useful to say. Misato never set any time for him to come home, she just told him to stay safe. He felt the distinct impression she wanted to say more, but apparently held her tongue, somehow. He shook his head to clear it. "Well, we should get moving." After all was said and done, he was about as relaxed as he ever got.

He held out a hand to the girl. "Where do you live?"

Saneda grabbed on with a smile, moving in a half-step closer. "Southern City District, you?"

"Old Hakone, Northern City District." He looked at his phone, then up at the sky, snorting. Saneda looked up at him. "What?"

"Oh, I keep forgetting I have an internal clock." He started to look around then, not so much lost as simply turned around. Where was the nearest train station... No that wasn't going to work. He wouldn't have Saneda-san out any later than necessary. He hoped Misato and Section Two would understand. Looking up, he gave a short nod. He knew these buildings, most of them civilian high rises with windows and balconies. He gave Saneda's hand a quick squeeze. "Do you think you could do two favors for me?"

Something in his tone warded off any attempt to flirt, but even then she couldn't stop her mind wandering, just a little. She scrunched up her nose before answering. "I don't know, maybe?"

"First..." He let go of her hand before moving over to hook one arm behind her knees and another around her back, while her wrists were laid around his neck."I need you to hold on tight." Now it was Saneda's turn to blush furiously, giving him a weak nod. "Second... I'd like for you to close your eyes until I say open, okay?"

"O-Okay." She giggled reflexively, before taking a quick, steadying breath and screwing her eyes shut. "Ready."

Shinji tossed the girl up and down in his arms a few times, just an inch or so, to get a feel for her weight. As far as he was concerned, he might as well have been carrying a cloud. He looked up once more and nodded. He could do this. Magic carpet or no.

* * *

><p>She started screaming after the second jump, wind tore at her hair and clothes, but each leap was smooth and easy, and the landings were just as soft. As promised she kept her eyes closed the whole time, which was probably just as well, because just feeling and hearing what was going on bordered on <em>nearly impossible<em>. It seemed like the only things in her world was the sound of rushing air and the muted tap of shoe leather on something, until finally, everything stopped. She heard the crunch of gravel, and the wind now went its normal, sane direction of side to side instead of straight down.

"Alright, Saneda-san, you can open your eyes now." He said nothing about letting her go, and that was fine with her. She had no intention of letting go. Slowly, so very slowly, she let one eye crack open.

"...What the fuck." Shinji nearly dropped her, right there. He couldn't keep himself from laughing though. Saneda squirmed in his arms, slapping at his chest and pouting. "It's not funny! stop laughing! I mean it!"

Still laughing, he turned so his back was to the wind and held her a bit closer. The cold didn't bother him at all anyway. He apologized shortly thereafter. "I-I'm sorry, Saneda-san, it was just... Unexpected."

Despite everything, Saneda pouted like a champion, it was all she could do to cope with the current impossibilities. "Ass, I try not to swear around people who aren't used to it."

Shinji just laughed harder. "I've trained with a lot of soldiers, so I've heard worse."

With that little interlude finished, Saneda finally mustered up the wherewithal to start looking around again. They were high, really, really high. So high that the corners of the building had red blinking warning lights, so planes didn't crash into them at night. The air was bitingly cold and the wind was nearly constant. "Ikari-kun... where the hell are we?"

"On top of one of the skyscrapers." He walked over to the edge, still carrying her so she could see out into the city below. They weren't on the tallest building by far, but certainly a high one, fifteen stories or more. Her jaw hung slack, turning left to right and back. She tried to reconcile it, she really tried, but couldn't. She didn't see or hear anything like a harness or helicopter or anything like that, and everything she knew about Shinji told her he just, didn't do this kind of thing. No big staged productions. He came up with it on the spot. "...How?"

Stepping back from the edge, he let out a dry, bitter laugh. "There are a lot of questions you really don't want the answers to."

She let out a soft 'oh' of comprehension, looking out at the cityscape and horizon. "...How are we going to get down?"

He gave her the best smile he could manage, which was saying something. Her mouth closed with a faint click, caught up utterly. She barely heard him speak. "I'll handle that, you might want to keep your eyes closed though."

"O-Okay."

A quick spin around let him get his bearings, finding and then facing south. Saneda lived near Toji, so he could get them there easily. He took a few steps back, then a few more, until he thumped into the maintenance stairwell. Saneda just looked up at him, subconsciously wrapping her arms around his neck and shoulders again. "I-Ikari-kun, aren't we going to uh... Take the stairs? I mean, you have a key right?

He just shook his head. "No, no key. Like I said, you might want to keep your eyes closed."

It was his fault for not waiting for her to be ready. The wind suddenly changed direction, all but slapping her in the face and making her eyes sting. But now it was too late, she couldn't look away even if she wanted to. Shinji, her date, an only somewhat strange, handsome, heroic boy, was running towards the edge of a skyscraper roof, a hundred and sixty feet off the ground.

The scream clawed its way out of her throat even as her fingernails dug into his neck, he didn't even flinch. "I-Kaa-_Riiiii-!_"

His foot hit the parapet, and then they were airborne.

* * *

><p>Forty-two yards had been his maximum distance, last time they tested his jumping. The gap between the two buildings was a bit more than that, the building he wanted to land on was lower. He knew before even starting to jump that he'd land perfectly. Saneda screamed in his ear, euphoria and terror mixed up with adrenaline in one massive slurry. The pair sailed through the air for less than five seconds, but the time slowed down to a crawl. When Shinji landed, it wasn't loud or heavy, though he left footprints in the roof dust and gravel. The shock of impact soaked into his calves and thighs, and only Saneda's windblown hair marked the trip.<p>

Twenty more minutes of jumping ate up distance as well as altitude, until Shinji landed a block away from her home. She'd screamed herself hoarse the whole way, and for as much misery as she felt right now, she'd not have traded it for anything. That didn't stop Shinji from forming a few mudra and tapping the side of her neck. She'd be fine in the morning. They even made it before her curfew was up.

When she got to the door to her apartment, Saneda stopped just short of knocking on the door. Her throat was still too sore to laugh, but she smiled anyway and dashed towards him, throwing her arms around his middle and squeezing. He only froze for half a second, before hugging her back. Maybe girls and dating weren't so bad?

Then her hands wandered south and _squeezed._

* * *

><p>The following Monday, the Sun was shinning, birds were singing, and all was well in Tokyo-3. The pilots and their friends were on their way to school. Shinji was happier than Misato had ever seen before, and the fortress city was on its way back to being fully repaired. They were just about to start replacing the various armory structures lost fighting against the fourth Angel. It was normally a fascinating process, ensuring the modular city structure and retractable building systems integrated with new construction, but right now Misato didn't care one bit.<p>

She had coffee, a desk empty of paperwork, and maybe finally she'd be reconsidered for promotion. It was _weird_ being the same rank as most of the bridge crew, even if her job was entirely different. She turned to Ritsuko and toasted her friend. "So, how was your weekend?"

Someone, somewhere in Tokyo-3 put a battery into a cellphone, then turned that phone on. He dialed a number and hit send, then waited three seconds. The phone rang twice before someone picked it up.

He didn't even hold it properly, just speaking into the mouthpiece. He said just one word.

"Execute."

* * *

><p>Six, unadorned white vans entered Tokyo-3's range of municipal influence. They lacked license plates or tags, and their side windows were all blacked out. The MAGI registered these traits and several dozen more, their exact time to enter the city, how low they sat on their suspension, dimensions, weight, wind resistance, route, anything and everything filtered through their system. They thought, and kept thinking at length, spending whole seconds building a consensus.<p>

NERV's command center was flooded with yellow light as every screen dissolved into yellow and black pentagons, emblazoned with bold, impossible to miss signs of WARNING. There was no sound or bell though. Immediately everyone rushed to their positions, checking consoles for threat data and checking with observational posts around the city. Less than a minute later, everyone shouted 'all clear'.

Ritsuko rolled over in her chair to another terminal, an unlit cigarette between in her lips. Tapping a few keys, she nodded to herself while Misato stepped over. "Thought so. False alarm. It went straight to the conspiracy buffer." She leaned into skim the alert warning. "Anomalous entry pattern, six unmarked white vans entering the city at the same time. Statistical outlier."

Misato nodded, looking down at the three massive computers below. "Standard procedure is to open the MAGI up and double check, right?"

The scientist nodded, having already started grabbing tools. Maya was pulling out tablet computers and other portable interface devices. "That's correct. The MAGI will be down for about twenty minutes. Until then, everything's on automatic. May we proceed?"

That last question was directed up towards the commanders Fuyutsuki and Ikari. Gendo did not move, other than to say "Carry on."

* * *

><p>Other than lunch, physical education was Toji's favorite part of the day. It was here that he could actually feel invested in something, he could step up and make a contribution. It was fun, he was interested, <em>invested<em> in the moment. It was also the only place his track suit never looked out of place.

It didn't hurt that the girls swim class was held at the same time, on the rise near the athletic half of the quad. Kensuke was huffing and puffing next to him. Toji had barely even started sweating. He grabbed his friend by the arm and helped him up. "C'mon buddy, stand up straight and breath deep, you can do this."

Meanwhile, Shinji was sitting on the bench with a pile of books. NERV, that is to say, Ritsuko, had quite firmly declared he be exempt from physical classes. He'd outrun and out-jump everyone in the school, for starters. Instead he used his time to study more. Today it was a refresher on anatomy and infectious diseases.

Toji ambled over with Kensuke when they were finished with laps. "Oi, Ikari." The taller boy leaned over to scan the titles. "So when are you actually going to be a doctor?"

Laughing, Shinji moved his book over. "Not for years, I'd still need to go through all the required college and post graduate studies."

Kensuke pushed up his glasses while his breathing normalized. He had enough air in him to gasp out a question though. "Ikari, I have to ask- why all this?"

Shinji didn't answer him right away. Instead he looked off, past Kensuke. It was a good question. Why was he doing all of this?"I..."

Really thinking about it, it all came back to is father. Distant, cold, almost disdainful. It hurt to think about it, even now with all of these amazing, terrible things happening, his father barely registered his presence. Him explaining the need for secrecy was the longest conversation they'd ever had. He wanted his father to acknowledge him. Shinji looked up as his friends, and had another epiphany: thinking about his father didn't hurt as much. He still wanted the man's acknowledgement, so very badly, but now, Shinji realized he wanted other things.

He looked up at Toji and Kensuke, who were smiling at him. Misato may have been his first friend, but she practically forced her way into his heart and life. He didn't have much choice and didn't much care. These two goofballs though, those were his success. Hikari, even Rei too. More and more people flashed through his head. Shigeru, who'd yet to still regrow all his hair, or Fuyutsuki-Sensei, even Saneda, no, Ayumi-san.

_I want to be wanted... I want to be needed._

Standing, Shinji shook off his melancholy, stepping past his friends and waving them over to the basketball court. "I'll tell you later, Kensuke. C'mon."

Toji immediately started arguing about handicaps, pointing out that Shinji would need all the unfair advantages he could get. A muted crack slapped into their eardrums, bouncing around the stone and concrete school property.

Kensuke fell over with a bloody hole in his side. Then the screaming started.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> So Chapter 21 hits.


	22. Grit

It was business as usual at NERV. Ritsuko was hip-deep in Melchior, sorting through the junk data, tracing perception and branching decision paths. All but two of the big board holographic displays were turned off. Makoto was talking into his headset, coordinating with law enforcement and Section Two, looking for the six white vans. Any declared alert was checked, but normal operating procedure required the MAGI be put into diagnostic mode. If a false positive from the conspiracy buffer was left unaddressed, the supercomputers could run into a recursive loop, extrapolating more and more insane theories from the same data.

Misato leaned over the railing and smiled. "How's it coming?" Her friend waved without looking up. "Everything seems to be fine so far, there were six white vans, we have traffic camera images and the rest of the MAGI's perception data..."

Makoto broke in then, "Lieutenant, Doctor! Section Two is reporting an anomaly." Misato rushed over, anomalies were never good. She leaned over the other man's shoulder while he tapped in commands. A compressed map of Tokyo 3 appeared on his screen, marked out with six green lines crisscrossing the street grid. "Someone's been preempting the traffic lights. They're on a dumb system while the MAGI are down."

The lieutenant stared at the screen, biting one thumb. Twisting, she started snapping out orders. "Put up a traffic map on screen two! I want to see where the lights are going!"

Maya turned to task, a handful of keystrokes brought up the traffic map of Tokyo-3 one of the two larger screens. Laid out in a gird with markers for each light, the dumb system drew a path for each anomalies, each one probably being the white unmarked vans. Misato frowned at the screen. "This isn't a false alarm. Mobilize Section Two and get everything going!"

She turned to Aoba. "Pilot status?" The operator cupped his hand over a headset mouthpiece. "At the school as far as we know, we're getting some radio and cellular interference. "

Misato shifted her focus back to the screen and stared at the six crawling lines. They passed through one familiar intersection, then another. Her face fell, along with her voice, growing thick with resignation and dread. "Please no, don't turn, don't. Our luck can't be that bad."

The nearest line turned and headed north, right for Tokyo-3 Municipal Junior High School.

* * *

><p>Toji had been friends with Kensuke long enough to recognize the sound of a gunshot when he heard one. Everything seemed to snap into a sort of distant, crystal focus. His best friend just got shot. Kensuke <em>got shot<em>. His best friend was bleeding on the ground and he was standing there like a _moron_. The smaller boy slid to his knees and hunched over, folding into a fetal curl, shuddering.

Behind and above the three boys, Hikari was at the side of the pool fence, with her fingers hooked into the chain links and screaming her lungs out. The swim class girls were bawling as well, clinging to anything they could hold. Teachers and the seniors grabbed the younger teens and dragged them away, some falling into the water and swimming back.

More gunfire echoed off around the school, and more voices were cutoff mid-cry. Dead or not, it was worse not knowing. Toji turned back to the gunmen. Motion, everything that was going on felt slow, like the world had been drowned in thick syrup. Shinji's eyes were wide and he was screaming at him and Kensuke. The pilot had that funny glow lamp on his head again, he could only _barely_ see it.

A burst of a sub-machine gun stitched a line across the quad, spraying chips of concrete into Toji's bare legs. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the class rep dive into the pool. Everyone still around was screaming and running. Kensuke was still bleeding on the ground, twisting up to look towards the main driveway. Finally, Toji saw them. Two white vans jumped the sidewalk and started tearing across the grass dividers, heading deeper into the school property. Another van skipped into the quad, where five men spilled out of open doors, waving guns. Was the one that shot his friend here? That didn't make any sense, where did that come from...?

Those five men were soldiers, maybe, they were dressed in a mix of gear and guns, and full face masks. All five moved together, as pairs when they could. Shifting between cover and staying low. Off in the distance, Toji heard sirens and the screech of rubber. More bad guys? A sixth man stepped out of the van holding a clipboard. Glancing left and right, Toji realized Kensuke and Shinji were the only ones left in the quad. There were more muted pops echoing behind the other buildings.

The five carrying guns split up to cover the three teenagers,only their eyes and gun muzzles peeking out from behind cover. The man with the clipboard ambled along sedately, glancing between the boys and what was in his hand. He said something in a rapid language they couldn't understand, but it sounded European, Toji and Shinji picked out a couple of familiar sounding loan words. Something in Toji's leg twitched, and he began to think. I have one shot, I can make it to the lead guy in less than four seconds... If I'm lucky I can get a gun and...

Two of the attackers split off, twisting around to take cover from behind. More gunfire rattled off in the distance. It sounded different, maybe another kind of gun? Kensuke, tears in his eyes and glasses cracked on the ground, laughed. "Section Two!"

The NERV security force charged in, spilling out of their black armored car and taking cover. Another white van charged in, revealing five more bad guys armed with shields and assault rifles. The man with the clipboard stood tall, utterly unconcerned. Kensuke squinted through tears and agony, groaning. He knew what they were pulling out of the van. "A squad automatic weapon. A fucking _machine gun_."

The weapon tore into the Section Two vehicle, and the agents hiding behind it. Armor was not a guarantee of survival. Clipboard looked at his files, then at the three teenagers, then back at the paper. Finally, he pointed at Shinji.

* * *

><p>For a time, the Third Child had been trained almost daily for any number of situations. Through all of that though, they hadn't actually covered <em>being held hostage.<em> Oh, he knew the Section Two procedures, but that assumed the security force wasn't being gunned down at that moment. He glanced sidelong at Kensuke, flexing that extra inner perception. A gunshot wound, obviously enough. It hit the lower abdomen right above his left hip, missing vital organs and arteries. His friend was lucky, if he got treatment soon, he'd be fine. Right now though, he was in serious risk of bleeding out.

A dozen or more books on military strategy and tactics were useless. He could quote half of them from memory, but _knowing the words_ didn't mean anything without the action to back it up. And now that it was obvious they wanted _him_, the chances of his friends making it out alive were getting smaller and smaller. Every bit of sage advice told him he had two options, and both of them _sucked_.

Unfortunately, much like Toji, he was three seconds away from five men with rapid-fire weapons and one with a clipboard. Three seconds was far too long a time between not-being-shot and being-shot. Clipboard pointed at Shinji again and snapped off orders. One of the soldiers broke cover and pulled out a handgun, walking up to Toji and leveling it at the boy's kneecap.

Toji tensed, dug in with his toes and tried to bolt, he really did, but the man was experienced if not trained, and had no trouble matching Toji's movement. Shinji tried to dash too, even faster and harder. He left a track of torn rubber and plastic behind him, abrading through his shoe soles with each step. He was fast, tests proved it. But he wasn't faster than a speeding bullet, especially one fired two feet away from its target.

A single nine-millimeter round lashed out of the barrel towards Toji's knee. The boy faced the attack with eyes open and focused. The air seemed to shimmer, like a hot, humid day. With a biting, almost electric crackle, a line drew itself across the quad, scoring a razor-sharp edge in the concrete slabs. The bullet slammed into thin air. It held there for a moment, vibrating against empty space, before it fell to the ground with a muted clink.

Clipboard stared at the bullet, as did the other five gunmen. He snarled something unpleasant, and the shooter growled, raising his weapon up to Toji's face. He pulled the trigger once, twice, three times and more, until the slide locked back. One slug stopped right in line with Toji's eye, and he could clearly see the tip deform against empty air. S_o, that's what 'Suke means by 'hollow point'._

The barrier then snapped into focus as a crackling, amber tinted hexagon, half dug into the pavement. Shinji slid and fell, rolling one shoulder into the _AT Field_ and yelping. His bare arm brushed the energy and he felt his whole side go pleasantly numb. Shaking it off he pulled back, his shoes half destroyed after two strides, trying to save Toji.

Rei practically floated from down on high, dripping wet and still wearing her school-issue swimsuit from class. Her hair was undone, but she pulled a soggy hair tie off her wrist and started to pull her hair back. At that point Ayanami could've been Amaterasu herself, for all Toji cared. The crackling pane of energy between the teenagers and certain death held up to bullets, it seemed. Shinji scrambled over to help Kensuke, pulling the boy around by the armpits.

More soldiers showed up, the team earlier with the _fucking machine gun_, bringing the total number of bad guys up to nine. They seemed gleeful, all of the sudden, never mind the _glowing orange energy field_. Clipboard was ducking behind cover, giving orders. The teens could pick out the English words 'First and Third', which seemed self explanatory. They wanted the pilots.

Well Toji wasn't going to let anyone take anything, because he was a god-damn _man_ and you don't _do_ shit like this when a _man_ is around! In the panic, some of the other PE students knocked over a ball caddy, spilling its contents all over. On a slight incline, one basketball finally wandered its way over, thumping obligingly into Toji's foot.

It got very quiet for a few moments, only sirens in the distance and the dwindling screams of retreating students. Rei stood between Shinji, Toji and Kensuke and the nine heavily armed soldiers.

* * *

><p>The command center was flooded with alert lights and warnings, but no sirens. Those had been shut off more than ten minutes ago. Ten minutes was an eternity in combat, <em>nations<em> fell in less than half that. Satellite coverage was limited over Tokyo-3, mostly as a security measure. Right then, Misato would've loved to have been the old United States with their lovingly maintained network of eyes in the sky. She sighed and cut that thought off.

She spun, twisting between the three operators and waving for them to give her something, anything.. Maya was busy trying to squeeze some useful f unction out of the city's infrastructure systems. Right now her job depended on those two men delivering the information she needed. Hyuga leaned back from his monitor. "We're working as fast as we can, Ma'am, Traffic is blocking Section Two reinforcements."

Aoba added his own report, tapping on his console. Misato could hear the crackle of gunfire over the radio. The tech tried to push his fingers through his hair, to make up for his level tone. "We're getting scattered reports from agents on site; the school is under attack."

Below, Ritsuko called up using the intercom. Melchior was still down for another ten or fifteen minutes. "We have procedures in place for this sort of situation..."

Misato leaned down, pressing the heel of her hand on the transmit button. "I'm not _really _worried about Shinji, not directly." She sighed, refusing to get further into rut of wishing for things she didn't have. "I'm worried about his friends and the rest of the civilians. Shinji may be forced to go glowy." She glanced up at the Commander. Her newest best friend's father was _smiling_. It had been bad enough during Shinji's first day in Tokyo-3, and the Angel attack. That had been blatant, gross manipulation. She hated the necessity of it.

Bad enough that the commander didn't seem to give two shits about his own sun, but now he's _smiling_ about an attack on the school? Right then, she wanted nothing more than to march up those stairs and punch those glasses right off his smug face and ask what the _hell_ was wrong with him. Shinji, Rei, Toji and Kensuke needed her more though, every kid in that school needed her. Her name was already in military history as a tactical and strategic genius. Now it was time for her to prove it.

The head scientist broke in once more. "Can we access the pilot's cell phones?" Maya answered, making sure everyone heard. She explained that there was some sort of localized jamming, or the cell network was down in that area. They had options, but none of them were exceptionally fast. Section Two was already en route to any number of important facilities, hoping to gain manual control.

The dark-haired operator twisted in his seat, shaking the head set in his hand. "Even if we could do it right now, it'd be a bad idea. A ringing phone might spook these guys, or give away the kids position... But, we can activate their phones, just turn them on and set to listen."

The Operations Director nodded, folding her arms over her chest. "We'll just have to trust the kids until we can act."

* * *

><p>One long second later, the invaders shifted further into cover and opened fire. This time Toji and Shinji did duck, but Rei's shield was holding, and a veritable wall of bullets began building in front of them, accompanied by flashes of orange light. Shinji tore his shirt part and wadded it around Kensuke's wound. Toji stood up and marched right up to the shield, screaming defiance.<p>

Two soldiers armed with sub machine guns broke off and tried to flank. Kensuke pushed himself up on one arm and looked at the line scored into the ground. He blinked, gulping down air and trying to find his voice. All the while, Kensuke recognized the sounds of those weapons, all various knock-offs. Aside from the heavy machine gun, their opponents had fifteen and thirty round magazines, and now the military geek had a handle on their reload intervals.

"T-They're going to flank us! Rei! Fall back to the right, your right! Keep that thing up and shift it facing your right, forty-five degrees when I say!" The First Child nodded, her expression never wavering, taking a few bare-foot steps to the side. Shinji pulled at Kensuke's arm, hooking it over his shoulders. and pulling the boy to his feet. These guys had good training, it would be a risk, but with most of them reloading and two of them moving to flank... "Rei! _Now_!"

The shield dropped, leaving Toji free to move in space that was blessedly free of hot lead. Two soldiers shifted their aim to the more vulnerable side. In that split second, he acted.

Since that damn ball rolled into his hit his foot he'd been waiting to do this. Shoving everything he had into one leg, Toji twisted and kicked that basketball right into the face of one of the gunners. The rubber projectile slammed into the their head, throwing his elbow into the other man's face. Toji was on them less than a second. A burst of gunfire blew past his face, drawing a hot line of blood along one cheek. He made a mental note to throw up a few times about that, but Toji powered on through, slamming his fist into the nearest head, shattering the mirrored visor into the jerk's eyes.

Hopped up on adrenaline and righteous fury, Toji grabbed the blinded man by his collar and belt and heaved him bodily into the embankment, aiming to crack his head open on that concrete slab. The air seemed to bounce and clap, before another crackling snarl hit their ears, and a new line was carved into the world. The single terrorist to became two halves of terrorist. The corpse's lower abdomen slammed into the shield-wall and a spray of blood coated the invisible surface, dripping wetly.

The barrier, angled as it was, cut into the artificial hill itself, cleaving through the fence and nicking the pool. A trickle of water started leeching out through concrete and soil. Clipboard was still shouting orders, while the heavy machine gunner was trying to get a bead on Rei. Toji felt his gorge rise, but adrenaline kept him focused. Scrambling around, he ran, but not before hooking a gun strap around his arm and dragging the weapon along.

They were safe enough behind Rei's shield, no amount of sub-machine gun fire could tear through it, Though Rei slowly but surely was reaching the limits of her endurance. A noticeable slant to her eyebrows, her the corners of her mouth tugging down millimeter by millimeter. Then the terrorists decided to get smart. Kensuke shoved Shinji off. "I'm fine! Go get help!"

Shinji was out of position, moving to help Toji. Even though he scrambled faster than any human had right to, he couldn't double-back in time.

Somehow, through the electric sound of the AT field and the roar of gunfire, everyone there heard the muted ting of cheap metal tapping into something. A flash of silver caught Kensuke's eye. _Oh shit._ The grenade itself was banked beautifully off of a concrete-ringed bit of landscaping, the fuse whistling inside the simple metal shell. The spoon clinked and rattled during the tumble. The grenade bounced to a stop behind Ayanami, and the shield. Kensuke was already up and moving, holding one arm into his side. No time to fumble for it, the fuse was nearly burnt down to nothing. Digging deep for that surge of strength, Kensuke _kicked_ the grenade away.

Rei seemed to blink, both in surprise and approval. Shinji and Toji turned to look at the explosion, utterly befuddled. The Third Child got shot in the shoulder for his trouble.

* * *

><p>Being shot, for real, <em>really<em> hurt.

Throughout all the simulations and three Angel attacks, Shinji had become fairly inured to pain, or so he thought. There was his Exalted resilience to consider as well. Combat knives had trouble cutting him sometimes. "Like cheap, over-cooked steak." One of his instructors had said. That had been an interesting day, with much Misato-fussing afterwards.

Now, he felt a nine-millimeter slug drill its way into his arm and scrape against bone in utter clarity. Blood pumped and every frantic heartbeat sent another jolt of pain through his shoulder. Hurt or not, he had to keep moving, had to keep going. He was close enough now to negate the range advantage, jumping forward to land with both feet into the nearest attacker's chest. His bare heels slammed into a bulletproof vest, cracking the ceramic plate insert in one go.

A handful of yards away, Toji rolled to his feet, scraping his arms and legs and fumbling with the gun. All the while trying to find the grips and trigger and not shoot himself in the process. Flailing wildly, he got his other hand wrapped around the fore grip and brought it to bear. No technique, no accuracy, just fired from the hip. The recoil nearly drove the gun out of his hand.

Between the third's dropkick, and now hot lead whipping past them, the soldiers lost their momentum. Clipboard waved to his men, and they began to fall back, peeling off one and a time and firing short bursts. Some at Shinji, forcing him to scramble away, and others at Toji, making him run back for cover. The rest targeted Rei, forcing her to hold the shield. The man Shinji had speared with his legs coughed up blood; his ribs were probably broken. Two down, six retreating. Toji was doing his part to keep _their_ heads down, growing more confident with the weapon as Kensuke shouted instructions. Rei walked over to help Kensuke up, ignoring any stray rounds that cracked into her AT field.

Finally, the attackers ducked off out of sight, leaving the wounded man behind. Shinji wasn't sure why, but he stripped the man of anything he could guess as useful, destroying the vest and web gear in the process. Behind him, Toji and Rei helped Kensuke back into the nearest door. The pilot threw his ruined shoes away, padding off after his friends.

* * *

><p>Tokyo-3 only had one high school of note. There were far more buildings than people to use them, and most of those were unmanned armory structures at that. The man known as Handler sat on one of those buildings, on top of an insulated, non-reflective mat. Opened cases representing several hundred thousand dollars of equipment spread out around him. Most of it had been put in place days ago, well before he even arrived in Tokyo-3.<p>

The portable pattern detection device had been going crazy for the past five minutes. This particular model looked something like a GPS, a screen and small keypad set into a plastic case. It also was not actually part of NERV's detection grid. Accuracy was exchanged for a degree of anonymity. At the same time, it also had a much more unique feature; Red pattern detection, and cross-phase detection. In other words, it could differentiate between humans, fully realized 'Angels', and the theoretical mixed pattern of hybrids.

Of course, Handler's job wasn't to interpret the data. If it hadn't been color coded, he wouldn't have known if the gadget detecting anything. He thumbed a control; Lots of red, as expected for a city. He pressed the button again, seeing no clear blue patterns. The third time showed a _tiny_ smear of ultraviolet? The screen was not very high quality. In any event, he made sure the sensor was recording.

What he saw through cameras and telescope proved to be far more interesting. A blue-haired girl was floating, and seemed to swing around shield made of flickering orange energy. That seemed like pretty conclusive evidence of Angelic super soldiers, didn't it?

* * *

><p>The four teenagers made it into the locker room without incident, before pushing out into the nearest hallway. Kensuke hung between Toji and Rei, with his arms draped over their shoulders. Shinji padded along on bare feet. His bullet wound had already stopped bleeding, <em>willed<em> to stop. The slug would have to be cut out later, but it didn't interfere with his range of motion at all.

Kensuke coughed, licking his lips. He was already far too pale for anyone's liking.

Blundering around a corner, Shinji nearly ran head-first into one of the invading gunmen. Behind that man was a throng of terrified students. Some he knew in passing, a few of his classmates. More than a few were girls in swimsuits, they must've been caught on their way out of the pool. Another soldier was at the other end of the hallway, waving his gun and shouting at the students, forcing them into another door leading deeper into the school. The first terrorist stumbled back, almost tumbling into the teenagers behind him. One pigtailed girl broke out of the crowd, screaming. It was Hikari.

Toji skid into the hallway with the gun at his hip, daring the other man to go for his weapon. The other kids started to panic, screaming and stampeding past the other, far away solder. Shinji shoved his confusion aside and reached around, yanking Hikari up into the air by one arm. Wrapping one arm around her middle, he scrambling back, her school bag slapped the pilot in the face as he turned.

Rei and Kensuke peered around the corner, only to watch as Toji lowered the weapon, reaching out for Hikari even as Shinji dashed past. That lapse was all their opponent needed, bringing his own weapon to bear. Radical reinforcements charged through the mob of students, herding them with gun stocks to the ribs and shoulders, while their rear guard took aim at Toji.

Ozone and the chalky smell of drywall and old dust filled the air. Another AT field snapped into being, cutting a line one molecule thick through the walls, lockers, widows, drop ceiling and floor. Rei stepped up, bracing the shield with sheer force of will. Toji and Shinji hauled Hikari to her feet and tugged her around the corner, scooping up Kensuke along the way. The blue haired girl was left alone facing one man, and more were charging toward her. Children screamed all around, growing fainter and fainter with each passing moment.

Taking one step back, she kept the shield up. No one had shot at her yet, but the soldiers had pressed one hand to their ears, listening for something. The girl took another step back, and more, always facing the shield. It was slow going, but it couldn't be helped. Less than two yards from the corner, pain exploded in her leg. Red blotches spread across her right thigh, then her left. She coughed into her hand, once, and her hand came away wet with blood. The AT field was holding, but she wasn't. Blocking out the sensation, she continued her backward march, out of sight.

As soon as she was around the corner, the field dropped, followed by a long, tumultuous crash. When the terrorists ran after her, they saw the hallway around the corner had been _caved in_.

* * *

><p>Confusion reigned supreme. Men with guns shoved them around, deeper into the school, down one hall, then another, sometimes going in loops. Students and teachers were shuffled into classrooms with cameras. Black-clad soldiers strung thick cables across the walls, or tore them open to get at support beams and more. Duffel bags full of things, weapons and tools and more.<p>

Eventually the hostages were corralled in the one place big enough to hold them.

* * *

><p>Once everyone was out of immediate danger, they switched so that Shinji carried Kensuke, while Toji and Rei helped Hikari along. She was breathing rapidly, sucking down air as fast as her lungs could take it. If it got any worse, shock was a real possibility.<p>

It took a bit of doing, moving through the hallways and checking every corner and door. But, they did finally manage to make it into one of the empty classrooms. Toji's thick jacket had been wrapped around Kensuke's middle, both as a bandage and a sponge. A blood trail would've led a search party right to them. It was now nearly noon, and the whole school was hot and muggy. Hikari dashed in and checked the windows, glancing left and right. She shook her head; nobody around. She then started to close the blinds, one by one, checking outside each time and making sure to not jostle them. Any movement could give them away.

Shinji laid his friend down on the teacher's wide desk. It wasn't a surgical theater by any stretch, but after that testing accident, he could handle this. Kensuke groaned, but did his best not to move. He was paying for that grenade stunt earlier too. Toji bounced from toe to toe, hissing urgently. "Shit! Shit! He's losing a lot of blood Ikari, you can do that doctor thing right!"

It was just like those games he played with the other interns and nurses. What would you do? What would you do... He looked around a bit for anything he could use. He could, if he really wanted to, just go ahead and treat the injury right then and there, not even needing bandages or clean water. That'd be fine if Kensuke were in a hospital or there was an ambulance nearby. Right now he needed to be stable, to be stabilized, so Shinji needed his powers _and_ something else.

Then his eyes fell on Hikari, and her school bag. He'd have time to be embarrassed later. Right now he was remembering a story one his trainers had told him. The old man was an impact war veteran, and something of a military trivia buff. Urban combat was ugly, messy and enduring. You were often out there for hours, if not days or weeks, and your supplies weren't bottomless. On the other hand, civilian infrastructure, which was to say supermarkets and convenience stores, was supposedly a godsend.

The pilot nodded, tugging away the soaked jacket and Kensuke's own gym T-shirt. "Yeah! I just... I just need a second. I can't just touch someone and go 'you're healed!'." He reached over and started tapping a few points around the boy's torso. He'd already checked once before, but it never hurt to redo a diagnosis. The way everything reacted to his touch told him everything he needed to know. Mechanical injuries were almost always easy like that. "Gun shot, obviously. Clean through-and-through... Missed vital organs, but you're bleeding pretty badly." He didn't bother turning his friend over. "Exit wound is... Large."

He looked up, glancing at the corners of the room. There were two sliding doors at either corner, leading back out into the hallway. If they had been western style doors, they might've had a chance to block them. Shinji shook his head. He might've memorized _The Art of War_, but he definitely didn't understand it. Kensuke was their go-to guy for military tactics and strategy. Until NERV and Section Two started acting, they needed the geek more than anything.

Shinji reached over and grabbed the bag, all but yanking it off of Hikari's shoulder. Dumping out onto the desk, next to Kensuke. Hikari puffed up mightily, but now wasn't the time for it. Shinji was in that state of no-thought, extensive training and instinct took over. He didn't have time to be scared, and neither did his friends. Kensuke was laughing, trying to at least. "I know where this is going... If she has one..."

Finally, the pilot found what he was looking for; a tampon. The class rep looked about ready to tear into the boys, but kept quiet. The... whatever they were, gunmen, terrorists might be right outside. He started to lay out the plan. "I heard this from my trainers. Old time field dressings were a lot like these. It'll help stop the bleeding." While he worked, their designated medic looked up at Kensuke. "I don't have a way to make this hurt any less."

The pilot raised his hands and folded his fingers into a short series of mudra, before pressing his hands into Kensuke's side. He flexed his inner core of power, focusing his will onto one razor point. Wet, fresh blood squashed over his fingertip; while dried layers cracked and sloughed off. Kensuke groaned, but didn't squirm, yet. Just from that, the injury felt better, as far as Shinji could tell.

Still serious, but what strength Kensuke had was being focused on his own survival. Even then, the bloody teenager started to squirm, gritting his teeth. Shinji's face scrunched up in a scowl. "Toji, Rei, hold him down, thrashing would just make this worse." In his free hand, he held up the tamp, squinting. How did you open one of these...? The old man never told him that part. The class rep just snatched it out of his hand with an impatient sigh. She got over her shock fairly quickly. "What do you need to do?"

Shinji pointed at the entry wound. "We use that to stop the bleeding and dress the wound. it's not the best plan ever, but I want to hedge my bets." He waved as his forehead. Hikari sighed and readied the tamp. "Get ready, there's going to be a lot of blood. I'll make sure the wound is all set." He held his hands on either side of the wound. "Now."

Hikari stepped forward and pressed the tamp into the wound. She didn't recoil or shriek at the blood coating her fingers. Kensuke clenched everything he could, but Rei and Toji held firm.. Someone had the foresight to stuff the sleeve of Toji's jacket into his mouth. The geek nearly passed out from the pain. Once the improvised dressing was in place, Hikari pulled back, letting Shinji take over.

As soon as Shinji touched the tamp, the wound seemed to staunch itself. He lifted Kensuke's side to touch the ragged edges of the exit wound. There'd be a scar, but he could take care of that later. Their impromptu treatment seemed to stretch on forever. Everyone snuck frantic glances at both doors, or the windows. The air was dead and still. The invaders must've shut off the air conditioning. Finally, Shinji pulled his hands away, slick with blood and dripping on the floor. Hikari, Rei and Toji leaned over to look at their friends' wound.

Kensuke craned his neck, sitting up on his elbows to look at his own gut. "Huh."

The pilot sighed, looking around the classroom some more. "We're going to need more bandages... And a blood transfusion, soon." The others looked at him. "I can only do so much with just my hands. It's just something I can do. I need more tools to deal with mechanical injuries like this."

"So I'm stuck here?" Before anyone could answer him, Kensuke looked around. "No.. No, Okay, idea." He pointed behind Rei. "The teacher's chair. It's got wheels." The other teenagers turned to their medical expert.

Shinji shrugged, but nodded a moment later. "It's the best we can do. For now, don't move." He turned back to Kensuke, giving his friend the best stern look he could muster. Which, admittedly resembled less a stern look and more a displeased kitten. Toji and Hikari got a weak laugh out of it. When they were finished, he told his friend to stay put. "Any rest is good rest, right now." Kensuke gave him a jaunty salute and tried to hold back his amusement, clutching his stomach.

They weren't safe, not in the least, but now at least they had time to take stock. Three two boys in gym clothes and another in a tank top and track suit pants, then two girls in school-issue swimsuits. Hikari having managed to grab her bag before being caught probably saved Kensuke's life. Toji had held onto the gun, while Shinji had pulled two full magazines from the man he knocked down. One weapon wasn't going to protect them for long.

Toji suddenly turned green and scrambled for the nearest waste bucket. Hikari slid over, rubbing his back while the boy revisited his breakfast. He looked sick and haggard, with a bit of bile dripping down his chin. His best friend got shot right in front of him, and then he killed a man, on accident, but still. Guns and terrorists and _fuck. _Hikari was shivering next to him, even as she tried to sooth him.

Coughing, he gave the class rep a sickly smile. "You guys aren't gonna tell anyone I threw up, are you?" She gave him a wan smile and shook her head. Kensuke let out a short laugh. "Your secret's safe with me."

Shinji sighed, wiping the blood away on his gym shorts. "Anyone else hurt?" Toji was covered in scrapes, but no flesh wounds. Rei however looked terrible, with blotchy patches of red just under her skin. He twisted, looking her over for a quick diagnosis. At least she had visibly obvious symptoms... That... Made no sense. Rei was something like a cut branch that grew roots, not a planted seed. Both of them grow the same way and eventually became trees, but if you were looking at them under the dirt, the differences were massive.

For one, Rei had an artificial immune system, and a really good one at that. It was like she wasn't carried to full term. Normally a child got their initial supply of antibodies and such from their mother, in utero. Had something gone wrong during her mother's pregnancy? He shook his head, just an incidental, if fascinating observation. The hemorrhaging far more pressing. The blotches spread all over her body, so far hadn't yet broken the skin. He traced the branches for the root cause. Just by looking at her, he knew, _knew_ that he was seeing a sympathetic reaction to her ego barrier dissolving. Barriers were mostly a theory, but it made sense; Her body was falling apart because she was losing her grip on her identity.

Of course in reality, that _made no sense what so ever_, not in a sane universe at least. Your identity wasn't necessarily immutable, but it certainly didn't just fall apart! The Exalt let out a ragged sigh before stepping over to Rei. She'd taken a seat, staring at her thighs. When his shadow crossed over, her eyes snapped up, staring at his face. She blinked once, then again. A bit of blood dripped out of her nose.

She looked back down at her hands, and the splotches. Shinji just stared, not at all sure what to say. The girl saved him the trouble. "Akagi-Sensei gave me auto injector syringes. They are in my school bag."

Toji and Hikari joined them, standing side by side with an arm around each others middle. Still on the desk, Kensuke hiked himself up on his elbows. "Where's your bag?"

"Classroom 2-A."

* * *

><p>An hour into the siege, the invaders listed their demands. Misato had to give them credit; they were crafty. The way the camera was set up, NERV could only see one invader. They could definitely see cafeteria full of students. The camera panned back and forth to make sure of it. The senior staff were content to watch a muted copy of the feed. Screen captures were drawn off and put aside for the MAGI to run facial recognition, primarily on the students. There would be a lot of families that needed to be informed.<p>

So far, there had been no sign of the pilots.

Everything he said was directed at the Commanders. Another group on the lower levels was transcribing it, before piping that up to her station and the rest of the senior staff. More interesting to Misato was the man's gear; a mix of equipment from no less than three nations. Cold-War era Russian fatigues, Iranian web gear, Israeli knock off weapons, and Chinese bootlegs of American IR/NV goggles. In short, maddeningly generic. That suggested either mercenaries, or someone who wanted to make it look like mercenaries. Paranoia paid at NERV.

On top of all that, the man used a vocoder, making his voice drone and rumble like a machine. The Magi _could_ scrub it, but they only just got it back up. For now, there were much higher priorities. Gendo was no dummy either. The terrorists were sending live video, primarily to remind NERV of the hostages. Gendo on the other hand refused to reciprocate, relying purely on a sound-only connection. It made planning things much easier, and with Gendo up on his balcony, there was very little risk of being overheard.

She hoped Gendo was smiling about how outclassed those idiots were. She didn't want to think about the alternative.

In the meantime, Section Two had secured the cellular station. It turned out there was no jamming. It was just bad luck that the network around the school was down for maintenance. The technician fixing the tower had no idea anything was wrong. Now though, Misato was starting to get options. The JSSDF was already laying down their support; more than a few were stationed locally. Some of their kids went to that school as well.

Misato bit her thumb. Any minute now, the MAGI would be ready. An entire city was going to unleash total, uncompromising hate. The only thing she needed, more than any other possible asset, was someone who could _see the school with their own damn eyes._

Above in their own balcony, the two commanders listened, and waited.

* * *

><p>The speaker's voice was distorted, but not so much as to be unintelligible. He spoke English flawlessly, to the point of suggesting it as a second language. Neither commander flinched when they saw the throngs of children, all sitting on folded legs, or crowding into and on the tables as best they could. The initial shock had worn off, but now an entirely new set of terrors began eating away at them.<p>

The demands were simple. Their point of contact made no claims of responsibility, but that wasn't entirely unexpected. "We require a public statement regarding why NERV has not mobilized to investigate the Angel sightings around the world. Further, we require why NERV did not alert the rest of the world before hand. You maintain and control the global interception system."

Delay was unacceptable in this situation. Taking any time to confer or discuss their response would immediately sacrifice the initiative. Maintaining that momentum, that sense of effortless call and response was key, above all else. Gendo thought faster than his opponents, thought and _decided_. He forced his opponents to match his speed, to sacrifice careful deliberation for an illusion of competence. It was a subconscious response, one that Gendo ruthlessly exploited. The commander's grasp of the technique was masterful, but he learned it from Yui, and she was _sublime. _Ikari made up for it by being a better administrator.

Fuyutsuki watched as Gendo reached out and pressed the transmit button mere moments after the speaker finished talking.

* * *

><p>There were times Misato wished all the planning tables and such were in the actual command center, and not outlying rooms. It made some sense at least, the big board displays were more for Evangelion deployment and direction. Here, the light table and holographic projectors were far better suited to laying out the school grounds. A topographical map was laid out in one tank, while a top-down schematic hovered in front of the lieutenant.<p>

"Six vans, judging by the make and model, can hold seven men plus the driver..." She tapped the file referencing the vehicle's attributes. "If they went in there armed like I think, we're probably looking at six per van, thirty two hostiles."

Ritsuko sat in one corner, puffing on a cigarette. Misato was the military genius of the pair, but they worked best when able to bounce ideas off of each other. Fuyutsuki was patched in via intercom, offering his own insight. "With a force that size, they can secure a lot of ground."

Misato shook her head, not even registering that the sub-commander couldn't see her. "They won't spread themselves too thin. Right now they're safest in the center of the school. It's a castle. The school is a freaking natural castle." She waved at the topography. "Hills all over make an approach risky at best, suicidal at worst. The surviving agents on site already reported in; the enemy is armed with heavy weapons and possibly explosives, even anti-vehicle weapons." No one expected a _tank_ in the streets of Tokyo-3, but it paid to be prepared.

The scientist rolled over and started entering commands into the display. Blue dots started filling the cafeteria. "Between absences and those lucky enough to escape before the school was locked down, we've accounted for five percent of the student body." A red dot appeared, marking the one terrorist they had seen thus far. Eight more red dots appeared in the quad. "Before they were routed, Section Two reported eight attackers in this part of the complex."

"They aren't going to keep the kids in the cafeteria, it's too exposed." Misato stared at the map some more. "It really is a castle... You don't run from castles." She asked the sub-commander what he thought; were these guys fanatics? Did they sound like they'd die for the cause? Fuyutsuki said no. Instead the negotiator sounded professional, almost at-ease.

They _had_ to have an exit strategy. There wasn't anything _under_ the school, it wasn't part of the modular city blocks... Then, the courtyards started drawing her attention. They were big enough, but considering the city defensive systems... No, those were all meant for Angels. If you had a gutsy enough pilot... She looked up at her friend. "They're going to _fly_ out."

* * *

><p>The Third Child had mentally dubbed him as 'Clipboard', which was appropriate at that moment. In reality, he was 'Boss', the invasion leader. Until today, he knew none of these men under his command. Knew <em>of,<em> but never met. Their reputations were impressive, if vague, missing out in important details such as Who, and Where. That was a regrettable concession. He already had a... Quiet word with... Wad, the one that sniped the kid. Casualties were often unavoidable, but right now, their chances of success depended on _not_ salting the earth.

He ran through the mission brief one more time: Secure the grounds, establish control over the hostages. issue demands, and finally, prep for extraction. There was truth to the saying that 'no plan survived contact with the enemy', which was why the plan was simple and open-ended, relying on initiative instead of planning down to the second. They weren't the JSSDF's HRT force, and trying to force a scratch team to act like one was just asking for trouble.

No, right now it was best to let things take care of themselves. Give him a team and a few months. _Then_ you can ask about precision timed assaults and extensive tactical wankery. Getting everyone to the school in one go was something of a miracle, as far as he was concerned. The mission had already hit one snag, anyway. The pilots demonstrated that right in front of his eyes. He'd lost one man to Suzuhara and Ayanami, and another was left with broken ribs. Corpsman had said he'd survive, but that was it.

Now, their immediate concern was NERV. The radical leader had listed their demands not three seconds ago. Time seemed to stretch out in eternity. Ikari had a reputation for being, well, _evil._ He wouldn't put it past him to just let an entire school die as part of his agenda.

There was no crackle or distortion; their connection to the NERV communication hub was perfect. "My name is Gendo Ikari. I am the Supreme Commander of NERV. We have agreed to your demands. In return for the continuing safety of the pilots, we will forward all relevant data we have on the Angel sightings around the world, which you are free to verify with an independent, third party."

Off-camera, Boss turned to his second, a communication expert. Commo gave him a thumbs-up, leaning over the laptop and tapping at keys. They were receiving the data.

* * *

><p>They felt more than heard the steady click of the ticking clock. Toji stared at the timepiece, scowling. Most days he wanted it to just jump to last bell as if by magic. Right now he'd be happy with his alarm, tumbling out of bed and shaking off a bad dream. He could still taste bile in his mouth, and the back of his throat stung like a son of a bitch. Hardly any time had passed really, and there was nothing else to listen to except the sound of the clock and their own breathing.<p>

The kids had to move, sooner rather than later. The chance of discovery, capture and death was itself only part of their problem. Even though they'd stopped the bleeding, Kensuke was in a bad way. He was visibly woozy and sweating, and kept pulling his glasses off to rub his eyes. He admitted it was getting hard to keep his eyes open, everything was starting to go dim and grey.

Hikari, ever practical, was the first one to ask about their plans. She stood up next to the still kneeling Toji, keeping one hand on his shoulder. The others twisted in their seats to face her. "So, what do we do?"

Their medic shrugged, waving at the closed blinds and windows behind them. They were on the outer edge of the grounds near the low, rolling hills students used for lunch. "Run?"

Kensuke frowned mightily, rubbing at his nose. "We could, but that's open, uneven terrain out there. I don't want to deal with snipers if I can help it. And someone would have to carry me."

Shinji shrugged. "I can carry you, and Hikari too if necessary..." None of them doubted that, not after what they'd seen or been told. He looked at the nearest door. "We can't stay here much longer, they're going to start searching soon."

The quiet was _still_ agonizing. Even gunfire and screams would be preferable. Anything would help them focus, on fear if nothing else. Kensuke sighed before glancing at the public address speaker. "...I wonder why they haven't threatened us over the PA system. I mean, they must have hostages by now, right, the rest of the school?"

Toji twisted around, he'd been sitting for far too long. He stood up and started stretching, leaving the machine gun to hang by its strap. Kensuke winced, before reminding his friend about gun safety rules. His friend just blinked a bit, before he looked at the weapon and let out a soft 'oh' of comprehension. After setting the weapon aside, he got back to stretching. "Maybe NERV is keeping them busy." He switched legs. "What're they going to do, NERV I mean?"

The Third rubbed the back of his neck. He knew the basics, at least in passing. "Well, Section Two and the JSSDF should taking care of things, but this is a bad situation all around..." He looked at Rei, who'd been silent the whole time. She gave him a single, decisive nod.

Turning back to the others, something new crept into his voice. Each word was just a little bit more sure than the last, a bit more resolute."Even if we surrender, there's no guarantee they'll treat Kensuke. We have to take care of him before that happens. Rei too." His friends all stood or sat up straighter. It was so subtle even he didn't quite notice it.

Grabbing the gun, Toji looped the strap around one shoulder. Hikari stepped up next to him, one hand on his arm and smiling softly. Bloody, tired Kensuke just gave the pilot a wry wave. He turned to Shinji and slammed one fist into his other palm, grinning. " Right. So where to?"

Shinji pointed past a wall and deeper into the school. "Classroom 2-A" They'd have to cross over who knew what on their way. At least now they had a plan.

They divided up their immediate tasks after a quick huddle. Hikari and Rei checked on the doors, glancing out the windows before opening them up a crack. Toji and Shinji worked to pull the teacher's chair around, and then ease Kensuke into it. Toji's jacket was a total loss, having soaked through and dripping with blood. The boys just tossed it aside, though Shinji had to suppress the urge to throw it away properly. He was probably the only one who cared at the moment.

Kensuke bit off more than a few curses, trying very hard not to clench anything below his neck. Easier said than done. Despite everything, he landed in the chair with a muted thump, sending a new wave of agony through his torso. His vision swam and tears built up, but he waved it off with a tight, choking grin. That done, Shinji started lifting desks out of the way, clearing a path for their chair-bound friend. He didn't drag them, instead he held the seats over his head and laid them down as quietly as possible.

When everything was ready, they kids gathered around Kensuke's chair, just ahead of the door furthest from the collapsed hallway. Rei waved them forward; all clear. Toji stepped up to slide open the door when Hikari stood bolt upright, realization dawning plain on her face. "Nurse's office."

Shinji looked over his shoulder, blinking. Hikari was practical vibrating while she explained. "It should have everything we need for a blood transfusion, even our blood type records."

* * *

><p>"This still isn't adding up. Not one bit."<p>

Ritsuko looked up from her laptop terminal, blinking away monitor strain. Misato had been pacing around the table for nearly two hours now with a wireless headset draped around her neck. She kept worrying the microphone between her fingers.

The lieutenant rounded the corner of the table, huffing and stomping with her arms tense at her sides. It was_ almost_ like those times Kaji stood her up, or worse, brought along a second (or third) girl. Any other time Ritsuko would've been grinning. Misato didn't seem to notice either way. She waved her arm and brought up the school blueprints again, dragging her fingers through the lines of light. "The kids, hostages. There's _no reason_ to put them in the cafeteria."

"There are nearly three hundred people at that school, counting students and teachers. The cafeteria has..." She started counting. "Seven entrances, not counting windows. It's also just one story. An assault force could just punch through the roof."

She kept talking, not even waiting for Ritsuko to answer. Her friend just let her go, Katsuragi always surprised her when she started talking things out. "These guys are smart too; they're not using anything with a strong signal, so we can't intercept their radio chatter." The dark-haired woman hummed thoughtfully. "Sounds like they're using some form of relay, like a hard line with transceivers. It's what I'd do at least."

Misato blinked once, before a slightly twisted, dangerous grin tugged at her lips. She dashed off a quick message and sent it off to the JSSDF liaison.

Ritsuko raised one dark eyebrow, and almost didn't ask. She always did though. Misato's grin grew insufferable. "What did you do?"

"Oh, not much. Just a little suggestion to the HRT."

* * *

><p>Misato sighed and folded her arms over her chest. staring at the plans for a while longer before turning back to Ritsuko. "How's the MAGI look?"<p>

Shrugging, the scientist waves at another bank of monitors nearby. Most of it looks like gibberish, as far as Misato's concerned. Ritsuko just parsed the raw output in her head. "Fine so far. They're going over every scrap of data we have." She glanced back at her laptop. "Facial recognition's given us a return, aside from the... seventeen people that escaped, that's every student and faculty member accounted for. Except for Rei and Shinji's friends."

"Section Two saw our kids before they got routed, as long as they're together, Shinji can protect them." Having said that, Misato didn't quite see Ritsuko's face shift just a little bit. _Rei would probably be more... Useful._

The scientist shook off her musing and turned back to the console in her lap. She squinted at the feed. Was that an anomaly, or something else? Crossflow from the conspiracy buffer again? She started running down the MAGI heuristic paths, trying to find source. Each switchback and twist started building a picture in her mind. Aside from her mother, and possibly Maya, no one else could read the triumvirate like that. "Katsuragi, I think I have something."

Misato hunkered over her friend, staring at the screen for a long minute. Her eyes tracked back and forth over the output. Ritsuko bit her lip, trying gamely not to smile. "You have no idea what's going on, do you?"

The response was wry. "Not one bit." The laughter bubbled out more easily than she expected. Maybe they all needed it, right then. Ritsuko tapped in a few commands, bringing up a recording of the terrorist demands, and the cafeteria. The MAGI started started laying out data with barely a nudge, anticipating their user's desires through context.

Now Misato could actually see what Ritsuko had. "All of their faces, everything is too clear for the kind of video they're shooting."

* * *

><p>If you asked, hardly anyone would be able to recall his proper name. He'd been a teacher for so long, before and after Impact, that at times he thought himself as <em>Sensei<em> more than anything else. Huddled in with the students, his head barely rose above theirs, and in most cases, towered above him. Oh the joys of old age. There were six men patrolling around the large room, making sure everyone stayed in their seats.

Right now the kids needed a stabilizing influence. Their old, rambling teacher had something of a reputation. Nearly every child here had been in one of his classes, and his digressions into pre-Impact life were... Infamous. He started slowly, talking just under his breath. He had a long career to draw on. As his story went on, his voice rose. Despite themselves, all the nearby students sagged in their seats, rolling their eyes. Then they realized what was happening, the familiarity, absurdity and juxtaposition shocked them out of their unease. Weak, thin smiles broke out all around.

None of them noticed it, but this wasn't his normal tangent. That one was so well worn into his mind, he could recite it in his sleep. Today, his rambling called back to the succession wars and post-impact strife, where nations clawed to the top and were torn down like sand castles. Militaries dissolved without governments to serve. Mercenaries and terrorists filled the gap, becoming a sort of privateer of land wars.

The old wizened educator turned to the nearest radical. The grandfatherly tone never once wavered. "A long time ago, before Second Impact, I wasn't always a teacher, young man." The terrorist ignored him. The old man waved one thin arm at the duffel bags and hard plastic cases nearby. One had been open, leaving a tangle of wires and off-white, clay bricks out for anyone to see.

He waved at the cases, still smiling. "I was JSDF back in the day, and I know plastic explosive when I see it. You're going to blow up the school, aren't you?"

* * *

><p>The five teenagers slowly crept through the empty halls. They couldn't run, not from there, and they weren't able to fight. The bad guys knew they came down the collapsed hall, and since the rubble created a dead end, all they had to do was post guards elsewhere. Right now it was Hikari's turn to push Kensuke along in his improvised wheelchair. Aside from the muted sound of wheels on linoleum, the hallways were uncomfortably quiet. Even whispers were loud. The class representative had lost one of her hair ties during the assault, so she gathered her hair back into a single tail.<p>

Toji was in the lead next to Shinji, slowly, awkwardly swinging the gun left to right. None of them knew how to hold the weapon properly, but at least his hands had stopped shaking. Rei lagged behind, but only by a bit, wincing imperceptibly. The red blotches on her thighs and arms looked angry and inflamed. Kensuke tried not to move, breathing shallowly. It was getting harder to keep his eyes open, but at least he wasn't _losing_ any more blood.

The hallway opened up into a stairwell and doorways. They weren't too far from the nurse's station. The principal's office nestled in one corner. The five teenagers huddled up in the corner, putting their backs to the wall. Shinji propped the nearest door open for a quick escape route, though if push came to shove, he could make one. He let out a long, ragged breath, pressing the heel of his hands into his eyes.

Outside, past a covered section of driveway was one of the terrorist vans, its doors left wide open and abandoned. Hikari slid over, asking Rei if she was alright. The girl nodded, staring at the red on her legs. "I will be, once we find the injectors." No one asked what was in them; it wasn't their business and wasn't important right now. Rei needed them, so they'd find them.

Leaning back, Shinji let his the back of his head thump into the wall behind him. The others turned at the sound. "Guys, are you all depending on me to save you?"

Toji and Kensuke blinked, while Hikari just cocked her head to one side. She shook her head, while Kensuke shrugged. Toji did so as well, but added "Kinda, magic and everything."

"I'm not an action hero. I learned that the hard way." He swallowed a bitter laugh. "I got sick, seeing the reports of everything I did when I went crazy. Still do when I think about it."

Wriggling around, Toji turned to better face Shinji. He kept his fingers far outside the trigger well. Kensuke tore enough strips out of him for that lesson to stick. "You're still messed up about that thing the girls?"

His friend just gave him a helpless look. There wasn't a simple easy answer for something like that. "It's not something you just get over." The boy sighed. "It was more the yakuza who came after me."

"What about 'em? They're yaks, they probably had it coming." Hikari hissed, leaning over to slap Toji upside the head. He grabbed his ear and bit off a shout. Instead he spat out a short, quiet,'dammit woman!'. Hikari slapped him again while Kensuke let out a low laugh.

Shinji gave the trio a wan smile before shaking his head.. "Doesn't matter. This isn't a movie or anything. I _maimed_ people because they got in my way. Two men won't ever be able to walk again because of me." The boy stared at his clenched his fists. He could still feel the sting on his knuckles."That wasn't even the worst part. I was drugged, knocked out for a few days, and everything was foggy... But then I remembered. I remembered how it felt during that day."

He looked up at his friends. "All of that... I did it because I _could._ I _could_ break people in half, I _could_ make girls wait on me hand and foot, I could be a _sociopath_... So I _did_. And I _liked_ it. That _terrifies_ me." He let his head loll forward, staring past his fingers and into the floor. The others were watching, he could feel it. "I can fight, I will fight, but I don't ever want to do that again. Be like that again." He looked up at his friends. "I'll do my best."

None of them had anything else to say after that. Toji reached over to give the boy a friendly slug in the shoulder. They sat there in that corner, exhausted. They knew it wasn't smart, but right then, none of them wanted to do anything but just sit and catch their breath. Hikari was the only one who had a watch, the other boys having left theirs in lockers. They'd been trapped in the school for almost four hours now. Toji got over his case of the shakes first, but now Hikari was starting to feel it, that mental and physical drain of maintaining hyper alertness. The adrenaline had long since worn off, so she had to push herself with just willpower. The pilots were used to stress.

Shinji heard it first, through walls and the roof and however far away. A muted sort of repeating, clapping sound. It was very familiar... He looked around for the source, asking the others if they heard it. They hadn't, but he could tell it was getting closer. A few seconds later, Kensuke put a name to it: "It's a helicopter."

Toji nudged his friend, sending the chair spinning lazily. "Can you tell what kind?"

The helicopter was _close_ now. Probably landing nearby. Kensuke shook his head, he had to raise his voice, but only a little. "Not by listening."

"Do you think it's NERV?"

They all looked out the nearest windows, watching the "I hope so."

* * *

><p>Now the captor turned to face the teacher with a low growl. Some of the kids shied away, but others looked on, curious. "Be quiet, old man."<p>

The teacher just kept on smiling. All around him the students started to whisper, squirming in their seats. Adrenaline started flowing once more. He wasn't afraid of a panic, not here and now. Those were good, strong kids. You had to be, to live in Tokyo-3 after two Angel attacks. Sensei got his legs under him and stood up, the top of his head barely came up to the soldier's collar bone. A smile made the creases in his cheeks stand out. He wasn't foolish enough to try fighting, not directly. Still, he was a _teacher_, and if nothing else, he had to show his students how to conquer fear.

"Now, young man, I have to ask, are you planning on destroying the school with us in it? I highly doubt that..."

Anything the old man wanted to say further was cut off by a sharp blow to the chest. The radical growled, twisting his weapon back around. Sensei doubled over, coughing and all but falling into the children behind him. They swept up and caught him in one move. The soldier cycled the action on his weapon, the metallic click-and-rattle was loud even in that space. The few juniors and seniors close enough to think about trying anything backed down, but only slightly.

Clicking his radio and switching to another language, the terrorist called it in. "Listen, Boss. One of the teachers got uppity, so I thumped him one." He looked back at the wheezing old man. "I think we should let the cops handle him. I probably broke something. Permission to ditch him?"

There was a long pause before he got a reply. "Granted. Take a couple of kids. Dead men walking as planned."

* * *

><p>NERV <em>finally<em> managed to get remote viewing and camera networks set up around the school. The JSSDF sent in their own HRT units to supplement NERV's own security forces. Any other time it would be a jurisdictional nightmare. Right now everything was proceeding as smoothly as one could hope. There were six invaders patrolling the roof tops in two-man teams, armed with scoped rifles. Probably designated marksmen.

Two helicopters had made an approach from the undeveloped mountain side of Tokyo-3. A great deal of armory infrastructure was buried in those hills, but Misato was right; those were built for Angel interception, and poorly suited to shooting down enemy air craft. Since their budget got slashed, there'd be no chance to account for human-scale invasion, even now. Right then, this whole event showed the world how vulnerable Tokyo-3 really was.

The aircraft themselves were of Russian design, most likely cold-war surplus or sold to some other nation during the nineties, or put back into service during Second Impact. Misato stared at the video feed. Thirty people per vehicle, more than enough to carry her estimates of terrorists and a buffer of hostages, when they escape. She was about to call the on-site commander when _he_ called her.

"Lieutenant Katsuragi, we've got activity on the south side of the school. Two terrorists, a teacher and two kids are coming out. Piping video feed to you now."

Misato scrambled over to switch the screens to the right channel, while Ritsuko rolled over and leaned in to get a good look as well. The quality wasn't great, but they could see well enough. It was one of the pilot's teachers, history if Misato remembered Shinji's report card correctly. She didn't recognize the two kids, but she _did_ however note the grenades the terrorists were holding. They couldn't see it, but it was a near certainty that those grenades had their pins pulled, but the spoons held down.

No one spoke. When the group got close enough to the JSSDF line, one of the radicals shoved the old man forward, gently. That done, he grabbed his hostage by the arm and pulled her back. The two terrorists walked backwards, tugging their shields along with one arm, and holding the grenades out with the other. The camera shifted suddenly. Misato figured it must've been a gun camera, because now it focused on one of the rooftop gunners. He must've moved to cover his buddies on the ground.

Once the two black-suited figures made it back inside, HRT and the paramedics fell on the old man and hauled him back down the hill to safety. Weak and wheezing, he still managed to shout "I need to talk to NERV!"

* * *

><p>By luck or skill, the five free teenagers managed to make it to the nurse's office without any trouble. Partway there, Rei started to stumble. The red on her legs wasn't getting any worse, but it was starting to hurt too much, even for her incredible resilience. Shinji just scooped her up in his arms and continued on their way. After a few minutes fussing, they managed to find the transfusion kit and a box of index cards, listing their own medical information. Hikari was a compatible blood donor. It took Shinji a few minutes to figure out the device, but everything went smoothly after that.<p>

Rei oddly enough didn't have a card. When he asked her about it, she said "My blood is incompatible with human tissue."

The boy blinked once, thinking. "You know, when you say things like that, I feel like you're trying to tell me something."

She just stared up at him with bright, red eyes. "I am."

When they were finished, Kensuke already looked visibly better; healthier and no where near as pale. Hikari was a bit woozy, but she had a candy bar in her bag. If she needed more, Shinji promised to punch a vending machine open for her. Before they left, their medic made sure to check Kensuke's improvised dressing, and stitch it up properly with sterile needle and thread. That, and another layer of bandages allowed the boy to walk under his own power.

Having stuffed a bag full of supplies, they were ready to move out once more. They headed down the halls once more, towards their classroom and possibly a lead on how to get out of there. Against all odds, they managed to reach familiar territory. All told they hadn't traveled very far the whole day, but they had to move so slowly. First with Kensuke's injury, then just to avoid making unnecessary noise.

But now, finally, the sign above the door proudly proclaimed '2-A'

Inside was an utter mess. Desks were piled up in one corner, while several black cases were laid out. Against one wall was a screen, like one used for movies, except it was green. Kensuke hunkered down with the cases while the others kept watch. Inside were imaging devices, extremely complex, expensive cameras. Not too far away was a laptop. He busied himself with that, while Rei made a direct line for her desk. Somewhere in the pile of seats and refuse was her school bag, and her medication.

Thumbing the track pad, Kensuke sucked in a quick breath. The computer was still on, and there wasn't any password protection. He didn't recognize the operating system, but it was simple enough. Toji loomed over him, asking what was up. The other boy shrugged. "Not sure yet..." He started scrolling through directories. One stuck out, listing hundreds of image files. He opened one, filling the screen with a front view portrait of a girl.

Kensuke started mumbling. "Pictures... of us? Students?" He accessed more files. Front views, side views, all in very high resolution. Nearly everyone was there, looking scared or in shock. He called Shinji over, pointing out the files for Saneda Ayumi. The pilot felt something coil in his gut, a low, heavy sort of heat, but he couldn't put a name to it, not right then.

A short, sharp squeak of rubber on tile echoed down the hallway. Immediately, adrenaline flooded through their veins. Toji scrambled as quietly as he could for anything resembling cover, tugging Hikari and Rei along. Kensuke leaned over to Shinji, whispering. "You grabbed a knife from that one guy, right?"

Shinji nodded, he'd forgotten about that. It had been clipped to the waistband of his shorts the whole time. Kensuke took it and eased over to the open doorway. The knife was sharp and well polished, perfect for what he wanted to do. Holding it just so, he leaned against the wall and angled the blade to use it as a mirror. His blood ran cold, clenching his stomach so hard he almost popped his stitches.

"Two bad guys, heading this way."

* * *

><p>The holographic projector could serve as a more traditional video screen, though the resolution was suspect at best. It was good enough. Patched in via landline, Misato offered the JSSDF captain a salute, even though it wasn't strictly necessary. He was in his forties, clean shaven and regulation. An officer's cap was fixed firmly on his brow. Facing a camera back at the remote command post, he returned the courtesy. More screens started to fill with information; maps and terrorist numbers. The old manbeing tossed out was the best thing to happen all day.<p>

On-screen, the captain laid everything out. "We now have estimates on opposing force composition, equipment and their plans. We know where the hostages are, and their escape strategy."

Misato folded her arms over her chest, nodding. "Good. We're ready to do our part on your signal. Make sure ordnance disposal teams are ready to move in."

* * *

><p>When Commo jumped out of his chair and broke into a jig, Boss let out a long sigh of relief. Finally they had all the data. Commo dropped back down and got to work, his hands flew over the console. More of his men joined in, looking over the take. Everything so far looked legitimate, samples from the UN briefing, copies sent to NERV from same, All in all it was an intelligence coup.<p>

Now they had to deal with their extraction. Transport had arrived not too long ago. That, combined with air support contracted from a silent partner, would nearly guarantee them getting out oft his alive. The old man being kicked out broke operational security, but at this point there wasn't much for it. Turning around, the leader ran through a quick head count. They'd need about twenty kids for hostage cover...

Someone tapped their transmit button, sending a crackling click into his headset. He looked around for the source until he spotted a raised hand. "What is it Commo?"

The radio operator held up a handset. "It's for you, sir."

"Hello?"

The voice on the other end was dreadfully familiar. "Greetings. This is Commander Ikari. Have you received the data?"

"We have."

"Excellent. Would you like the files on our previous three Angel attacks, for purposes of comparison?" He didn't wait for an answer. "The information is being transmitted now."

* * *

><p>A lot of things started to happen all at once. The squeak of rubber-soled boots gave way to low voices as two terrorists closed in on their position. Kensuke and Shinji worked to very quietly tilt over the teacher's desk and moved the girls behind it. The military nerd made sure Rei and Hikari hugged the floor as best they could, before doing the same. Toji got behind some overturned student seats. He grabbed the bolt like Kensuke showed him and dragged it back, trying to be as gentle as possible. Even then, the sound seemed to carry forever.<p>

The voices grew closer and closer, and the kids did their best to hide. Shinji pressed himself against the hallway-ward wall, between the two doors. They couldn't close the room up, because someone might've noticed the change. They just had to hope no one saw them. Closer, louder. Now they could hear the sounds of weapons and belts rattling against each other. And footsteps, instead of echoing squeaks.

Hikari was turned away from the doors, looking at the windows behind the desk. Black, faint reflections crossed over the glass, then vanished. The voices and footsteps faded away. She let out a long, slow breath, all but melting into the floor. Slowly, the kids peeled out of their hiding places.

One of the gunmen walked back in.

* * *

><p>Boss was currently being treated to the most surreal, one-sided conversation in his life. The supreme-commander of NERV, quite possibly one of the most reclusive men on the planet, was being <em>helpful<em>. Unfailingly so. The new data arrived just as he said it would, and his men were already pouring over it. Commo was up in arms, trying to make sense of everything. Pressing a key to mute the mouthpiece, he asked the operator what was going on.

According to that new data, and accounting for the different environments, there was no way an Angel created any of those craters. The flashing lights NERV couldn't explain, but the recordings of physical evidence were compelling. Of course, none of them were willing to _believe_ NERV, especially when all the data they had so far came from them anyway. It would be painfully easy to falsify everything.

Gendo seemed to realize this without even being asked. If he noticed the lack of response, he didn't mention it. Instead he continued to be helpful, almost _pleasant_. "You are of course welcome to verify the data with a third party."

Even having never met the man, Boss found it all incredibly unnerving. Assuming their plan worked, they'd definitely confirm it. But now he had all the more reason to set up the failsafe. He gave Commo the order before turning back to the phone. "Thank you, Commander Ikari, for your assistance in this matter. I hope that we can maintain this spirit of cooperation."

"Of course. I do have a question, however."

That didn't bode well _at all._ "Yes?"

That polite, accommodating never wavered, not once. "You are in fact standing in front of a green screen, with a computer generated image of both the cafeteria, and all of your hostages. Your simulation accounts for nearly every student and faculty member, except for those who have already escaped, and several others. Two of which are my Evangelion pilots."

"Tell me, how do you plan on guaranteeing their safety, if you do not know where they are?"

* * *

><p>Five teenagers and one terrorist were locked in a stalemate. The soldier froze in the doorway with his hands up and weapon hanging loose across his chest. Shinji had barely dropped back from the wall when the enemy blundered in. Kensuke and the girls were just about to stand up, while Toji lapsed, having let his own weapon fall to the side. No one did anything but breath.<p>

Finally, Shinji managed to muster up the will to say something. He tried English, on a hunch, though he was sure his accent was muddled. "L-Listen, sir. We don't want any trouble." He tried to put everything he had into that one line, every ounce of honesty and benevolence.

The man kept his hands raised. He didn't say anything right away, but shook his head, like he wanted to believe it. Instead, he replied, "I'm sorry kid, it's not my call."

The other terrorist chose that moment to come back, intent on finding out what held his partner up. It took him less than a second to react, after seeing Toji through the doorway. The first man dropped into a sprawl while the kids shifted as fast as they could, but they weren't trained, experienced soldiers. Snapping his weapon up, the second soldier started shooting, first through open doorway, over his partner's head. Then tearing a line through the wall.

Shinji dove for the floor while bullets cut through the air above his head. Even slowed down and deflected, they were still dangerous. His friends ducked behind cover as best they could while the radicals regrouped and recovered. The second man was breaking for the opposite, unblocked doorway, while the first was rising to his knees with a ready weapon.

The Third Child dug his bare toes into linoleum and shot forward, driving his full weight into the man's chest.

Toji twisted around to bring his own gun up. Kensuke spat out a warning, forcing his friend to fall back and aim from the chest at the far door. It slid open just as Toji managed to find the trigger. The terrorist ducked and rolled back into cover just in time. Hikari bit down a scream and held on to Kensuke while the huddled behind the desk. Rei however, was _thinking_.

Ground fighting was, to the militaries of the world, the worst thing to ever happen in a combat situation. Not the worst thing to _do_, but to be involved in. It was miserable, painful and agonizingly slow, even in the best case scenario. The soldier was no slouch either, big, tall and strong with great instincts. The Third Child had learned some of the most fearsome, devastating close combat techniques known to modern military science in seconds, but none of them compared to the potential in his core fighting style. Hardly anyone recognized it right away, but those who did marveled at its effectiveness... And brutality.

Strike, counter and reversal. It was a matter of weight and distance. The spaces between were measured in inches, and every bit of leverage counted. The boy was heavy, heavier than most fourteen-year-olds had a right to be, matching but not more than his opponent. It was a mistake to believe that simply because he was taller, because he had better reach than the pilot, that he could overpower him.

The Third Child was a master of Pankration, and quite simply the greatest grappler in the world.

Meanwhile, Toji had turned the enemy's tricks against him, shooting through that abused wall wherever he thought the terrorist might hide. He tried to aim for where light flickered through gaps and craters. Over the din and gunfire, the teenagers could hear him through the wall, yelling into his radio. Rei stood up, still red, splotchy and unsteady. The plan came to her in a flash, and there was no real sane rational for it. Raw inspiration struck for the first time in her life. Reinforcements would arrive soon. Ikari lacked the means to deal with multiple opponents. Her own powers were unavailable.

She would have to improvise.

Turning to Toji, she whispered. "Cover me."

The boy stammered out an incredulous _what_ while doing what she asked, focusing his fire back on the voice behind the wall. The girl was off like a shot, barefoot and running past Shinji and his opponent, into the hallway. Luck and good timing prevented her from being gunned down on the way out. Gawking, the Third caught an elbow to his eye for inattention. Wheeling around, he got his feet under him and _lifted_, swinging the man up into the air so high his leg tore into the drop ceiling. Dust rained in heavy clouds around them while Shinji whirled on one foot.

With a low, rising yell, the pilot flung the man into and through the poor, abused wall. The throw destroyed it utterly and sent the screaming soldier out into the hallway, slamming into the far side. There wasn't any sign of the second soldier or Rei. Shinji let out long, panting sigh. Hikari let out a small squeak while the pilot turned, only to find the barrel of a gun pressed into his cheek. There was the other man. Disheveled and covered in dust, he looked uninjured, surprisingly.

Now they were well and truly caught. Shinji did not want to try catching a bullet with his face, not right here. Even if he could, it'd be far too easy for the terrorist to turn and shoot his friends. At least Rei got away. Not long later, the four teenagers heard stomping from down the hall; more soldiers. Toji hissed and spat, biting at one of the gunmen before being clipped the head by a gun stock. Plastic zip-ties were brought out to secure the prisoners. Shinji had five wrapped around his wrists.

Shoved back into the classroom, the kids were on their knees in a row, looking up at their captors. The only thing Shinji could think to do then was try to talk his way out, but no matter how hard he tried, these men just weren't budging. There were four terrorists now, with Dusty standing ahead of them, while the others held position in the rubble of the wall. Dusty held his pistol against Shinij's forehead for a long moment, thinking. Then, very slowly, he moved the gun to the side, aiming at his shoulder.

Shinji could only watch as a gloved finger began to squeeze the trigger. He braced for the pain, and the sound of an engine running.

Wait. Engine running?

Everyone didn't _see_ what happened, so much as caught the edges of it, like a ship passing by the tip of an iceberg. Instead of motion, they saw brief flashes, still images capturing all the wonderful, catastrophic detail. From down the hall, towards the Principal's office, one of the white vans crashed through the doors, careening into the wall and tearing free a bank of lockers. Tires squealed, leaving hot rubber tracks on the hallway floor, chewing up the distance in the blink of an eye. Then it was right there, bearing down on the three men standing in the rubble.

Dust had turned to face the oncoming vehicle, taking the gun away just enough for Shinji to act. Not even bothering to break free, he stepped up on one knee, lifting his shoulder into the man's hand. The gun all but exploded from the impact, leaving the soldier's hand a bloody mess. A tiny grunt was all the teenager needed to snap the cuffs. He fell back down to his hands and knees. Dust managed to draw a knife while Toji dragged Kensuke and Hikari away. The van plowed through the three soldiers and into the far doorway, slamming into a support pillar and crumpling impressively.

Under his hand, Shinji found, of all things, a comic book. One of those magazine anthologies for girls, barely a hundred pages thick. It seems to jump into his hand. His fingers curled around it, rolling it into an unexpectedly heavy tube of paper. Rising to his feet, he readied his unassuming weapon, facing down a trained killer. They set aside any sane knife-fighting practice, Dust was past that, past the absurdity of a bunch of kids giving them _this much trouble_.

* * *

><p>Kensuke and Hikari rushed past the melee, heading for the wrecked van. The passenger side door had been ripped off sometime during the assault. Rei was inside with her head pressed into the deployed airbag. She looked positively tiny compared to the seat and steering wheel. Her legs were stretched out nearly straight just to reach the pedals. Hikari moved around to help her out of the driver side.<p>

Rei leaned back in the seat on her own, coming away from the impact with little more than a bloody nose and nicked lip. Something felt off, but no one could quite place it. The way her lips curled up, the slight pull of her cheeks, or the hint of color on her pale face. More than any of that that, though, was her _eyes_. Her eyes were wide open, but not from of shock or pain. Instead, her eyes were fixed wide open, staring in what could best be called _revelation._

* * *

><p>The first slash drew a line down the boy's chest, but Dust got a ringing strike to his head in response. The boy hit like a freight train. A quick dodge proved it, when Shinji's swinging lunge angled down into the ground, only to tear free every floor tile in the classroom, and more than a few out in the hallway. Twisting, blocking, tackling and striking, the whole time trying to gain some form of momentum. None of the other kids dared interfere, even after Toji got his gun back. Shinji was moving too fast to get a clear shot.<p>

A final, close in reversal threw the soldier's arm out of line, giving the pilot the chance he needed. The magazine cut through the air, cut the air itself in a perfect, fluid arc. Dust slumped to the floor, silent and locked in shock.

Toji walked up and put his hand on Shinji's shoulder, looking down at the terrorist. His voice had gone soft, almost awed. "...Ikari... You cut his arm off with a girlie comic."

The pilot tossed the bloody magazine away. "...Yeah. I did. Come on, help me stop his bleeding."

* * *

><p>He allowed himself one moment of anguish, now that <em>everything<em> was starting to go wrong. There was no way Ikari had cameras, no way he _knew_ his men had found the kids right as he called. That was too much of a coincidence. Boss shoved that thought out of his mind and focused on the immediate problem; the patrol that found the pilots called in reinforcements, and now _they_ hadn't checked in.

Ikari was still on the line, but Boss kept his end muted. Even so, he only trusted hand signals, telling Commo to get Wad and Heavy, along with Specs, Splice and Scout. They needed to get their rides prepped. The failsafe was already in place. Their leader turned back to the rows of students and teachers behind him.

* * *

><p>Rei finally found her injectors, jabbing one into her thigh. The effects were obvious. The red splotches covering her body faded in seconds, and her balance was restored. She stood tall and steady without a hint of tremble. Kensuke stared at the blatant regeneration, trying very hard not to stare at her legs too. He tried to ask, but she didn't reply. She <em>would have<em> said something, if she knew how to be vague. Instead she just stared at him with that same fixed look.

The other kids took care of the other injuries, both theirs and the terrorists. Shinji didn't spare excessive effort treating their enemies, but nor did he leave them to wither in agony. They were all stable, though most likely crippled for life. It was wrong to say he did not care, but more that he cared as much as_ his _circumstances allowed, which meant treatment. Lacking explicit magic, he was sure to have left them there for anyone else to find.

Realizing that didn't exactly sit well with him either.

Toji and Hikari started digging through the pile of desks, looking for anything useful, while Kensuke picked over the terrorists, grabbing weapons, ammo and supplies. Anything he couldn't use, he disassembled, removing firing pins and tossing them away. Shinji managed to find his phone not long later. He stared at the tiny screen. Had someone used it during the day? It looked like it had been in a call for nearly three hours.

He pressed the phone to his ear.

* * *

><p>Misato heard the sweetest, most amazing words, said by the most welcome voice ever. "H-Hello?"<p>

Almost immediately, the entire command deck fell silent, even as Misato scrambled for the headset. "Sh-Shinji-kun! You're alive! Alright?"

Other officers and crew started patching in, Ritsuko donned her own earphones while Fuyutsuki leaned over the balcony. Gendo never once stopped smiling. The Third started talking. His voice was thick with relief, of being able to talk with someone, anyone. Especially someone he knew with authority and experience. The second he heard Misato's voice, he knew everything would be alright.

"Yeah mostly, Kensuke got shot but we took care of him, uh... We got caught and Rei was doing something weird with her soul..." Ritsuko paled, but hardly anyone noticed. On the other end, NERV could hear the cheers and jubilation; between them _and_ the adults, _nothing_ could stop them. The lieutenant rubbed at her eyes, but her voice was steady and even. Relieved big-sister Misato was gone. Strategic Genius was in control.

"Alright, kids, the bad guys might have a way to intercept this call, so I need you to stay put, for now. Stay on the line and we'll make sure everything gets taken care of." She could just imagine the teenagers crowded around Shinji's phone, hanging on every word. "Stand tall boys and girls, you're all heroes today."

* * *

><p>The HRT captain looked at his watch, a hybrid model with both analog hands and an LCD display. The seconds ticked down, even as he reached for his radio. "Lieutenant Katsuragi? On my signal."<p>

Five seconds later. "Execute."

* * *

><p>There were any number of options to take both helicopters down before they reached the school, but like many plans, they were discarded out of hand. The reason was simple: Escalation. Gendo knew it just as well as Misato that above all else, the enemy must <em>not<em> become desperate. They needed the invaders to follow their own self-imposed rules as long as possible, to ensure the safety of the hostages, of _everyone _involved. Because of that, The enemy aircraft had been _allowed_ in.

Most often, some form of rapid-takedown strategy was deployed. Soldiers would breach doorways or blow down walls, aiming for total surprise. HRT needed surprise, but they couldn't risk an aggressive entrance, not with hundreds of hostages and fully automatic weapons nearby.

Communication was integral during any military operation. The invading force set up transceivers between physical cables, relying on short range radios to minimize the chances interception. The MAGI couldn't take over a self-contained system like that, not directly. Indirectly, on the other hand...

The rooftop scouts would alert the forces inside the school structures, they had to be taken care of first. Those patrols grew lax during the day, opening up gaps in their awareness and reporting intervals. Enough for a two-man technical team to sneak in. They only needed to find one of the enemy relay stations, and patch them in. NERV would handle the rest. Fifteen seconds of checking connections gave Misato what she needed. Turning to Ritsuko, she nodded. The scientist grinned, entering the command.

The terrorist communication network now belonged to NERV.

* * *

><p>It took patience, to wait long enough for the MAGI to accomplish its task. The limiting factor was the enemy, not the hardware. Voice samples were repurposed and regenerated, and in less than thirty minutes after gaining control, the operation was ready to go.<p>

The terrorists heard the reports they expected from outlying patrols and scouts, even though their rooftop sentries fell down in ones and twos. Suppressed rifles fired sub-sonic, lead-cored rubber bullets into helmets and faces. The HRT captain counted the targets down, four, five, six, eight... "Stage two: Execute!"

Assault teams charged up the driveways and stairs, spearheaded by explosives experts, rushing past the initial battle in the athletic quad. On their way inside, they skirted past the massive, muddy puddle left by the ruined pool. The old man had been right, everywhere they looked the school was rigged to blow, but not one trip wire blocked their path. One group had to tear through a wall to get past a collapsed hallway.

* * *

><p>At her console back in the Geofront, Ritsuko initiated the second step in Misato's plan. Flash bangs and dynamic entries were out, but there was more than one way to disorient someone. The projection ahead of her marked out the allied forces as they closed in on the terrorists and hostages. Misato had been right well before the MAGI or old man confirmed it; the hostages had never been in the cafeteria.<p>

They were in the gymnasium, they'd been there since the start. The scientist's grin matched Misato's.

* * *

><p>It started as a slow whine, like that intermittent, unexplained ringing in one's ear. A high pitched squealing sound that grew more and more intense with each passing second. They didn't realize what was happening until their headsets and radios started to crackle. A sharp 'bang' would've spooked them, thrown them into panic and possibly start shooting. This slow building, piercing screech dug into their ears and forced out all thought. Dozens of men around the school tore at their masks and gear, trying to shut the sound off.<p>

Cut off from their network, the guards watching the hostages were reduced to shouts and hand signals, and any reinforcements may as well have been across the globe. The Hostage Rescue Team didn't give them much time to think about it. One group scaled the outer walls before taking position near the high windows, looking down. The other team burst through the doors in one fluid move. On one unvoiced signal, both teams opened fire, one from on high and the other from ground level.

Less than forty seconds later, the gym was secure. All hostile forces down.

Bomb disposal experts rushed in next, sweeping the massive structure while the HRT waved the hostages out and into the late afternoon sun. JSSDF helmet cameras piped the feed back to NERV, and the MAGI ran the facial recognition once more, looking for tricks or plants. Misato sat back in her seat, letting out a long sigh of exhaustion. Ritsuko puffed on one of her thin cigarettes, smiling past the wispy smoke.

Her console started beeping. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she leaned forward. "...Katsuragi, we've got a problem!"

* * *

><p>Only somewhat against instruction, Shinji and his friends moved out of their hiding place and towards the gym. They'd seen the military run past them, and followed along behind as best they could. One soldier spotted them and very quickly pulled the group to his superior officer.<p>

The gym itself was in fairly good shape. The high windows were broken, and the floor was ruined by boots, crates and rubber bullets. Bits of clothing and refuse littered the bleachers and tables, while Toji bemoaned the wrecked home team basketball hoop. Men in extremely large blast suits were pulling down cables and very carefully pull apart what looked like clay bricks.

Kensuke whistled quietly while Toji nudged him. "Plastic explosive, probably Semtex."

His friend paled. "Isn't that kind of... Dangerous?" Kensuke shook his head. "Nah, you have to want it to go off. They're cutting all the detonators apart."

Their escort saluted the officer before running off to fulfill some other duty. Another soldier stepped up to Toji and asked for the gun still slung around his neck. The captain took one look at the disheveled teenagers before opening his mouth, most likely to tell them to _get the hell out of here._ Instead, he pressed his hand to one ear, stopping mid-thought.

He was quiet for a long moment, listening. "Lieutenant Katsuragi, are you telling me that there are _twenty kids_ unaccounted for?"

The day wasn't over yet. Something made Shinji focus on the one-sided conversation. Now the captain ignored the kids entirely. Another soldier reported in, forcing the officer to put Misato on hold. Shinji could _barely_ hear the voice on the other end, but hear it he did.

"They're crafty, I have to give them that. Ishimura's down. The enemy has anti-personnel _and_ anti-armor mines surrounding their aircraft."

The captain looked like he wanted to do something, anything, but settled on standing up straighter. He very nearly growled into the radio. "Can you get past them?"

"Negative sir, not from here!"

Only then did the captain remember the kids. The three civilians stood there, whistling without a bit of guile. The pilots were gone.

* * *

><p>Already moving with his phone against one ear the Third charged ahead. Out the gym and into the courtyard and then into the school building once more. Down hallways and past JSSDF patrols and who knew what else. Everything seemed to blur together. "Misato!"<p>

Her reply was almost swallowed up by the rush of air. "S-Shinji-kun? Where the hell are you?"

Swinging around a corner, his bare feet left the ground and started slamming into the walls, warping locker doors with each impact. Dropping back down, he hit the floor running. "Uh... just passed class 3-C. Going after them!"

"Wh-No! No way Shinji! You're safe! Most of the kids are free and-"

Against all expectations, Shinji cut her off mid sentence. That same feeling, the one that helped him lead his friends into the unknown, to fight a trained soldier hand to hand, to _act_. That feeling came back in full force. "I have to! Listen, remember what you said about not-stupid plans? I could really use one!"

Shinji could hear Misato's teeth gnashing on the other end. "...Fine! They're at the north eastern corner of the school, the athletic court surrounded by trees. There are nine bad guys left. Automatic weapons, land mines and twenty hostages."

Now he finally had a name to that feeling. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the word, Misato told almost a year ago. Others had said it since them, and Misato said it again less than an hour ago. But now, now Shinji started to _believe_ it.

* * *

><p>Over thirty people tried to take over the school. Now there were only nine remaining.<p>

Shinji tore through the main building. His momentum forced him to run along walls just to change direction, crossing in long, smooth arcs from corner to corner. Turning one last time, he had a straight shot down the hall, some thirty yards away. At the halfway point, he dug in with his heels for a split second, folding up like a spring before launching himself forward and airborne.

Ahead of him was a normal, unassuming double-door, just like most of the doors leading outside. A dark shape blocked one of the windows. Tumbling in mid-air, The pilot slammed into the barrier with both feet, heels first. The door, part of the wall, and terrorist standing there did absolutely nothing to slow him down.

Eight Remaining.

* * *

><p>Ikari had not noticed her leaving, not precisely following but intent on assisting. She'd fashioned a strap for her injectors from a piece of her swimsuit, strapping them to one thigh. She lacked his speed and resilience, but made up for it with inspiration. She knew exactly what to do and how to help her fellow pilot. Her friend.<p>

Bare feet squeaked against tile as she skid to a halt, staring past a floor-to-ceiling window and out towards a pair of innocuous white shapes a few dozen yards away. There were no witnesses to the look of rapture on her face.

* * *

><p>If anyone heard the doorway collapsing behind him, there wasn't any sign of it. Nor did anyone hear the doors themselves drop into the ground. Shinji rode one pane of wood and glass until it stopped, right at the edge of the stairs leading down.<p>

Below, at the bottom of the hill , two massive helicopters dominated the courtyard, obviously large enough to carry every kidnapper and quite a few hostages. Shinji could see their pilots running through pre-flight checks. Eight men with guns and masks shoved their last group of hostages into position, splitting them up between the two aircraft. These people attacked him, his _home_ and his _friends_. They attacked _people he knew_.

In that moment, something crystallized within him, catalyzed. He would not stand for it, not here and not now. The distance would be a problem, but he was at the top of the hill, he could jump down to the quad in just a moment. But just dropping in was a risk, they still had hostages.

Providence smiled upon him then.

* * *

><p>Tires dug into a translucent plane of crackling orange energy. One of the white vans flew over the top of a tree and the rumbling aircraft. Just as the AT field flickered out of existence, momentum and gravity caught hold, dragging the vehicle down into the nearest helicopter, throwing nearly a ton of metal and plastic into the main rotor and engine. Aircraft fuel ignited, flash-cooking anyone unfortunate enough to be inside the copter, or directly above it.<p>

The nearest hostages and terrorists were knocked on their backsides, singed and winded but still miraculously alive. Clipboard was there, armed now with a rifle and shouting orders. From the wreckage, a tiny slip of a girl floated out. The flames and heat refused to touch her, but the roiling air whipped at her hair, dragging the tips skyward.

Everyone froze for one beat, then two. On the third, Shinji was in their midst, having jumped the intervene distance. He slammed into the pavement so hard, the massive concrete paver split into a spider web of cracks.. He clenched his bare toes into rubble, savoring the feeling of that impact in his bones. A glimmering, almost invisible tracery of light folded around his shoulders, outlining his sun-drawn arms and corona. Ahead of him were enemies, and suddenly everything felt _right._

* * *

><p>Once the Third landed, Rei focused on her own survival. She pulled the second auto injector from the makeshift strap and jabbed into her thigh. Almost immediately the recent hemorrhaging faded, and her proof of identity reasserted itself. The students nearest the ruined helicopter had already broken away, running for whatever safety they could. It was by sheer luck that remaining invaders deemed Ikari to be the greater threat.<p>

They were correct, of course.

* * *

><p>Eight men surrounded him, armed with fear and automatic weapons. Shinji was only very distantly afraid. He stepped forward, through the weapons and threats, towards the last of the hostages, last of the people <em>he knew<em>. These men attacked his friends and his home, even if indirectly. He would not stand for that. He would however, stand for the those children, teenagers just like him. The pilot put himself between the hostages and those eight armed men. He glanced up at the setting sun, and for a moment, imagined it was smiling.

A secondary explosion tore the helicopter apart, raining hot debris down all over. One van axle dropped to the ground with a heavy, metallic bang. A burning leaf wafted between Shinji and the terrorists. One heartbeat later, eight men and one Exalt charged into battle.

Misato was right; he was a hero, and it was time to be _righteous._

* * *

><p>The terrorists broke for cover, much like this morning, but this time, Shinji was ready for them. One toe caught the axle and flicked it up into the air. Pivoting at the toes, up through his ankles, thighs and hips, the pilot reared back with one arm chambered. He drove his hand forward, heel of the palm out and into the hunk of twisted metal. The impromptu attack slammed into two men, knocking them over with the audible crack of bone.<p>

A third man back pedaled. They were not in the grand arena under any rule, they would not charge into melee range. Shinji did not give them the option. Stepping over and driving one foot down, forward at an angle, he kicked the pavement. Concrete buckled and cracked, racing ahead to catch the retreating foe by one leg. Gunfire from the left raked his side, leaving three bloody wounds. Rolling away to cover, he grabbed a fistful of dirt and staunched the bleeding. He'd have time for stitches later.

The gunfire slowed for a moment, and then the very familiar, unwelcome sound of pins being pulled. Three grenades arced out from behind the enemy line, aiming to sail right past Shinji and into the crowd of students behind him. He couldn't ignore that, no matter what.

Fortunately, he didn't have to. The air flexed and ran liquid for a split second, before the explosives hit an angled AT field, sloped down and back towards the enemy, exploding seconds later. Rei stepped up behind her fellow pilot, nodding slightly. Shinji was up and moving as soon as the shield dropped, blowing past the last of the shrapnel. He skid to a halt between the four nearest men.

Rocks, guns, bits of helicopter, anything he could reach became a weapon. He could weaponize his bare hands, a magazine, or a wrecked axle. Reaching out to grab one man by leg, he could weaponize his opponents too. He swung the black-clad man into his allies, the ground, anything and everything he could reach. Every impact left shallow craters and smears of blood in its wake. Alive but only just, Shinji dropped that weapon, and turned his attention on the last four terrorists.

Those remaining four immediately peeled back, angling for harder cover behind an old, stout tree and the concrete barrier surrounding its roots. Gunfire filled the air, sending bursts of hot lead toward the Third Child. Now he'd take no chances, Shinji focused his will towards his own defense. Bullets pounded into his bare chest and arms before bouncing off, or flattening out and falling to the ground. Striding forward without fear, he moved through the hail of fire. Some shots he blocked, slapping the bit of copper and lead away. The whole time his stare never wavered, focused straight ahead. Another shot deflected by a backhand, and then a third, he caught between thumb and forefinger, before tossing the slug away.

The first man had no time to even drop his spent weapon. Shinji didn't even bother raising his arm. Instead he just rolled his left shoulder forward, slamming it into the kidnapper. Ceramic armor and bone cracked under the blow, sending him to the ground. The second man pulled out a wicked, matte black knife, surging forward with an overhead downward strike. The pilot stepped into the arc of the man's arm, crouching for a split second before standing straight up. His rising strike pulped bone, knocking the blade out of the broken limb

Two down, one to go before Clipboard. Drawing a pistol, the radical took one step back. Shinji stopped, waiting, with the muzzle less than a foot away from his brow. Clipboard sighed, standing up while reloading his own weapon. The other man said something Shinji couldn't understand before he pulled the trigger.

Unburnt gunpowder and hot gas shot out of the barrel, speckling Shinji's face with hot smoke and grit. By the time the bullet had left the barrel, Shinji had already moved ahead a half-step, angling his head down. The piece of copper-jacketed lead drilled into Shinji's skull, above and between the eyes, then stopped. The bullet dropped to the ground, not even leaving a mark. Shinji looked up at the shooter, offering a tiny grin.

And then everyone in that courtyard saw the sun.

* * *

><p>On his rooftop, safe and secure, Handler made sure his instruments were recording.<p>

* * *

><p>The Third Child was surrounded, consumed by a column of gold, blue and ultraviolet fire, rising from his feet and tapering to a point above his head. The whole yard was cast in the brightest lights of high noon, shooting up into the sky for miles and piercing the clouds. Automatic systems all over Tokyo-3 turned the massive sunlight-collecting mirrors towards the towering display.<p>

Lines of golden light unfolded out of his shoulders and back, resolving into iridescent contours. Six arms twisted in lazy ritualistic patterns, with hands curling into mudra, one after another. Behind him, A system of circles in circles etched in hair fine symbols and designs twisted around, becoming an ever-cycling mandala. Flanking that were bright rings of solid, gleaming gold. Not rings, but halos, wrought in the image of fire and cut open in overlapping patterns.

Somehow, through all of that, Shinji stood out clearly for all to see, wreathed in flame and light. The great halo and mandala faded after just a moment, leaving the boy surrounded by fire. The man babbled, firing the pistol at nothing until his weapon ran dry. The Third Child walked over and kicked him out of the way. He landed inside the previously undamaged helicopter. That he survived was impressive.

Now, nothing stood between him and Clipboard. It took Shinji moment to realize the man was screaming, terrified. Stepping onto that bit of nearby landscaping, he drove his hands into the old, sturdy tree. The halo reappeared for a split second. The lightspun arms dug into the tree as well, though they left no mark. With a great heaving shout, the Third Child pulled the tree clean out of the ground, The foot-wide trunk and leafy branches swung around as easily as a broomstick in his hands.

Clipboard kept shouting, and now so did the other radicals nearby. Their leader dropped his rifle, but managed to draw his own sidearm. Shinji held the tree over his head. Several shots went wild, cutting into the tree. into the tree, and a string of impacts slapped into his stomach from below. Some of the high schoolers were still there, to afraid to move, too shocked to look away.

Something stirred in his chest then, a quiet sort of warmth. The other kids were going to be safe, _he_ saved them. He really was a hero, just like Misato said. He saved people, saved Kensuke and Rei and fought and _won_. The pilot looked down at the leader _the villain_. An_ enemy._ That same feeling whispered to him then. It felt like justice. _Knock him out and move on, he's already defeated._

Shinji reared back and slammed the tree into the ground.

* * *

><p>AN: Whew.<p> 


	23. Balance

January twenty-first, two-thousand and sixteen.

Thursday morning in Tokyo-3. Low-hanging clouds and mist curled around armory buildings and flooded the streets. Dewdrops gathered on every surface around, metal, stone or grass. Soldiers stood at every corner, watching empty roads. Three days ago, a tiny part of the fortress-city fell under siege. A small courtyard had been cut into a hill, dotted with rises and stone benches.

Faint smears of oily black smoke hung in the air even now, rising from two ruined helicopters and a charred, white van. Concrete paving stones two yards wide were spider-webbed with cracks and craters, while brass shell casings littered the ground. Yellow caution tape crisscrossed the scene.

In the center of it all was a tree unlike any others nearby, shrouded in early morning mist. Mature and venerable with healthy roots and a stout trunk, it stood unchanged for years. The sun finally peeked out over over the east hills and through the city towers.

That one unique tree had been driven canopy first through concrete and into hard packed gravel.

* * *

><p>"There are too many damn conspiracies around here."<p>

Normally Fuyutsuki would've glared at the lieutenant. He had a reputation to maintain as officious, concerned with proper decorum. Now though, even he was tired of the role. Even so, he still gave her a sour look. She didn't seem to care, leaning back in her chair with one leg folded over the other, simmering. Akagi sat in her chair next to Katsuragi, while Ikari lounged in his own, as a concession to his own humanity. The glass floor of the Commander's office tinted just enough to let them see Geofront lakes below. Past the window, off to the side, Tokyo-3 was retracted into fortress mode.

Gendo nudged the meeting back on track."Be that as it may, we are utilizing every resource we have at our disposal. Unfortunately, the terrorist leader was killed before the situation was contained." Misato snorted, but chose not to comment The commander carried on as if nothing had happened. "Our immediate concern is the Committee."

"To hell with the committee! What about Shinji?" Now the Lieutenant couldn't stand it. They'd been ignoring the important issues for _hours_ now. Misato shot upright and threw her arm out to the side, trying to encompass all of Tokyo-3. "He went glowy! In the middle of the city! The Dawkins protocol is going to collapse any minute now." She turned to her blonde friend. "Tell em, Ritsuko!"

The seated woman sucked on her teeth before giving Misato a sidelong glance. "The MAGI's performance _is_ dropping notably," She allowed. "We can probably hold the information blackout for another two weeks safely. After that, we risk the at least part of the triumvirate going down."

Misato's face took on a fierce, tight grin, folding her arms over her chest. Seconds ticked on by with nothing happening. No one spoke. Fuyutsuki and Gendo just waited until Misato ran herself down. When she finally took her seat, Gendo picked up where they left off."Then we will let the protocol run for the two weeks. This was a probing attack and little else. The motives and nature of the Committee are outside your responsibilities."

Now the Commander moved, waving his fingers through the hologram and summoning up several files and budget graphs. Across the board, all the trends and data were pointing _down_. Gendo pointed at one section and summoned a comparison of their previous budget compared to their future funding. Ritsuko knew the numbers, could envision the scale better than her friend. Misato on the other hand couldn't help but draw in a quick breath.

Fuyutsuki took up the brief then, shuffling some loose papers in his free hands. "Our primary concern right now is one of funding. The UN has slashed out budget to a trickle. In approximately four months, we will have to curtail all unnecessary expenses. Our primary purpose will be reduced to the repair and deployment of Evangelions."

The head of research slid back in her chair while her voice went low and wooden."Our outlying research stations, manufacturing facilities, the Third's experimental test chambers, even maintaining Tokyo-3 itself."

Now the Operations Director couldn't believe what she was hearing. She stood up once more, very, very close to shouting. She held herself back though, since everyone she wanted to rail at was halfway across the world. "What, is the UN going to hold out for ransom with _the rest of the world as a hostage?"_ Misato shot out of her seat and slapped the table, banishing the holographic display. "What kind of backwards logic is this! Did they give you a condition of 'Do this and we'll give you back your money?"

A generic ball point pen spun beneath the Commander's fingers. "In so many words."

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Misato sighed. "I'm not sure I even want to ask this; what were their demands?"

The pen stopped with a touch. "Control over the worldwide detection system, and feasibility studies on a 'rapid response protocol', allowing an Evangelion to be deployed to anywhere in the world." Gendo's tone was distant, almost lazy. "I was given the very clear impression that any answer other than 'Yes sir, Secretary-General. Easily done, Sir!' would not be accepted."

"So the UN is full of morons."

"Regrettably no. They are far too intelligent, and consummate politicians. All the same, the Committee has enough of the voting body in their pocket. They are our real opponent, the UN is merely their instrument of the moment."

The four leaders of NERV looked at each other, then, as one, one man and two women turned to face Gendo. Misato crossed her arms over her chest, nodding. "So what's our next move?"

"Contracts and licensing."

* * *

><p>Misato considered her life to exist in a cruel, uncaring universe. No benevolent force would make a three hour budget meeting just as exhausting as three weeks of combat. The dark-haired woman braced her hands against her back and stretched, drawing out a series of satisfying pops. Slouching wouldn't help her in the long run, but at that moment, lurching through the halls of NERV was the most relaxing thing she could do.<p>

The pair walked along in comfortable silence for a while. The job wore on everyone, more now than ever. When they reached the elevator and Misato pushed the button, Ritsuko asked how the kids were doing. Leaning against the wall, Misato let out a long sigh. "Well enough, I suppose. You probably know more about Rei's condition than I."

"Probably." The scientist agreed. "Everything with regard to Rei seems to be stable." She didn't feel the need to elaborate on how slapdash the stabilizer substances were, or any other number of shortcuts she took. Somehow Rei managed to worm her way into the blonde woman's heart. Ticking away, the rotating counter above their heads marked the next car's progress.

"The boys and the Horaki girl are doing fine." Misato smiled softly. "Unless Shinji does something clever, Toji will have a scar on his cheek for life."

Ritsuko held the door after the elevator arrived."How is Shinji?"

Misato's cheerful mood evaporated. "Could be better, could be worse. He hasn't slept since the attack. He can go about four days without a break though. I'll order him to bed tonight."

"M-_Misato!"_

* * *

><p>The Commander hadn't moved from his seat since the others left. Fuyutsuki stood facing the window. After months of reconstruction,, the city was fully repaired. Readiness was as high as it was ever going to be. The old man wondered if it was providence, ensuring they'd have what they need for the battles ahead.<p>

The old man turned back to his former student. "What are we going to do, if SEELE acts on their findings?"

"At the moment, very little. The old men are blinded by their preconceptions." Finally Gendo did move, staring at Fuyutsuki, forestalling any response. "You overestimate Kihl and his cronies. In absence of all data, they err towards the most comfortable explanation. The boy returns as Pattern Red, without our custom filters."

"And Rei?"

"She holds to the spirit of the Scenario, if not the letter. I have utmost confidence in her."

Gunpowder and the sharp stink of blood clogged the air. That was alright though, there was a sense of honesty about it, soaking into the conflict. The world had been cast in bright, garish tones. Blazing slashes of orange and red and yellow cut across the canted ground. Blocky, angular man-like shapes danced around like stiff paper cutouts. A tree made of metal, engine and oil appeared in his hand.

He smashed them left and right, rending and tearing into flimsy bodies. Brass shell casings rained to the ground, spreading like windswept leaves into pools of blood. The last man was there, firing a weapon made of fear and agony. The Third Child raised the engine-tree above his head and brought it down.

He blinked. Then everything changed.

The tree in his hand vanished, replaced by a leather-bound shaft. A sword was in his hand, in _her_ hand, buried to the hilt in something. Sunset-red blood twisted and pooled, rising _upwards_ into the sky. She pulled the weapon free, distantly baffled at how easily the massive weapon moved in her hands. Spitting out her own teeth, she looked around. The sky above her head was lit up like noon for miles around. The sky quivered and twisted, sending up more trails of blood higher and higher.

Ahead of her was a bloody horizon, behind her was a massacre. An impossible army fought and died against impossible creatures. The sky spasmed again, and she knew deep down that she had _killed the horizon_. The shouts of that army, of her people, were deafening, billions of voices calling out the name of a slain titan.

* * *

><p>"<em>-ake up!"<em>

He slid off the bed with a muffled thump, twisting awkwardly to look up past Misato's toes, knees, thighs then chest, all the way to her face. Still clad in her night clothes, she looked just as rumpled as he felt. Kneeling, she put a hand on his shoulder. "Shinji-kun, a-are you alright?" Tugging him out of the tangle of bedding, she coaxed him back onto his bed. They both glanced at the clock, showing barely one in the morning. Shinji had been asleep for less than an hour.

"M-Misato?" He croaked, looking up at his guardian. His throat felt hot and scratchy, like he'd been screaming all day. Misato sat down next to him, letting one hand rub up and down his spine. She'd been right, of course, about his endurance and her need to order him to bed. She knew it wasn't going to be easy.

Barely any light made it through the open door. The converted storage room wasn't made for much sun or comfort, but their eyes stood out as bright spots in the darkness. Shinji could see almost as well as he could during the day. Misato licked her lips. "You, you said something. In that new language you learned."

"I did?" He looked past her then, starting to talk it out, mouthing words silently . He tried it first with Japanese syllables, then English, and then back to Japanese.

"_Ghadalion, The Point Beyond Distant Sight."_

Before he could say anything else, he scrambled for the bathroom.

* * *

><p>Misato stood outside while Shinji emptied his stomach for the third time that night. After nothing but dry heaves, the boy busied himself with brushing his teeth<em>. He's stalling<em>. When the Third Child finally shuffled out, he sniffled apologetically. "I'm sorry..." The older woman moved to hug him, but he stepped away, stumbling shoulder first into the door frame.

"Don't!" He tensed up, then relaxed a half second later. "I... Don't think I should be close to you... I could hurt you."

"Not a chance, Shinji-kun, now c'mere!" She brooked no argument, scooping him up before he could ward her off. Shinji sniffled harder, and she hummed into his hair. "It's alright. You did what you had to do. It was a fight to the death."

Sobbing, the boy shook his head. "No, that's the problem... At that point it wasn't about 'What I had to do'. I felt like a hero, Misato. I was doing something _right_. I was _righteous_. I defended innocent people, brought justice to the wicked... And then I crushed him anyway, crushed him with a _tree_. It wasn't slow, it wasn't merciful! He died, mangled and in pain and calling me a _monster!"_

"He was already down and he didn't have any weapons. He was completely helpless!" The words tumbled out faster as he rambled, his voice rising higher and higher. "I knew he wasn't a threat, and I crushed him anyway."

Misato stepped back and raised one hand before bringing it down, slapping him across the face. He turned with the blow, cheek stinging and starting to turn red. Misato cringed, bit her lip and started to shake her hand out, biting back curses and stomping her feet.

When she finally blinked the tears out of her eyes, she took a deep breath, putting both hands on his shoulders. "Okay. Two things;"

"First, slapping some sense into you hurt way too much, so if I have to do that again, I'm going to use a stick." Rubbing his cheek, Shinji let out a quick, sobbing laugh.

"Secondly, yeah, you probably did go too far. I can't sugarcoat that. You killed people. You killed someone who had been trying to kidnap you and dozens of other innocent people, and Rei."

She ushered him back into his room and sat down next to him on the bed. "You don't have the same military conditioning most soldiers have. We're taught to dehumanize our opponents, to them like the Enemy, like an animal. Anything that isn't human." She sighed, wrapping one arm around him. "Yeah, It's kind of scary that you killed someone."

"I can't say you won't have to fight or kill again. Crazies like that, they're everywhere these days. sometimes people just want to find the most famous person and burn them down, laughing. you might have to defend yourself, or your friends, or even me... And that's alright."

"...I'm afraid I'll do it again... I'm afraid I'll do it to someone who doesn't deserve it... By mistake." He waved his hands. "I mangle steel pans by mistake, I could break a man's spine with a punch! I tore a _tree_ out of the ground and swung it around like a _baseball bat_."

Misato squeezed him a bit tighter, and he fell silent. "I trust you, Shinji-kun."

She rubbed his cheek and smiled, whispering a quick "Wait here" before dashing off to her bedroom. Shinji nodded, and flopped back onto the mattress. The pillow and sheets were wet and clammy from sweat, and he began to shiver within moments. Misato returned almost immediately. When she came back, the thin cotton shorts and flimsy, thread-bare t-shirt were gone. In their place were a faded, light-pink set of pajamas. She blushed prettily, giving him a shy little smile with her head down, but eyes up.

"Now's not the time to play up the fan service." She admitted, before nudging him over to one side. Too shocked to reply, the teenager obliged. It took them a few moments to get fully situated, mostly at Misato's prompting. The bed was tiny, and he was much taller than her, They ended up almost brow to brow, with Misato's toes brushing into his shins.

Shinji's spine was locked straight and tight, as were his arms and legs. Misato curled up against him and whispered, asking him what was wrong. Every bone and muscle in his body was simultaneously trying to _not move_ and get as far away from her as possible, if for no other reason than staying sane. Still, he twisted his neck enough to look her in the face. Her expression was different, she didn't realize he could still see her clearly.

Misato didn't wear masks. Instead she put one part of herself forward ahead of all the others, blinding people with her extremes. Now though, he could see that she was relaxed. Not diminished, but balanced, at peace. She was smiling; warm, welcoming and soft. Bit by bit he let out the breath he'd been holding, before finally answering. "I don't want to hurt you, Misato-san... And..."

He looked away, not needing to say any more. Misato reached over and tugged his chin, turning his face back towards hers. "I trust you, Shinji. There's nothing else to it."

With her head nestled in the crook of his shoulder, she curled her arm around his face and shoulder. He could feel her heartbeat, among... Other things. Exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and pressed up against another warm body, Shinji's eyelids grew heavy, and slowly, with a great sense of dread, he fell asleep.

No terrors touched him.

* * *

><p>He was fully awake almost instantly. He let his head fall back into the pillow, breathing deeply. Misato hummed against his collarbone. Something twisted in his mind<em>. I've seen this woman naked, why is this bothering me so much<em>? He thought about it some more_. It's because she's here; I can touch her, hold her_. Staring up at the ceiling, he started to think. _This... This is actually pretty nice. _His right arm was trapped under her, but he knew he could lift her up over his head easily._ It's like_ _she barely weights anything..._

Misato chose that moment to move _just so_. Then, his entire awareness focused in on one single point. Shinji had to get out of bed. Now. Extricating himself was no easy feat, but he managed, barely. He let out a long, low sigh of relief, even as blood pounded in every limb. Making it to the door without incident, he shut it behind him and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Rei had stepped out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel.

The boy blinked, while she just stared at him unflinchingly. His own eyes dropped down, then up, down again and up one final time before he registered her state of undress. Nature then decided to take its course. His whole body seized, even as he choked back a rough, guttural cough. Rei stared at him for another long second, before walking back to her room. Shinji had long since flushed crimson. Very gingerly, he made his way to the bathroom.

_This... Is a wonderful start to a day_

* * *

><p>For a long time, Rei didn't consider time to be valuable. For one, she was young, and generally, teenagers were incapable of comprehending its finite nature. For another, she was <em>literally<em> replaceable. Now though, she understood that even with her advantages, it was never a good idea to waste time _in excess._

Her strides were perfect, and her goals were clear in her mind. After using the shampoos Lieutenant Katsuragi provided, every stray breeze and motion seemed to pick her hair up and sent it flying. She was only distantly aware of it, even on this early morning. Walking into down-town Tokyo-3, the First Child was _turning heads._ No one decided to pursue her after they saw her face and distinct lack of expression.

School had been canceled for an indefinite period after the attempted kidnapping. The invaders had _intended_ to use the pilots as leverage, in order to secure their own safe escape. Confronted with free days, Rei began to explore the new revelations she had experienced. A notebook and reference guide were clutched in her arms, with a pen slipped into the spine.

A few blocks later brought her to one of the inner-city train stations, and then the next train further into the city. Like before, she attracted a fair amount of attention, but for once, it was welcome. Aida Kensuke sat across from her, smiling. He lacked the nervous, jittery energy that characterized him.

Now he just raised a hand in greeting. "Morning, Ayanami-san."

Rei looked up, blinking once before answering. She could count on one hand how many people talked to her consistently. She'd have fingers left over, if she counted how many times she ever _replied. _"Good morning."

Any other day, Kensuke would've filled the air with chatter, hoping to flood the awkward silence with meaningless conversation. Right now though, he was happy to just sit across from the blue haired girl. The train moved between stops smoothly, losing and gaining passengers. It was a truly pleasant morning. The sun was out and rising swiftly, warming the train car but not enough to offset the cool rush of air conditioning. Finally, Kensuke mustered up the will to ask her what she was doing. Rei's face and expression did not change, nor did her head even move.

She did however, tighten her grip on the books. "I have an appointment."

* * *

><p>The drive to NERV was awkward, to say the least. The Sub-Commander wanted to brief the pair on their newest assignments and recent developments. The pair arrived early though, because Ritsuko probably wanted to get some more tests in.<p>

The pilot and Tactical Operations Director entered to the Geofront. Rushing out of the tunnel, Shinji's ears popped, and he felt that familiar, welcome sense of elation. The Geofront was as awesome as he'd first seen it. Most of the armory buildings were extended into combat mode. Tokyo-3 was still on lock down after the attack, no one going in or out.

That wasn't unexpected though. Several thousand people saw the tower of golden light in the sky. There would be no amount of favor trading or back room deals to keep a seal on that. For once Shinji was actually kept in the loop. Their main concern was preparing all of their information before the story broke wide open. His father, no matter how standoffish he was as a person or parent, gave every indication of being a ruthless, talented administrator and leader.

Shinji never doubted that Gendo was good at his job.

'Going Public' was still out of the question, but for now, they had to keep additional exposure to a minimum. The next step was creating a suitable cover story and preparing to deploy it. Shinji however wasn't going to be much help with that; he had trouble ever thinking of himself as anything other than well_, human_, in addition to _Exalted_. Deja and Misato assured him they'd take care of that.

Navigating the corridors of NERV was a chore as always. Fortunately for all involved, Shinji's incredible sense of direction proved itself more than a match for the catacombs of NERV. Passing by another cross-back that would've sent them in circles, he finally asked Misato. "Why are there so many..." He waved his hands at the tangles of passages.

Normally, Misato would've laughed it off, but she figured Shinji would understand the finer points of defensive planning. "It's to keep intruders confused. None of the maps of NERV are fully up to date. Aside from you, I think only Ritsuko and the Commander knows how to get everywhere without getting lost."

She snorted, smiling. "Ritsuko cheats though, she has a remote link to the MAGI somewhere in her lab coat."

* * *

><p>The train glided along, tilting just so to make the upcoming turn just a little bit easier on the passengers. Rei had always liked the train, but now... Now it was missing something. Her tongue touched the roof of her mouth, remembering the tangy iron taste of fresh blood. Her own blood. She had been lucky during the school attack, none of her injuries reached that theoretical threshold for her regeneration. Doctor Akagi admitted it was all guesswork; They just <em>did not know anything<em>.

Uncertainty seemed to be the word of the day. Self-sufficiency was surprisingly easy to attain with a small amount of critical thinking. The world lacked an omnipresent internet. Tokyo-3 compensated with the MAGI's near limitless capability to multitask. Automated phone directories lead to information lines, which in turn guided the teenager to her goal. Even for all of that, all of her planning, there were still questions.

Rei lifted her head to stare at the boy. Seconds passed before she spoke."Aida-kun."

The boy looked away from the window, blinking once. "Yeah?"

She had to think through her mannerisms, picking the right muscles to make the right faces. It took her a long time to find the body language and expression she wanted, but to anyone who knew her, the change was dramatic. The Commander had been for the longest time, the only person to generate any semblance of emotion or vitality in her. She tilted her head to one side and raised one eyebrow. Awkwardly, like she hadn't quite figured out how to move just one part of her face. Kensuke didn't know it, but it was eerily similar to a look Ritsuko often used.

Her face held that way for a long moment, visibly struggling to find the right words. "Were you afraid?"

Kensuke leaned back in his seat. The rest of the car pointedly ignored their conversation. It took him a few moments to figure out what she was asking."During the attack?"

Rei nodded. He glanced out the window, the sun obliterated his reflection, but he didn't flinch or squint. "Of course, it's really hard to _not_ be scared in the face of certain death."

She just cocked her head to one side. It was a Misato-esque gesture, though terribly exaggerated. The girl bent her neck painfully. Kensuke just elaborated. "We're humans, fear is kinda hardwired in."

Was she really so poorly made as to not even have that? She felt the desire to _live_, but was that really fear? She was never afraid during the Angel attacks or any of the dangerous sync tests. She shook off the tangent, focusing back on Kensuke. "I do not think I have fear."

Now the boy seemed to notice something was off. He was a teenager, and a boy at that. Intrapersonal skills were not something he had in excess, especially as a declared geek. Regardless, he wasn't _blind_. Rei was uncomfortable, visibly so. He knew her well enough to say that something had always been off about her. She blushed without looking embarrassed, never fanned herself during the hot days. Nothing.

Well, he couldn't read her face, but he could talk to her, listen, and make her think. Best to start with a basic question."Why not?"

Rei fell back into that expressionless state. "I was never afraid during the attack."

And who said you couldn't get lucky? That was something Kensuke could answer, easily too. "Oh, that's just adrenaline. You were afraid, your body just wasn't letting you feel it."

"How do you know?" It was more like asking 'how do you know _me?'_

His response terminated every thought in her mind. For a split second, Rei stopped seeing a boy sitting on a train. A tiny part of her collected experience pulled itself free, falling into her conscious thoughts. Words and phrases of poets and educators and hundreds of other people finally started to make sense. She gained vital context. There was a font of wisdom sitting across from her.

"Because you're human, the same as me."

* * *

><p>The Proving Grounds were being disassembled. Shinji had spent the better part of ten months in the converted hangar. He knew the names of every regular trainer, technician, engineer and scientist on the floor. It was probably going to be the last day he spent here, for a long time.<p>

Now at least, he was doing something reasonably constructive. Ritsuko had pulled him over, hoping to compare notes."So, what do we know, really, about this... Thaumaturgy?"

"Well, it's based on a lot of ritual behavior so far. Things like contagion, sympathetic resonance. I want to say Hermetic tradition?"

"Sounds about right, except for the fact that Hermetic magic never really... Worked. At all. Have you heard of the Zeitgeist theory?"

Shinji shook his head before grabbing a general reference book. When he found it, Ritsuko leaned over his shoulder to read as well. She only knew of the theory in passing, herself. They closed the book and faced each other, blinking rapidly. Over the last ten months or so, Shinji moved from an awkward, stumbling neophyte to a worthy disciple. He lacked Maya's talent for computer sciences, but his ability to tackle any form of problem or challenge was an asset she couldn't ignore.

Even so, he gave her an askew look. "Are we seriously going to consider a 'spirit of the century'?" He didn't want to think about how _he_ could be that spirit. It would've been too... Big.

Ritsuko just shrugged. "I'm a scientist, I have to accept that everything I know could be wrong. It still _bugs me_ though." She rolled around in her chair, coasting along. "That's the point of science, to make predictions, experiment, and run tests, over and over again."

Finally stopping next to the percolator, she refilled her coffee. "So, let's go over the rules again." Shinji nodded and moved over to the white board, scribbling away. When he was finished, there was only one real 'rule', and a handful of theories. Most of it was locked away in Shinji's mind, trapped behind a language he spoke in fits and starts. They were making progress, slowly.

The most obvious, important rule was ritual behavior. Shinji knew, front to back, a handful of self-contained sets of instructions for any number of useful things, most of which required ingredients that didn't exist. One particular set annoyed him even then, the recipe for purified 'suntouched' gold. That had been the closest translation he could make. He'd since moved on to other things, leaving Kensuke to do his own research, in addition to Ritsuko.

They proved that you didn't have to _be_ magic to do Thaumaturgy. That Shinji himself was not required, though none of them could say with any certainty if any of this had been possible before he Exalted. Did he bring that potential with him? Did he awaken magic on Earth? They couldn't say.

The ritual behavior, however, chanting and specific procedures, they all had one thing in common. Finding that common point ended up taking a lot longer than anyone expected. Both pilot and scientist took a crash course in anthropology and mysticism, looking for the vocabulary they needed to ask the right questions. Symbolism was their latest lead. Their actions and intent lead to something becoming another thing... But at the same time, more than that. They were getting more than what they put in.

The card-pattern ritual, for example. Kensuke proved that you could use your own ink, and his printed circuit boards were an interesting avenue of research, but they missed the mark, only slightly. Whenever Shinji or Ritsuko made a new test slip, they could make the pattern as elaborate as they wanted, as many colors as they could think of... And they would never once run out of ink.

A simple thing, ink, liquid and pigment. They were taking black ink and making it red, blue, green, turquoise, chartreuse, puce, umber. The ritual required a specific amount of ink to work. They ended up with a page covered in designs that defied any sane conservation principle. During one experiment, Shinji and Ritsuko stared at the offending piece of paper for a very long time.

In short, they were violating causality as they knew it.

Now though, months after the initial discovery, Ritsuko had gotten over most of the initial incredulity, buckling down to focus on the science. There had to be something that made it all possible. Something from nothing _didn't happen_... So there had to be a something they weren't yet seeing. Now they teased at the problem, slowly. Even more so now that Ritsuko's budget had been slashed.

The scientist looked out into the Proving Grounds, watching the engineers tear everything down for storage. A wistful smile tugged at her lips. Barely a few months ago she was watching the Third punch and kick his way through everything, trying to find something he couldn't break. Everything did though, every single time.

Something caught then, on the tip of her tongue. Twisting in her seat, she looked over at the pilot standing by the white board, scribbling away. Every single time. She filtered through her memories, countless experimental sessions, footage. Every single time.

Language failed her. She wasn't sure what she was speaking when she swore. "That's... That's... That's _stupid_."

He turned, asking what was wrong. Ritsuko didn't answer, she lurched out of her chair, dropping her nearly full cup of coffee on her way to a hidden cabinet, muttering the whole time. When she came back, two thick glass tumblers slammed into the table so hard, he was amazed they didn't shatter outright. He wondered if it was a bad thing, that he recognized the bottle of liquor in Ritsuko's hand as vodka.

She poured two glasses, staring at Shinji, glaring drunkenly somehow before even taking a sip. She held one dangerously full glass out to him, but before he could even reach it, she pulled back and downed it in one shot, coughing raggedly. The second tumbler followed right after, leaving Shinji to stare, helplessly.

"R-Ritsuko-Sensei?"

The woman refilled the glasses and offered him one again, this time he slid forward and took it before she could drink them both. Her manic glare intensified, while her shoulders shook with broken laughter. "You don't realize it. I didn't either until just now. You're the first, last and only word, Shinij-kun. First and last!"

He tried to mouth a question, but she spun and hooked her arm around his, like how couples did at bars or during weddings. He diagnosed her in an instant; there was no way she was already drunk. Getting there, but not for a while yet. All of this was deliberate, she was _acting_... And Not.

Before he could try to get a word in, she answered. "How does it feel, Shinji-kun? You don't get it yet. I know, I didn't see it the first time either." Untangling herself, Ritsuko leaned back and flopped in her chair, bottle of vodka in one hand and glass in the other.

"You know that everything we see is just a tiny fraction of a fraction slower than the speed of light? It takes time for a photon to bounce off one thing and hit our retinas. Just a little." Shinji started to break out in a sweat, because Ritsuko started to _sing._

"Just one little photon! Bouncing around at the speed of light. Can't go faster, can't go slower. Except for that one time in Berlin." She hiccuped, grinning muzzily. "Oh where was I. Photons. Speed of light. We call it C, Em Cee Squared. See? Cee. Cee for _Constant."_

The scientist, head of Project E and lead researcher, quite possibly the smartest woman on the planet today dissolved into giggling fit, kicking her legs up in the air so hard her shoes flew off, lost behind consoles. "Co~onstant!" She crooned. The boy really hoped this was just a temporary thing, really, he did.

Leaping out of the chair, she gave him the pointer finger with the hand holding the bottle, very nearly losing it completely. The mad grin returned in force, along with a basic proclamation.

"You can break anything known to science, reliably and without fail. We have C, now we have S, for that which breaks everything! You, Ikari Shinji, are a _scientific constant!_"

* * *

><p>He missed his stop by more than three stations, an extra ten blocks of walking to the arcades. Kensuke found himself not caring one bit. Instead his mind was blank, almost scoured clean. All he did was tell her the truth; borrowed from books, but no less real.<p>

Rei stepped off the train nearly thirty minutes ago. She did something then, that suddenly put everything into context. The awkwardness, the mismatched expressions, her _otherness_. It all started to make sense. When her stop was announced, the girl stood up, just as easily and mechanically precise as any other, but she looked at him, and he'd never forget it for the rest of his life.

The boy was the first person in the world to ever see it. It was something reached her eyes, her whole face, because he didn't expect anything of her; no loyalty or companionship. No conscious thought guided her, she did not _think_, she just _did_, the same as babies do, children at play or her classmates after school.

It had been her first truly human smile.

* * *

><p>NERV was truly labyrinthine, maintaining facilities in the surrounding bedrock, 'below ground', and the upper strata that held up the fortress city. Delegation was the greatest weapon in Ikari Gendo's arsenal. As such, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki Kozo was briefing Lieutenant Katsuragi. The old man preferred the lower offices within Central Dogma. Mornings in the Geofront were often dark and cool, even with the mirror network guiding light into the space from sunrise to sunset.<p>

Fuyutsuki slid a bound folder across his simple desk towards the Lieutenant, along with an enclosed mini disc. Clipped to the inside was a photo of a young redheaded girl. "Due to the... Unfortunate events last week at Tokyo-3 Municipal High School, NERV-Germany and the United Nations believes it best that we place all active Evangelion Pilots under the same security envelope."

Neither of them felt it worth mentioning how much _money_ that would save, consolidating their assets. Misato wondered if she was getting too attached to the pilots, but decided that wasn't a bad thing. Fuyutsuki continued the briefing. "To that end the Second Child and Evangelion Unit-02 will be arriving in Tokyo-3 on February 14th, 2015."

She looked up from the folder for a moment. If Asuka was going to be under the same security envelope... The lieutenant frowned slightly. The blue haired girl had only just gotten settled in... "What about Rei? Sir."

It seemed that had already been accounted for. "The Commander has decided to leave the specifics to you. The Second Child should be moving into your apartment complex. The majority of the units are vacant, correct?"

Now things were starting to make a little more sense, she blinked a bit before bracing. A superior officer asked her a question."Yes Sir, Section Two cleared out most of the neighbors before I moved in. Stupid security concerns..."

"Quite." He didn't call her on the lack of discipline, not today at least. The old man coughed, shuffling some papers to cover his gathering thoughts. "Anyway, dispensation has the paperwork you need to lease out an apartment. For lack of a better term, Lieutenant Katsuragi, you are now the landlady of that property"

She blinked twice in short succession. _Does this mean I can collect rent_? A blinding, brilliant smile spread across her face, followed by a jump and rising fist-pump. "Score!"

"Lieutenant."

Wincing, Misato bowed, tucking the folder behind her back and holding her other hand in front of her lips and smiling, contrite. "Sorry sir."

Fuyutsuki sighed before moving to get on with the meeting, when his intercom blinked. Someone needed to talk to Misato. The lieutenant took the offered headset and listened. With each passing second, the normally healthy, vibrant woman grew a shade paler. Her side of the conversation moved from words to squeaks of dismay. When she was finished, the woman put the phone down.

Sickeningly sweet, saccharine, and thick with dispair, the woman turned to the old man. "I. Right. Taking care of this! Have a good day. Sir!"

* * *

><p>This was karma. It had to be. Karma for <em>miles<em>. This was cosmic payback for that one time in Tibet with the two initiates and the Buddha. She just knew it. A subterranean transport line followed by a powered walkway, moved Misato deeper into NERV, towards the Proving Grounds. All the while she had been patched into the Section Two agents on watch, listening as they recounted the past two hours.

Shinji now knew at least six _scandalous_ bar rhymes, and it had been determined that he could definitely carry a tune. Ritsuko decided table dancing on the consoles was a good idea. Lunging for the call button, she summoned the nearest elevator, furiously tapping her foot. "C'mon, c'mon..."

Up towards the ground level and the outlying pathways and forest campus, past a small man-made river. The hangar structure dominated everything around it, easily large enough to hold multiple Evangelions. Inside, Misato was close enough now to hear voices, familiar ones. Slamming into and through the door, she stopped. Ritsuko was there, lounging on one of the terminals in her normal lab coat...

And a plugsuit. One of Rei's at that. The lieutenant coughed, almost swallowing her tongue. Her best friend was _vamping_, playing it up like a calendar photo shoot and giggling, blushing down to her chin. Two bottles of empty bottles of vodka slid off the monitor and crashed to the floor. Ritsuko blew the sober woman a kiss before folding her legs around like a fifties pinup model.

Sweating and haggard, Misato ran shaking fingers through her hair. "This isn't happening. Please tell me this is not happening."

She turned to see Shinji, looking far less drunk and humming pleasantly. He was standing in front of the white board, scribbling away without a care in the world. Facing her, he stopped, blinked once then blushed incandescent, down past his neck. Ritsuko started laughing even harder. Misato glanced between the pair, one, than the other. That look, that laugh. Oh please no. She didn't deserve that. Really. It was only _one_ time.

She whirled on Ritsuko. Her friend was a giddy, talkative, _uninhibited_ drunk. "_What did you tell him?"_

Ritsuko just hooked her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth on her rear, looking ten years younger in a white supertech skinsuit. Her eyes were dancing. "Nothing important!" She crooned, ticking items off on her fingers. She kept overshooting. "That thing with the missile silo... Annnnd" She pauses for a moment, putting one gloved fingertip on her chin. Misato's face had already turned ashen.

"Apple Tree."

"That one bit part you and Kaji did."

Now Misato started hyper ventilating, even as her throat locked up tight with a dry, whispering croak. Ritsuko kept on smiling. "Okay I lied."

"Y-You did?"

"Yeah. I told him about that bit part you and I did instead."

With that, all the fear, humiliation and stress vanished. In its place was icy cold clarity. The tactical operations director was in charge now. She knew exactly how to deal with this problem. Shinji cheated; he was a burgeoning historian because he could spend sixty consecutive hours in a library. Well, she had a college degree too, _and_ knew the classics. She reached into her red jacket and pulled out something black and plastic.

Misato had no time or patience for any of this. She could play Alexander just as easily as anyone else. With a snarling, electric crackle, she pressed the taser into Ritsuko's middle and thumbed the trigger. Her best friend fell over with a short, euphoric gurgle. Shinji was still trying to reconcile... Something. Whatever had happened. His guardian and friend tazed him once, twice, then three times before he went down.

Ritsuko could sleep the rest off in the infirmary. She'd just take Shinji home.

* * *

><p>Rei had completed her objective successfully. Her task was complete. The first of many. She looked up at the sun; midafternoon. She would have to return home soon.<p>

Staring at the tiny rectangle of laminated plastic, she felt dismay for the first time in memory. Not at having it. The license proved she was ready, provisionally. She sat on a bench outside the tiny government office. _Is this how normal teenagers feel?_ She wondered. Looking up, Rei watched the early afternoon traffic bustle around her. People walking past, cars rolling along. Only the soldiers on every street corner reminded anyone of what happened earlier that week.

The niggling sense of dissatisfaction had more to do with the swatch of color in the upper right corner of the card.

_This... Is a terrible picture._

* * *

><p>He'd lived with Misato long enough to know that people who had hangovers would swear off drinking for life. Then get drunk again the next evening. He knew it well enough to not fall into that trap. Instead he tried very hard to ignore the pounding in his skull, or the over-sensitivity. The alcohol blocked out the nightmares at least, small favors. He made it to the kitchen without... Exacerbating his condition. He wasn't nauseous at least.<p>

Reaching for the biggest glass he could find, he slapped the faucet on and let it fill. Something cold and wet pressed into his cheek, very nearly shocking him out of his bedclothes. Misato stood next to him, smirking with a friendly glint in her eyes and a can of beer in her hand. "Hair of the dog?"

He just sighed, smiling. "No thank you, water." A hangover was just an acute case of dehydration, among other things. He downed the full glass of water in one go. Misato had a bottle of pain pills in her other hand, those he did take.

Misato leaned against the kitchen counter while Shinji took a seat, slowly sipping his third glass of water. Popping the top on the can, she a swig herself. "So... Why did you drink a whole bottle of vodka?"

"I don't know. I-I just break things. And they have math for it." He let his head drop onto the table. Ritsuko, during one of her more lucid moments, asked him about one of the various god paradoxes. 'Can God make a stone he cannot lift?' He tried explaining it to Misato two, three times more, but couldn't quite find the right words. It was all just too big. Violently big, life-altering. It was the opposite feeling, of being put in context of the greater universe. Shinji did not feel so small as to be insignificant, instead he was now had _too much significance._

He could break the table if he wanted. Break the floor, break the walls, Evangelions. Break Misato-to-his-wil- _No. _ He shoved any comparisons between him and _any_ sort of _god and _Caligula well away from his thoughts. Was there something he couldn't break? Could he make it? Misato watched the emotions flash across his face, sipping the beer she previously offered him.

He started to clench and unclench his hands under the table. "I think I need to go... Do something." He pushed away from the table, but Misato stopped him partway with a raised finger. Pulling a briefcase out from somewhere, she handed it to him. "Section Two delivered it this morning. Ritsuko wanted to apologize."

Inside the case was a high-end laptop computer, leagues ahead of his own school device. A hastily hand-written note declared that Shinji now had a scholarship to Kyoto-2 University and its entire online curriculum.

"I think it's a great idea too, as long as school is canceled. Would you let Rei borrow it, if she was interested?" Misato pushed the case and computer towards him with one of those warm 'best-friend-in-the-whole-world' smiles. The the kind of smile that said everything was going to be great.

He pulled the gift into his arms and matched her grin, even if he still looked a little hung over. "Y-Yeah, I will."

* * *

><p>If left to their own devices, the victims involved in the terrorist attack would have suffered much, much more. Fear had a way of weighing on people well after the fact. Tokyo-3 however, was a strong, tightly integrated community. Children returned to their families, while soldiers and law enforcement buckled down. The city was in some ways a company town, built from NERV, an outgrowth of the research group and paramilitary organization. That tight community turned inward, grew even more interconnected.<p>

Even as school was canceled, people dove back into their lives with as much vigor as they could muster. Reestablishing patterns was the key to successful recovery for most people. Children studied, played, or spent time with their parents. Stores were open and sold their wares, while the MAGI worked to keep the city running smoothly.

The JSSDF elements near and in the city proper integrated themselves into the city routine. These were career soldiers, enlisted men and NCOs, focused on protecting their families directly. NERV's part in resolving the crisis was small, but respected for its efficient, elegant contributions. NERV used its own internal command structure, but it lacked proper military organization. It was a research facility, a corporation or university more than a government body. Instead, the JSSDF attached honorary ranks to the 'officers' of NERV's command staff, holding them to the same standards as normal soldiers.

Misato was a Lieutenant because of her position in the JSSDF, serving under NERV's civilian authority. It was an unorthodox arrangement, to say the least, and not one that everyone was happy about. But for right now, it worked, and that was what mattered.

Gendo had not planned for it, but he was not going to disregard additional loyalty to spend.

* * *

><p>The school had been cleaned and declared fit for use a week after the incident. Reopening the facility had to wait for another matter; retrofit and upgraded security. After the attack, NERV dipped into their dwindling budget as both a practical response, and a political one. Most of the children in the city attended the complex, to say nothing of the Children.<p>

Despite the good will and solidarity created by the attack, there were concerns, issues. They built in strength and spread throughout the city, breaking into factions and ideologies. On Gendo's order, NERV kept the pilots and Misato in the dark. If they had known, there might have been... Complications. Complications like the protest happening outside the school.

Concerned parents, citizens, even some of the older students were out in force, pressing against the construction cordon. JSSDF guards did their best to keep the peace, but tensions were rising. Behind the barriers, workers bustled about, installing new cameras, outlying security structures and more. Jack hammers were brought out to tear up the street, preparing for the installation of retractable bollard's, a defensive measure against unauthorized vehicles.

Everything NERV was doing to make the school safer seemed to just make the protesters angrier. Their rallying cry was simple: "This is NERV's fault! We don't want the pilots here!"

* * *

><p>Tucked away in one of the Old Hakone suburbs was a tiny shrine. Probably the only shrine near one a train stations. Nestled in a small cluster of low slung, rolling hills, the dilapidated structure was still in some way stately, worthy. It had been ignored for a long time, left to overgrown grass and trees and early morning mist.<p>

Thousands of people saw the tower of light rise into the sky. Tens of thousands. Word of mouth ensured the tale spread to nearly the whole city. The Dawkins protocol would have buckled if it tried to quash discussion _within_ the city. Instead, communication directed away from the Hakone region were carefully sanitized. It was not a perfect solution, but it bought valuable time for NERV, and by extension, Gendo.

Just under twenty teenagers witnessed the aura of burning sunfire around Shinji. They saw him glow, fight, take three bullets to the torso and keep going. They saw him break concrete, and they saw him win. They were debriefed, of course, told under no uncertain terms not to reveal anything they saw with regard to the pilot. That was all well and good, but they were teenagers; they hear but only rarely listen.

They weren't very religious, either, but that didn't stop them from _thinking_. It started in ones and twos, a mere handful, like a school club. It was something fun to do before the students were allowed back. They found the shrine and cut away the overgrowth, pushed scrap wood into place to hold up the roof. Bit by bit, things started to build up; a symbol here, a history book there.

To the kids it was fairly obvious; who else in the history of Japan had any association with the Sun?

* * *

><p>The bags had been in his room, weighing on his mind. With everything else that had been happening, it seemed like now was as good a time as any to sort through them. Section Two had already vetted them for drugs and explosives, leaving harmless wrapped packages. Gifts from his 'admirers'. The whole situation still bothered him, sickeningly so. Misato and Ayumi had explained it, sort of, how a lot of women liked 'danger', and how there was a degree of truth to 'girls liking bad boys'.<p>

It honestly made no sense, and kind of repulsed him. But, during his episode, it was the best time of his life. He sighed and shoved those memories back, focusing on the task at hand. It was better than all the other things he could've been brooding over. Now the two sacks were emptied and spread out on the kitchen table. All the food and candies had long since been tossed out, too dangerous, or just old and stale. That left handwritten cards, declarations of affection and... Offers, that made him blush past his ears.

One slowly growing pile was made of all the messages forgiving him. Lots of reassurances, heartfelt words. He was already planning on saving those. Leaning back in the chair, he stretched, yawning. The apartment door slid open, and Rei appeared. She glanced at him and the pile of presents while walking towards her room. He knew her well enough to not be offended at her lack of expression; that was just how she was. He still gave her a smile, slightly wry with regard to all the 'work' he has left.

Tearing open the next batch of envelopes, the smell of week-old perfume hit his nose. Wincing, he tried to wave the scent away, but there was only so much he could do. Rei walked by again. This time with a pair of towels in her arms, on her way to the washroom. A few moments later, the bath started filling. Shinji pushed the scented letters away, reaching for the next one. It was slightly heavier than the others, but made it through security, so it was probably fine.

A moment later, Shinji lost all capacity for rational thought. A tiny card marked with a phone number tumbled out of the envelope. Not that he noticed it; the offending item dominated every thought. Less than a handful of lace and wispy, fine silk landed in his palm, clinging to his fingers.

"Excuse me." Shinji looked up, turning to the towel, and then looking up to the Rei clad in it, still dripping from her bath. His hands felt incrementally lighter after Rei gently lifted the intimate apparel from his palm. "I forgot to bring underwear. I will return it later."

She held the under things between her hands, lifting them up to eye level. There was maybe enough material to equal half a candy bar wrapper. "Yes. These are my size."

Some distant part of Shinji's mind remained aware, quietly archiving everything that had and would happen, if for no other reason than to let the boy drive himself more insane later. The blue-haired girl slid one foot through, than the other, drawing the dark purple panties up her thighs and under the towel. Then she turned, hiking the towel up high on one hip and twisting to look at how well they fit. For a brief moment she looked like a completely normal girl, interested in how she looked.

Except it was _Rei_ and she was _mostly naked standing a foot away from him_.

It was then, in that moment, that Shinji started to hear 'Hall of the Mountain King', playing in the back of his mind.

She let the towel fall back down, thankfully, regrettably, barely covering her thighs. "I have not worn anything like these before. They are very insubstantial, almost impractical. I feel like I am wearing nothing at all."

The girl turned on her toes and bounced, like how Misato sometimes did around him or Toji and Kensuk- The realization broke through his train of thought - _Rei was emulating Misat- _His free hand clenched so tight, all five tendons cracked at once. She stared at his hand, then at his face, for a very long moment.

Shinji let out a quick, short choking sound, and Rei kept staring. Then, her eyes seemed to light up, almost glowing. "Ah." She looked down, comprehending. "They are not meant to be practical. I understand."

Rei hooked her fingers into the waistband and pulled, tugging them around her hips. Turning once more, she made her way back towards her room. She had to stop ever few steps for adjustments, wriggling her hips the whole time.

"They ride up."

Shinji stayed in his seat for nearly an hour, before Misato came home for the night. She walked past the kitchen and down the hall towards her room, tossing her jacket on the couch as she went. Walking backwards, she leaned past the corner to look at the staring, catatonic teenager. Ambling over, the woman waved her hand in front of his eyes. Shinji didn't even blink. Shaking his shoulder didn't work either.

Looking left and right, Misato smirked. If this didn't snap him out of it, nothing would. She leaned down and pressed her lips against his cheek.

Nothing. Not even a squeak. She sighed, scratching her head. "Great. Do I have to break out the grapes and togas?"

* * *

><p>In the following weeks, Misato pushed for normalcy, as normal as her apartment could ever claim to be. The lieutenant had nearly laughed herself hoarse after finally digging the explanation out of her kids. Life with the older woman felt like an endless summer vacation, even if the pilots had to go in for synchronization tests every two weeks. Shinji found himself absorbed into higher education, devouring the contents of university online degree programs. Even cheating via magic, he found himself having trouble finding time for everything. He spent time at the NERV infirmary, or with Toji and Kensuke, or continuing to date Ayumi.<p>

Rei would often vanish for hours at a time, spending the whole day out in the city for no apparent reason. Misato never pried, as a girl was entitled to her secrets, and Rei was so fastidiously responsible, she felt no fear what so ever. The girl just wouldn't get in trouble, she was constitutionally incapable of it. Shinji on the other hand seemed to attract trouble wherever he went, but in a good way.

He still had nightmares, but again, cheated, sleeping only once or twice a week, and working around Misato's schedule, instead of his own. She hated the necessity, but couldn't argue the convenience. The lieutenant refused to give up any chance to tease her charge in the morning after waking up though. All but inhaling breakfast, Misato prepared for that morning's opening salvo when she noticed something.

She squinted at the ceramic dish in her hand, past the left over scrapings of breakfast. "Shinji-kun, did you buy new plates?"

The Exalt leaned out of the bathroom, drying his hair. "Ah. No. I made those."

Misato blinked, before moving off to rinse the plate and examine it more. "Really? You made this? How?"

No matter how tall he got, the boy could hunch over and smile like a sheepish fourteen year old any day of the week. Misato raised one eyebrow, waiting for an answer. "I uh, built a kiln."

She just stopped then, and stared. Her voice went flat, drained of intonation. "A kiln."

"Just a small one."

* * *

><p>Misato glanced at Shinji, who was standing on his hands on the balcony, wobbling severely. He tumbled, and she winced in sympathy. She turned back to the dispensation forms and minutiae required to extend the security envelop and lease the apartment next door for Asuka's arrival. She didn't notice Shinji finally 'get' standing on his hands. Nor did she notice him changing positions, now trying to do so on the rail of her balcony.<p>

She did not notice Shinji's squawk of dismay followed by a scream, the crunch of metal and the indignant yelp of a cat. The Third Child muscled his way back up the side of the apartment building, a moldy orange stuck to his shoulder, and a banana peel flopped over one eye. He sighed and went to get cleaned up.

Martial Arts were a great confidence builder, so many people have said. It worked much the same way for Shinji, in some areas at least. Misato had grown used to him practicing simple forms in the living space of the apartment, moving very slowly and with deliberate care. She'd seen how fast he could move when Ritsuko tested him. The phone clicked. "H-Hello!"

There was a brief crackle of ambient sound followed by a tinny, cheerful woman's voice. "Hello, thank you for calling - Hakone Municipal Advisory Board - your call is very important to us. Please Hold!"

Misato's eyebrow twitched madly. Behind her, out of sight, Shinji tripped on a fold in the floor rug. The table in his path did little to break his fall, but instead did everything to break itself, falling to kindling around him. The boy shot bolt upright, nearly panicking. It took him a few seconds to settle on a plan of action, dashing outside and up towards his lab.

He scrambled around, picking up bits of table, flailing and panicking in the background. Misato twirled and hummed into the phone, on hold yet again. The synthesized voice chirped an alert: "We estimate your time holding to be..." Click-click-click "Six. Hours." Click. "Here is some music while you wait~" Misato groaned, tossing the phone aside and shuffling into her room to take a nap. Incidentally missing Shinji come back, carrying an armload of wood and tools. Nor did she hear him work.

Later that night, she asked about the obviously new table and chairs. Then she asked about the old furniture. Only then did the boy act embarrassed. "... We also have a new chess set, picture frames and spice rack."

* * *

><p>"...I... What? I don't... <em>Rei!"<em>

Several deep breaths later, Misato managed to find the means to actually ask a question. Rei had asked her to come down to the rear of the apartment complex, near the garbage collection area and the parking lot. There, next to Misato's own blue Alpine Renault, was a car. It was in fact a _wrecked_ car. Even so, there was something about it, it was familiar, and full of potential. She looked at Rei, hoping for an explanation.

The blue-haired girl stood next to the damaged vehicle, in her same school clothes as almost always, smeared with a bit of oil and rust. Ever impassive, the lieutenant couldn't help but shake the impression that Rei might have said 'It followed me hope. Misato also wondered how the thing even got into the parking lot. "Rei... What is this?"

"A Nissan NISMO R34 Skyline."

"...That's a freaking supercar." Suddenly, the pile of crumpled metal and plastic seemed infinitely more interesting. She was enough of a gearhead to recognize it now. Misato reached out and ran her hand over one panel, almost feeling the engineering excellence that went into the design. She hoped Rei would tell her what was going on.

Rei reached into a pocket, opening her wallet to reveal a piece of laminated paper and plastic. Misato blinked, leaning in to squint at the license. "That's a pretty awful picture."

The girl's expression didn't change, but she did speak. "I agree."

* * *

><p>Miasto held up the familiar black bundle of fabric. It had the same high collar, zippered front and white edging at the shoulder cuffs. It was her favorite dress. She looked at the almost bashful, smiling boy. "I thought you already fixed this dress?"<p>

Grinning slightly, he rubbed the back of his neck. "I did, that's a new one. I made it."

"Made it? From scratch?"

"Well I had to buy the cloth." He waved at the living room, where Rei had the college laptop balanced on her thighs. "I had to learn everything, how to cut cloth, sew. But yeah, I made it." It was a lot easier than he originally thought too, the concepts just came to him. If he had the dress itself, he probably could've made an near perfect copy.

_I really shouldn't ask... But..._ Misato turned on the charm, not quite thinking of what she was actually doing. "Do you think you could maybe make some matching jewelry?"

The boy scratched his head. "I think so, sure."

* * *

><p>There were times Misato missed her tradition of instant food. That night wasn't one of them. Shinji had outdone himself, finding a new cookbook and loading the refrigerator and cabinets with dozens of ingredients. Cooking was something he just loved to do, and it showed with every meal. Rei, sadly, never experienced the joy of the Magic Pan. The Pan was keyed to Misato and Misato only. Still, the lieutenant was in heaven; a cold beer and a hot, home-cooked dinner waiting for her.<p>

It had gotten to the point that Misato only rarely noticed _what_ she was eating, instead only during special occasions. The more important part was that _Shinji_ made it, for the three of them to enjoy together. He made their breakfasts, packed their lunch, and made dinner, six or seven days a week. Misato sat at the head of the table, while Shinji and Rei were across from each other. The blue-haired girl favored teas and tofu, sticking to her rule of no meat. Shinji sometimes had trouble keeping chocolate in the house.

Most of their dinners were multiple course, with expertly allocated proportions. There were just enough appetizers to tide everyone over, even as Shinji put the finishing touches on the rest of the meal. Misato was already _beaming_, practically glowing with praise. Rei was never much for vocal displays, but her delighted expression was about as honest as anyone could ever hope to see.

It didn't take long for the house cook to lay out the main course, pulling off his apron before taking a seat. Misato grinned broadly, clad in her normal yellow tanktop and cutoffs. "Ahhh, This is great, this is really feeling like home, isn't it?"

The other kids nodded, though Rei didn't smile. It was the thought that counted. None of them minded the lack of conversation, though Shinji blushed every time Misato brushed his foot with her bare ankle. She did it to Rei as well, and for some reason, the young girl found herself smiling, just a little, and responding in kind, culminating in a duel beneath the table.

The night wore on, pleasantly so. Misato licked her lips and took a bite of the most recent, wonderful dish. She chewed, stopped, and blinked, just once, looking down at her chopsticks and the bit of seasoned meat. She chewed again, and blinked once more, feeling a bit of heat rise in her cheeks.

Shinji was saying something, had been saying something, because he looked a little anxious. "-isato-san, is it... Okay?"

Instead of answering right away, Misato took yet another bite. She started to breath a bit faster, a little more shallow. Her smile grew just a bit more goofy. She took another full bite and just _stopped_ thinking. _"...Yyyeaaahh.."_

Meanwhile, Rei was experiencing much the same sensations with each bite. She lacked Misato's worldly experience or ability to express herself easily, but her academic knowledge was impeccable. She started sampling different morsels from her plate with rigid, mechanical precision, attempting to find a correlation. Rei also didn't have Misato's grasp of social mores, or maintaining control over subconscious responses. With each bite, she could not stop how she flushed a little bit more, grew a bit more frazzled, and looked just a tiny bit more _manic_.

The boy blinked, looking from one girl to the other, one eyebrow rising towards his hairline. He turned to Rei. "So... Did the beans come out okay?"

The girl fixed him with an unreadable look, only offering a curt 'Yes'. He looked back to Misato, asking her, again, if everything was alright. She nodded vigorously, waving her arms and doing her best to tell him everything was great. She leaned back in her seat, gingerly. Raising her can of beer, she took a sip to hide her look of utter disbelief. He had _no idea_ what he was doing, at all.

Then, Rei stopped at the second to last bite, putting her chopsticks down and folding her hands in her lap. She looked up at Misato, impassive as always save for the thin sheen of perspiration and the red on her cheeks. "Lieutenant Katsuragi, am I experiencing-"

For once, Misato's face burned molten, skipping past crimson and running into beet root. She waved, scrambled to cut the girl's question off and tried to keep her voice light and full of laughter. Shinji, meanwhile glanced from one girl to the other, bewildered. "Ahaha! Rei, I thought I told you, call me Misato while we're at home."

Fortunately, Rei could take a hint, and didn't bring it up again for the remainder of the evening. They were only halfway finished; the table was packed with food just waiting to be... _Consumed_. Misato stared at it all with a sort of dread glee, licking her lips even as she blushed down past her neck. Rei loosened her uniform neck ribbon and collar. The older woman had to suppress the urge to _pant_, and miracle upon miracles, Rei seemed to follow her lead, leaving Shinji none the wiser.

Then it came time for _desert_.

Earlier that evening, Misato had wondered why Shinji had spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen, and why it had smelled so _good_ and familiar. Now she knew. Shinji had baked a cake. A chocolate cake. Rei's jaw had fallen open, staring at the confection with wide eyes. Misato snapped back to full alertness, skin tingling like she'd been dumped in cold water. She all but lunged, planting one knee on a thankfully clear spot of table, in order to reach out and grab Rei's wrist, then Shinji's. Shinji blinked at his guardian, holding the serving knife poised above the dark frosting. Rei's nostrils flared, even as she strained against the older woman's grip.

Laughing, she played it off as one of her normal antics, again keeping her voice light and airy. "Ah! It's okay, Shinji-kun! I think that would be best, if we saved it for... Later. Yeah, Later."

The blue haired girl turned, head swiveling and focusing on the lieutenant. There no expression, other than the slant of her eyebrows. That look promised retribution. Misato ignored it."I'm stuffed. Rei and I will clean-I mean, clear the table. You did cook everything, after all." The woman looked at Rei, who let the glare fade before nodding. Shinji again was lost, but he agreed, letting the ladies take care of things.

The pair waited on eggshells, until they heard the telltale beep of a laptop starting up. They made sure he never saw that the chairs needed to be wiped down.

* * *

><p>When Misato winked and told him she and Rei were going to take a bath, for 'girl time', he started to hear an uncomfortable medley of, again, <em>Hall of the Mountain King,<em> alongside _Ode to Joy._

* * *

><p>The bathroom was the main reason Misato chose the apartment. NERV had given her a list of options, and while other buildings had their pros, like more space, better views, closer to work, this one had the best bathroom. Of course, since she was on her way to becoming landlady, she could in theory spring for remodeling... Well, she'd have time to think about that later.<p>

All together, the main washroom was large enough for two people, three in a pinch. The bath tub could only fit two, however. After everything that had happened that evening, Misato figured spending some time with Rei was a good idea. She was definitely not going to pass up a chance to tease the girl either.

Misato watched Rei go through the motions; disrobing, then rinsing before soaking. That was really the best way to describe it. Mechanical, precise, and utterly consistent. There were glimpses, rare moments where the girl moved and acted like a real person, but this wasn't it. Oddly though sometimes, Misato started to wonder why it felt like she was looking in a mirror.

Sliding her own bath chair over, Misato reached around and plucked the bottle of shampoo from Rei's hand, smiling. "I'll wash your hair, then you can do mine, Okay?"

Rei just nodded, turning to face the wall and wait. The older woman started to hum as she worked, spreading the shampoo into the girl's hair and kneading her scalp. Gently, Misato ran her fingers through it, wiping suds away before working in a bit more lather. A few weeks ago, Rei had more of a mop, than anything else, but after being showed how to better care for it, the results were clear.

Combing out the last remaining suds, Misato grinned at the girl, even if she couldn't see it. "Your hair is really nice now."

For a long time, Rei didn't say anything. When she finally did speak, it was quiet. So quiet Misato almost couldn't hear. "Thank you."

Tension drained out of the girl's spine. Rei leaned back. letting her head bob from one side, then the other. She was almost listless, like a kitten in need of a nap. The older woman blinked, but didn't stop, continuing to tease at the teenager's longer bangs and smoothing the hair away from her forehead. Rei leaned back and let her eyes close, allowing her slightly sudsy head to fall against Misato's chest.

The bathroom was flooded with steam and condensation, clinging to the mirrors, walls and the bathing pair. Misato reached over and shut off the water, just for the moment. Her arms dropped down, hooking loosely around the girl's middle.

Misato gave the girl a gentle squeeze."Rei?"

The girl's eyes fluttered open, tilting her head up enough to see Misato's face. "Have you ever done anything like this? Been hugged, I mean?"

Sitting as she was, the girl couldn't really shake her head. Instead she just breathed out a short, quiet, "No."

It took nearly everything Misato had right then and there not to just suffocate the girl with affection. Instead, she whipped up all of her considerable big-sister charm and _beamed_. She flicked the hot water back on before reaching for the shower head. "Well, let's get you rinsed off, then it'll be my turn."

* * *

><p>It turned out that Rei had never taken a bath before, let alone shared one. Her old apartment only had a broken shower, and she never used any of the other facilities at NERV. That threw Misato, somewhat, especially when learned what kind of perks the pilots had. If it had been her, Misato would've probably never left the Geofront.<p>

Misato also had the bad habit of projecting what she would do on other people. Aside from that, it only took her a few moments to explain the basics of proper bathtub entry, of how to savor the hot water, and just soak, as long as one needed. With one person, the tub was roomy, easily allowing for Misato to stretch out head to toe and completely submerge herself.

With two people, even when one of them was as tiny as Rei, it was a little bit snug. They sat at opposite ends, wedged in on either side and submerged up to their shoulders. The young girl didn't shy away from physical contact, but she didn't seem to respond to it much either, thinking nothing of how her right thigh and calf brushed against Misato's. The lieutenant let out a long, pleasant sigh, drawing a deep, steamy breath through her nose. A rubber duck drifted between them.

Minutes passed slowly, and the only clear sound was their slow, even breathing. Finally, Misato broke the silence. "We may have to kill him now, before it's too late."

Rei just looked up at Misato, blinking once, then twice more. The older woman laughed, nearly shaking her hair out of its bun. "I'm joking! Shinji's just becoming a real heartbreaker, a menace."

Misato grinned. She was getting better at reading her lack of expressions as well, finding the girl's impassive, subtly befuddled look adorable. The water rippled slightly when Rei sat up, staring at the older woman. "I am afraid I don't understand."

The older woman just gave Rei the blithe, limp-wristed wave she was known for, smiling broadly. She reached out for the nearby mini fridge, pulling out two cans of beer and sliding one over to Rei. Misato openly extended her 'live fast' mentality to her charges, lacking the restraining influence of most parents. The kids were soldiers as much as anything. Of course, Shinji drank at least one bottle of vodka and barely felt it. Neither the lieutenant, girl or Ritsuko knew if Rei could _even get drunk_.

Aforementioned lieutenant popped the tab on her can and took a long, slow sip, relishing the way condensation built up on the metal. A cold drink and a hot bath was an amazing combination. She smiled again at Rei, toasting the red-eyed girl with a mischievous wink. "It's okay, you're young, you'll learn."

The girl just nodded, opening her can and holding it like a traditional tea mug, taking short sips. The rubber duck bobbed between them once more, bumping into the side of the tub.

Two cans later, Rei spoke. "Lieutenant Katsuragi."

Misato held back a sigh. The girl would never stop calling her that, it seemed. She smiled though a moment later, stretching languidly. "Yes, Rei?"

"Did Ikari." The girl cut her question off without any inflection. She wasn't very good at intonation, like letting her sentences trail off. She just ended them.

"Yeah Rei, he did."

* * *

><p>As far as Misato was concerned, you could never skimp on creature comforts. That was how Rei found herself practically engulfed in a soft, cushy cotton bath robe, while Misato settled for wrapping herself up in a dark towel. They both sat on the edge of the drained tub, with the blue-haired girl facing away the older woman, allowing Misato to brush her hair.<p>

The pair sat in companionable silence, while Rei learned to savor the steam and gentle tug of a hair brush. She found herself wanting to doze off again, but at the same time, remaining upright meant more fingertips brushing against her scalp, or her forehead. Want, the idea of it was endearing, almost insidious, and wonderfully pleasant. She couldn't see it with her eyes, but knew, felt Misato smiling behind her.

Nearly half an hour later, Misato pronounced Rei's hair fully brushed, after helping the girl pull it up into out of the way. Turning to face the mirror, Rei blinked. She had the same... Everything for so long, she truly almost didn't recognize herself. Bandages more known to her than the shape of her face. Her hair practically glowed, hanging down almost completely straight and silky smooth.

She blinked again, blushing when Misato leaned into the frame, Smiling and pressed cheek to cheek with the other girl. The teenager looked at her reflection, and a thought drifted through her mind. _I... I am pretty._

Having gone for several months without, Misato's alcohol tolerance wasn't quite what it used to be. So much so that four beers put her into 'tipsy', with a bit of red in her face. Sliding an arm around the girl's middle, she pulled Rei against her side in a half-hug, all but purring. After everything that had happened over the past few weeks, she knew exactly what to do with the rest of the evening.

Lilting, playful and dripping with mischief, Misato nudged Rei's head with her own. "So... What do you think of Shinji's girlfriend? Is she cute? Nice?"

Shinji wisely kept Ayumi away from Misato, to prevent situations like this. Rei understood that as well. Solidarity between pilots guaranteed her response. It was short and clipped, almost curt. "Saneda-san is an admirable person."

Misato practically _beamed_, glowing like a beacon and flush with the potential for gossip and even more bonding. "Aww, are you... Jealous?"

Rei's tone was uncompromisingly flinty, despite the fact that she all but melted against the older woman, cuddling. Everything was so _warm, _then_._"You misunderstand. I am not sexually or romantically interested in Ikari-kun."

"You're not? H-how, I mean, girls seem to just follow him around like puppies." Misato blinked, not admitting that sometimes _she_ was just as struck silly. He was too charmingly oblivious and easy to wind up. Still, Katsuragi Misato would not give up without a fight, not when it came to teasing her kids.

She was about to renew her friendly offensive when Rei cut her off. "I do not desire him. I would have protected him... Even if I hadn't been ordered to. But he protected me instead."

Misato let the questioning tone creep into her voice. Everything was going _extremely_ off plan, all of the sudden. She gave the girl another squeeze, hoping to remain supportive. "Rei...?"

Rei didn't turn to face the older woman, but her voice was strong and clear. "I am a partial clone of his mother."

Suddenly, the hot, steamy bathroom felt icy cold. Misato's voice dropped down, going low and flat.

"What."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> With much regret, this maybe the last post for the forseeable future, but fear not, I will make as much progress as am able, and continue to post as I can.


	24. Harbinger

Controlling the flow of information in and out of a city was not something done easily or lightly. Only a handful of places on the planet could hope to accomplish it. All of them were built around MAGI class super computers. If the Internet had developed unimpeded, the Dawkins Protocol enacted by NERV would have failed outright.

Now, though, the MAGI under the control of NERV could filter and monitor outgoing communication, carefully sanitizing information, removing details, dissembling. The collective might of the greatest thinking machines in the world were directed at one man. Handler found it hard to finish his mission, when the _entire city seemed to hate him_.

Phones refused to work, any bills he paid were returned to sender. Traffic lights stay red for ten minutes or more, just to make him late to an appointment. NERV, the MAGI had his number, and he knew it. The only reason he hadn't been visited by nice men in black suits was most likely due to the fact that _he wasn't important enough_. Of course, he didn't care about that either, he had no egotistical desire to be notorious.

It was wrong however, to assume the MAGI had complete control. There were ways, flaws in the system. The computers had impressive direct influence, but not total. The only thing Handler could do was try again, and again.

* * *

><p>When he was younger, Gendo brooded. Back then, he was almost charmingly easy to read, if not for his rage. Seething, boiling, ready to lash out at anything. Fuyutsuki knew him for nearly thirty years now. The younger man sat in one of the normally hidden, thickly upholstered chairs, facing the office window. Nights in the Geofront were alien, at times. The hanging structures dripped with red warning lights, and the dome flood lamps were dimmed.<p>

The old man turned to his former student, letting a smile tug at his lips."I would expect you to be drinking more."

"It dulls the senses."

"True enough." Fuyutsuki let out a dry laugh before sitting down next to Gendo. " Did the Scenario account for Rei's... Development?"

"No, but it was not discounted either. As long as it does not interfere with her purpose, there is no issue."

Gendo pulled off one of his white gloves and flexed his fingers. The scar tissue healed nicely, barely impacting his range of motion. He did have a great deal of time and effort invested in Rei. Perhaps it would be worth checking in on her. He made a note to spend an evening with her. Dinner, perhaps.

_Easier to get blood from a stone_. Fuyutsuki frowned, but didn't let it show. He poured himself a drink from Gendo's desk, knowing the other man wouldn't mind or want his own. He had the decency to spare Gendo's so far untouched private stash. Everything was so wrong then, the Angels were behind schedule, SEELE and NERV were gearing up, ready to go at each other's throats.

Gendo's own commitment to the Scenario, through all of that, was both reassuring and insufferable. Fuyutsuki knew of course that being flexible was a virtue, considering the imperfect information they had _and_ the myriad variables. Even Yui's plan was more a series of guidelines, when it was first laid down. The very _Dead Sea Scrolls themselves_ changed at inconvenient times. Only death and taxes had the luxury of certainty, after Second Impact. The laws of physics, at the worst of times, were _mere suggestions_.

Fuyutsuki nursed his drink before finally getting to his point. "The synchronization tests are hard to ignore. The Third's ratio is declining." _What are you going to do about it?_ was left unasked. Nearly ten years of careful conditioning were rapidly being eroded, and both men knew it.

Gendo wasn't the type to stew in denial. "The boy's greatest fear is no longer rejection. Given his circumstances, that's understandable."

The old man snorted into his drink. "No, I imagine he fears other things now."

Neither spoke for the rest of the evening.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko wanted a lot of things in that moment. A cigarette, a steady boyfriend, a nice glass of wine; any of those would've been lovely. The thing she wanted more though, was to be anywhere but hip-deep in the MAGI, again. She was about to hike herself out of the computer case when Maya appeared, kneeling next to her and offering a hand. Taking it gladly, the pair stood up and moved back toward the bank of temporary consoles.<p>

The two lead MAGI operators had their work cut out for them; the Dawkins protocol, on top of everything else the computer did, ate up a considerable amount of resources. When Maya asked, Ritsuko leaned over and brought up a new diagram, illustrating the behaviors of a single, specific person in Tokyo-3. "The Dawkins protocol is really only good for censoring electronic communication. There's enough runtime left over for things like manipulating traffic, and the postal service"

She tapped a few more keys and animated the display. The dot flickered around a map of the city, from place to place over and over."The MAGI are ninety percent sure this is SEELE's man. He's been trying to send a message for about three weeks since the attack." She waited a moment for that to sink in. "He hasn't succeeded yet."

Maya didn't consider herself _naive,_ but nor was she worldly, compared to say Lieutenant Katsuragi, or the blonde woman leaning over the console. One of the informal qualifications required to work at NERV was both a healthy desire to save the world, and a high interest in conspiracy theories. Or falling short of that, a tolerance for them.

Ritsuko could see her protégé's face twist into an adorable, incredulous pout. "We... We know? We're sure? Why aren't we doing anything?"

The scientist sucked on her teeth, fully aware that she _wasn't_ an authority on espionage. She was however, a genius and critical thinker. "Well, NERV isn't doing anything _officially_. The Commander's given the order to keep an eye on him and the other potential threats. No one here wants to escalate matters any more than they have."

She reached for the freshest cup of coffee she could find and taking a sip. Turgid, but warm. "Now we can assume he knows about the protocol, so he ignores electronic communication. We can jam, intercept and retransmit anything in the air, and we control all the land lines. If he tries to just _walk out_, we'll catch him."

Maya frowned, scrunching her face up as she worked through the chain of logic. Can't call, email, regular mail, radio... Escalation, gambits... She looked at her mentor. "Isn't that needlessly complicated? I mean," she waved at the MAGI. "All of this?"

The other woman just shrugged, as if to say 'what else can you do?'

* * *

><p>In less than three months, NERV would be bankrupt in all practical terms, left to wither on the vine. The UN would sweep in, devour the component parts and move on.<p>

Gendo would have none of that. NERV was _his_, and he would prove so _decisively_.

At the same time, their problem was very real. NERV shifted, turning inward. The organization focused its last reserves of money and manpower into the core purpose, Evangelion. Men and materiel trickled to a halt, from the outlying organs. Even though Misato proved the interception system under combat, against the Fifth Angel, it too suffered. From that point on, only skeleton crews would maintain the extensive network of armory buildings.

They weren't going to be able to reload them after the next battle, either.

Around the world, the greater whole of NERV seemed to spasm, kinking up and curling in, trying to conserve energy for one last task. The Second Child was only dimly aware that NERV-Berlin would be shut down a few days after her escort convoy sailed for Japan. The high-energy tests in Nevada would continue, as they were funded out of the United States directly, near the Groom Lake facility. China, Russia, Australia and other 'public' bases were being cut down and mothballed.

The situation was not all bad, however. Tokyo-3 possessed the best and most efficient power distribution in Japan, fed by three fusion reactors within the Geofront. That in itself was an incredible asset, capable of taking the burden off of other parts of the country. NERV had already been getting polite inquiries regarding their surplus power. Nations were also interested in NERV, pledging donations and funding outside of the UN Security committee.

Any altruism was tempered by the very real intent to appropriate NERV entirely, adding it as a prestigious feather to a country in dire need of political, economic, scientific or military clout. Many nations wanted to control the agency that charged itself with defending, and saving the world from alien invaders.

The inward focus opened up new opportunities as well. The organization employed the top leaders in nearly every relevant field, much like GEHRIN before it. Military funding lead to the advent of most pervasive civilian technologies, and Gendo would exploit the same pattern. Universities from around the world received pledges from ad-hoc think tanks, generated out of NERV's own manpower pool. Corporate backers and interests followed shortly, throwing money into research and development, backed by NERV licensing contracts. The research grants were pittances. In the face of the repair budgets of Evangelions, they needed the wealth of nations to function.

SEELE wanted to destroy Gendo's political power, to emasculate NERV in the eyes of world leaders. The Commander of NERV would fight back by becoming an unparalleled economic force; a company, corporation, conglomerate.

With Gendo as CEO.

* * *

><p>About twelve students gathered at the little structure, having already lost nearly a double handful to lack of interest. They hardly expected to do much with the shrine; most of the kids were completely suburban. A few though knew things, having worked with their fathers and grandfathers in the country, or taken shop classes and the like.<p>

Leading them all was a girl who gave them the words to name what they saw. Her name was Nanba Kasumi. She drove them to not just rebuild the shrine, but do it right. She told them the right kind of wood to use, the right kind of cuts and joins. Despite that, there were gaps in her knowledge, leading to subtle flaws, and falling just short of the ideal. It felt more honest though, the mistakes made the work _theirs._

Kasumi knelt in front of the interior shrine, praying. Her family was Shinto, going back at least six generations, and likely more. She wasn't unfailingly observant, hardly anyone was post-Impact. Even before then, Japan had extended its cultural, spiritual identity into its government, or vice versa. It was difficult, at times, to see where the two met or merged.

Still, Kasumi knew the basic rituals, and knew how faith and reason interacted. She saw things during the attack that people couldn't explain, and no cover story or reparation paid by NERV would shake her. She trusted what her parents and grandparents taught her, and her own mind.

Behind her, the rest of the students idled about. Most of them treated their little project like an after-school club. In a sense, it was. A little more than half of them were girls; it was wrong to call them 'groupies', and 'harem' was both inaccurate and unflattering, Like Kasumi, they were the last hold outs. The girls who nursed some form of feeling towards the Third Child, because, after, or despite his amazing, terrifying rampage a few months ago.

Then he fought men with guns, using just his bare hands. And he _glowed gold._

Rationally, they knew it was wrong, and they knew how close it got to being something terrible. They formed the clique out of mutual support, having brushed against dangerous, thrilling psychosis. They quickly realized the redemption fantasy was unrealistic, and the consequences for failure were painfully real. They couldn't just let it go though, not completely. It wasn't logical, their desire to do _something_, but it was still real and very much human.

The boys on the other hand were there for a far simpler reason. Some of them wanted explanations. Others simply wanted something to do. And, more than likely, a few found being around the girls was itself a suitable 'explanation'. None of them believed her, completely, but she gave them the words to name what they saw.

When they finally asked her why _this_ shrine, why _that_ kami, she just smiled. "My family has been Shinto for generations. It seemed... Fitting."

* * *

><p>Katsuragi Misato leafed through the handwritten list of parts they apparently needed. It was more than six pages. Rei had reassured her that the car was worth fixing, nothing that needed a full auto shop. The pair waved to Shinji as they left the apartment. "This is going to be really expensive, Rei. I mean, this isn't an electric car."<p>

Rei poured over the car manual, seemingly unconcerned. "I have sufficient funds."

_Well_, Misato mused. _I suppose she does._ Making the way down stairs towards the back lot, she glanced at the teenager over the stack of papers. "Where did you find it anyway?"

"A junk yard."

Misato couldn't have stopped her eyebrows rising even if she tried. "...And they just let you have it?"

Ambling around her car, Misato opened the door and slid into the seat. It had been a while since she drove; the leather was a bit springier than she remembered. Now where did she put her keys... While Misato was working to start the car, Rei was belting herself in, folding the manual in her lap. "I paid. I do not think they knew what it was."

Bemused, Misato just let it go. "Huh. Okay then."

She looked up from the parts list and realized why she wasn't finding her keys, or the steering wheel. She was in the passenger side of her car. Rei was driving. Cute, little, mildly unsettling Rei with her provisional license was driving. A license she only had because her NERV ID let her skip the legal age requirement. Somehow her keys ended up in Rei's hands.

When Rei had appeared that morning in her school uniform, Misato realized she'd need work clothes. For a moment Misato had considered asking Shinji to just make a set of coveralls for Rei, but decided against it. She already was imposing a bit by having him tailor _her_ wardrobe as it was. He wasn't very good at new designs yet, but could make alterations and repairs with ease. Since that wasn't an option, Misato took it upon herself to find the girl a pair of coveralls, good, tough shoes and some gloves.

Somehow, all of those things lead to Rei driving Misato's car.

Belted in tight and pressing into her seat, Misato screwed her eyes shut and braced herself. She was finally getting paid back for teaching Kaji how to drive, and mocking him every second. She could hear Rei turning the key in the ignition, putting the car into gear... And... Not slamming her foot on the gas? Her eyes opened just a bit, squinting. Rei was... Driving, just driving.

The teenager seemed to know what she was doing, easily navigating the apartment lot. Misato let out a long sigh of relief, sagging into her seat. Then Rei pulled out onto the road and turned towards the highway. Misato wasn't a terrible driver by any stretch of the imagination, and had something of an undeserved reputation. In fact, most people would say she was _amazing_, if she were filming for a movie.

She wondered then, if this is what other people felt like, when she drove. "Car."

Rei just ran her hands over the wheel, changing lanes perfectly. "I am aware, Lieutenant Katsuragi."

Squashed back into her seat and holding on for dear life, Misato squeaked. "_Car!"_

"The car is two lanes away. I am signaling appropriately."

* * *

><p>Misato all but shambled out of her car, leaning against it to keep upright. Rei was already waiting on the sidewalk, running her NERV ID through the parking meter. Misato panicked during the whole drive, but the reasons shifted partway through. Once Rei proved she <em>didn't<em> drive like a teenager, or Misato herself, for that matter, the older woman realized that Rei was _too nice._ Her poise was perfect, but rigid, mechanical.

Rei, as far as Misato was concerned, needed an infusion of fun.

They had all day to spend on their project, and Misato would admit that she was being lax. There hadn't been a peep out of an Angel or terrorist or anything for weeks now. Asuka would be on her way, halfway into February, on the fourteenth if memory served.

"Well, we have all day to ourselves... Breakfast? " She winced, lamenting the missed opportunities. "Shinji's amazing, his cooking..." She trailed off, licking her lips _very_ slowly. "But, if we stayed..."

Rei seemed to understand, nodding once. "It would not have been a very productive morning, no."

Misato smiled, feeling her face heat up. "...Maybe some other time." She let out a slightly dopey giggle, before shaking her head clear. "Right, breakfast." She tugged Rei along towards a cafe sandwiched between a pair office high rises. Rei's only response was a short, quick 'yes'.

A few hours later, it occurred to Misato that she had no idea what Rei had said _yes_ to.

Glancing past the menu at her companion, Misato wondered. "Have you ever had coffee?" Rei just shook her head.

Misato bent down slightly before tossing her head back, flipping her hair around in waves before it fell back down around her shoulders. Both waiters, more than a few patrons and at least two pedestrians slowed down, or outright stopped , glancing sidelong at the display.

Rei felt the appropriate expression for that moment was raising her eyebrow, but she couldn't quite find the right muscle. Instead she settled on one blink, then another. Sexuality was only confusing to Rei in application; she understood, objectively, why Misato's choice of snug sweater and jeans drew attention. Her understanding of aesthetics and attraction was also limited. She knew enough to know that Misato was attractive, and _why_.

The pilot wasn't sure yet what attraction _felt_ like, though.

The other woman didn't seem to notice Rei's short sequence of epiphanies. Instead she just winked, running her fingers through her bangs and pushing her hair out of her face. "I'll order; just watch, our coffee will be loaded with extras."

When the waiter sidled up to their table, Rei was treated to a first-hand demonstration of flirtation. The hair-toss was just the start. It was a combination of things; Misato's tone of voice, how she let her hand catch on the waiter's wrist. Little touches that built up into visible displays on his part. Rei noted in particular how Misato folded her arms beneath her breasts and _lifted._

She wondered then, why that needed emphasis, but turning her attention back to Misato and the waiter, it seemed to make sense. The pilot was much better at _reading_ expressions than being expressive. he waiter was younger than Misato. His reactions were a little less polished, but earnest. The whole exchange lasted maybe twenty seconds, leaving Rei with the impression of _blinding, playful encouragement._

After the waiter left, Misato leaned back in her chair with a smug grin. "Any minute now..."

Barely three minutes later, he did return with a tray bearing two drinks crowned with whip cream and a dusting of chocolate shavings, and a chilled pitcher of milk. Misato's grin grew even wider. Waving to Rei's mug, she warned the girl it would be hot, while adding some milk to her own. The girl followed along, mimicking her guardian.

Finally, she spoke. "That seems very manipulative."

Misato took a cautious sip, leaving a bit of foam on her lips. It took Rei a few moments to realize that had been deliberate, as was how Misato licked the bit of sugary fluff away. "It can be, I like to flirt when I know everyone will come away happy. If you're not careful, you can give the wrong impression, like making a promise you can't keep."

Nodding, Rei scooped a spoonful of whipped cream out of her mug before replying. "You refer to the idea of 'mixed signals'?"

"Yep, you got it!"

Rei looked down at her chest, her white and blue school uniform. Then up at Misato's. "My clothes are not well suited for flirtation."

* * *

><p>Jammed into another street-level unit was an arcade, much like the dozens that littered down town Tokyo-3. Traditional games like Pachinko, or more western style games from the eighties arcade cabinet culture. The one Misato spotted was more of the latter. They stowed their purchases, having gotten everything they needed for the moment, and still had most of the day remaining.<p>

Once inside, Rei was inundated with sound and light. Unused machines displayed their eye catch graphics and attract modes, not that Rei knew those terms. Misato basked in it all, letting a wave of nostalgia wash over her. How long ago had it been, since she went to an arcade. At least ten years or more.

She turned to Rei, smiling broadly."You ever been anywhere like this?"

Rei shook her head, hunching in on herself like Shinji on his best day. Her hands twitched, but she fought the urge to clamp them over her ears. Even so, Misato noticed, reaching out to lace her fingers with Rei's, giving them a quick, reassuring squeeze. Rei looked up and gave the older woman a nod, taking a deep breath, then another, letting the tension drain out of her.

Tugging Rei along, Misato moved deeper into the arcade, mumbling. "I wonder if they have..." She trailed off, eyes lighting up with a manic, childish gleam. Pulling Rei around front, she nudged the girl forward towards the paired machine. Spread across the marquee in bold, stylized characters was the title 'Evangelion Battle: GO!' Rei twisted to look up at Misato, visibly confused.

Misato pushed Rei into the left hand machine before feeding a few notes into the receptacle, grinning widely. "I always wanted to try one of these things. It'll be fun!"

"Fun?" Rei echoed.

Misato stood up, planting her heeled foot on the seat of the other machine. Rei's eyes tracked up from that foot, to the denim-clad knee, thigh and hip. Every patron behind Misato stopped what they were doing and stared. The lieutenant _had_ to be doing that deliberately. She stared down at Rei like a conquering emperor, leering fondly. "I understand joy. I understand fun."

Twisting, she dropped into the seat and hit the start button. "Fun is snatching victory from your enemies. It is trampling their forces, and feeding on their lamentations."

Rei just nodded, turning back to the game and the control sticks. She pressed a few buttons, eying the nearby diagrams. Leaning over as she was, Rei had to blow some of her hair out of her face. "This game is very inaccurate."

* * *

><p>Even in February, late winter, it was still hot in the early afternoon. Sometimes though, that was the best time for fun, honest work. Misato and Rei had already spread out into two additional parking spaces, filling them with car parts and packaging. A folding table stood nearby, laden with more pieces and the car manual, held open with bits of engine.<p>

Misato leaned back against the edge of the table and wiped the back of her arm across her her brow. She let out a pleased, sultry sigh, tugging at the neckline of her black tank top. The bit of black fabric seemed to cling to every curve, and despite the heat, Misato found she'd rather not have it any other way. Something about the day just made her feel amazing, powerful and sexier than ever. Her ego was at that moment indestructible.

The only thing missing really, was an audience, someone to reflect on her brilliance.

Rei, meanwhile, gradually pulled out pieces of the engine, all but pressing grease-stained cheeks into the next bit of metal or machine, reaching for the next part. Misato thought it was adorable, considering the girl was so tiny compared to the car. Their conversation meandered throughout most of the late morning and into the afternoon, moving from one topic to another.

"You've never had a birthday? How old are you, anyway?"

The blue-haired girl tugged on something, hard. She didn't grit her teeth like a normal person would. "I have not. I am fifteen years old this year. My birthday is January First."

Hiking herself up on the table, Misato leaned forward and crooned, again, inwardly lamenting the lack of an appreciative male audience. She was using her best material with no one around to enjoy it. "Aww! We missed it! you should've said something, we would've thrown you a party!"

Rei just stared until Misato let out an awkward, reluctant, laugh. Fussing with a piece of engine, Misato soldiered on. "Have you ever been to a playground?"

"No."

"Hide and Seek, Tag?"

The girl looked up at Misato then, having leaned back on her haunches. "I know the rules to the former, but never played. What is 'tag'?"

Misato frowned, looking up towards the skyline. The words weren't coming to her, not as fast as she expected. She knew the game so well, intimately, like any number of things from her childhood. It was almost like language; she knew it so well she couldn't think about it.

"Tag is... Well, Tag is a game you play with at least two people, but more is better. The idea is that someone is 'It', and they need to touch someone, shouting 'Tag, you're it!'. Now that person's 'It', and they need to tag someone else. Sometimes there are more rules, like 'no tagging the person who just tagged you."

"I see."

Misato grinned, stepping over, she pressed one fingertip into Rei's bare arm. "Tag. You're it!"

* * *

><p>Later on, Toji and Kensuke stopped by, solving Misato's lack of audience. She dazzled them with one of her patented smiles, making sure to match their bow with one of her own. The low cut top remained one of the most devastating weapons in her arsenal. The older woman tossed the other girl a smile; Rei knew a cue when she saw one.<p>

Misato had assured her the snug, white T-shirt would be sufficient, especially after the woman took a pair of scissors to it, cutting four inches away from the bottom hem. She stretched, arching her back and trying to match the older woman's languid grace, but not quite making it. Even so, the shirt rode up on her torso, and the boys followed along with their eyes.

"I am practicing," she admitted, framing her breasts between her arms while turning to face her captive audience.

In a way she realized being so transparent defeated the point, but at the same time, she was still having fun. Amusement, enjoying something was a novel experience. The honestly helped, somehow. Her voice was still flat and quiet, lacking Misato's lilting, mirthful tone. Even so, there were hints of life there, and that was worth it.

She frowned then, minutely, cradling her breasts again and _lifting_, before letting them fall, resulting in only a modest bounce. Toji appeared to be choking on his tongue, but Rei was more bemused by her sudden grasp of envy.

She glanced at Misato, then the lieutenant's chest, before looking back at her own. "I lack the required proportions."

Toji regained enough sense to retreat, heading off to Shinji's lab. Kensuke, on the other hand, swiveled from Rei, to Misato, then Rei, and back again. Finally, he stopped, reaching up to adjust his glasses. He summoned up every bit of gravitas he could, even with the red spread across his cheeks.

Pointing, he fixed the older woman with a look. "You meddle in things which you do not understand!"

With that, he turned on on heel and marched off towards the stairs. Five minutes later, he could still hear Misato's laughter all the way up on the roof.

* * *

><p>Not long after, Shinji meandered out of the apartment, arms laden with lunch and drinks. He was quickly conscripted to help extract what was left of the engine. Shinji carried the mass of metal over his head easily, setting it aside.<p>

Misato had been playing with a squeeze-pumped can of oil, watching Rei direct her other charge. When he set the engine down, Shinji admitted he could have carried the it in one hand, with a bit of extra effort. Misato's hand clamped down on the pump grip, leading to a dribble of lubricant soaking into her thigh. She licked her lips when Shinji turned.

Her hand clenched tight a second time.

A wide, curling, cat-like grin worked its way onto Misato's face. The other day, she had to give up an amazing opportunity to tease her roommate. Well, now it was time for revenge, even if Shinji had no idea why. Wiping her hand clean, she sauntered forward, letting her hips rock and roll with each step. Shiniji was a boy, there was no way he wouldn't notice. So did Rei, taking on that all-encompassing look of attention she had during her lessons that morning.

She wrapped her hands around his arm, pressing her fingers into the lines of muscle. Her all too familiar, lascivious smile shut down all protests and panic on his part, while the look in her eyes promised him it was all honest fun. Left without fear or embarrassment, all Shinji had to fall back on was 'normal', humoring Misato's winsome smile with one of his own. Rei on the other hand just blinked once, visibly comprehending. The older woman basked in the warm rush of a lesson well-taught. She hummed, tucking his bicep against her chest. She could feel her own heart beat, thumping into the back of his arm.

Looking up at him through her eyelashes, she purred, linking her fingers with his. "You're useful to have around, you know?" She pressed her forehead into his shoulder, grinning. "Like the most attractive forklift in the world."

Twisting, Misato untangled herself with a laugh, tugging Shinji's hand into the air. Before he could react, she hooked her fingers around his bicep and vaulted up. Instinct took over; Shinji braced himself and stood tall, even as the woman wedged her hips into the crook of his arm, wriggling just so.

Beaming like the sun, Misato laced her fingers into Shinij's raised hand, laughing the whole time. She glanced at Rei, the older woman waving at her perch with her free arm. "This is what flirting should accomplish- guys doing the heavy lifting!"

* * *

><p>Somehow, Deja had become a fixture in their lives just as much as Misato and Rei, after Shinji. The agent also <em>terrified<em> all three boys, in some way or another. Deja stood guard on the roof while Kensuke and Shinji worked in the shed laboratory. Toji kept them all company and wasn't afraid to drag any of them away for something normal. Nobody seemed to mind him having dragged a basketball hoop up to the roof. A few days later, a paved platform appeared, defining their little half court.

Shinji just shrugged and smiled.

Deja wasn't 'incognito' today. Instead, she wore the traditional black suit of Section Two, though she'd long since tossed the jacket and tie aside. Toji was just happy she wasn't sunbathing again; He didn't want to give her any excuse to shoot him. Still, it was pretty screwy, an agent hiding by hanging out in a bikini, on a roof. Kensuke said it made sense though, so that was fine for the jock.

Now, Kensuke was holed up with some project, leaving Toji and Deja on the roof, looking out at the city skyline. Misato and Rei were still down in the parking lot, working on the car. Something cold suddenly pressed into his neck, sending the boy sprawling. He fell forward, getting his legs tangled up in his chair. Twisting, he saw the agent looming over him with a smile and a cold can of soda in hand.

"You're too easy, kid." She laughed, offering her free hand to help him up. "Why aren't you with your girlfriend, Suzuhara?"

"She's not my girlfriend!" He kicked the parapet. "I dunno."

The woman raised her can to her lips. "It's been a few weeks, you're still feeling screwed up?"

"Hikari still has the shakes, sometimes." Deja tossed him another can of fruit juice. He popped the top and took a sip before continuing. When he got home after the attack, his sister, step mom and dad nearly killed him with hugs. They fussed over his scar and the bruises and _exhaustion_. Then he went to bed. "I haven't lost any sleep over it at all."

Deja didn't do or say anything, other than to take a seat next to the boy and listen. "I was ready to kill people, you know? I had a gun and everything. I would've killed them."

"But the fact that you would have done it, that you tried to, bothers you more."

Toji tilted the can up and drained it, before tossing it over his shoulder. Without looking, it landed in the recycling basket. "Yeah."

* * *

><p>Kensuke wondered if he was vain.<p>

He spent ten days working on his side project, pushing the limits of his knowledge. They still didn't have a _name_ for most of these things. He did realize though that Shinji had mostly taught him individual rituals, things that were self-contained and part of a larger field of study. Most of the _real _discoveries started when they went back to the roots of Shinji's earliest experiments, discerning the power contained within human blood.

Back then, Shinji had no sense of scientific rigor, such as how to test his hypotheses and track his findings. Instead, Shinji made wild, intuitive leaps. They were incredibly useful for finding fields of study and guiding experiments, but Kensuke learned and discovered much more. The blood itself had not been specially, not really. Ordinary human plasma. They knew _something_ had to happen, because the blood was _doing stuff_, it interacted with the ritual behavior in consistent, predictable ways.

So they experimented, expanding their hypothesis until more and more clues were revealed. Old blood never worked, often resulting in ruined materials and similar messes. Stored, preserved blood was the same. It only ever worked when Shinji or Kensuke gave blood during the desired ritual. Kensuke then asked 'did it have to be human blood?' There they proved that animal blood did work, but again, only if freshly spiled on the spot.

They wisely decided to just use their fingers, humans were easier to take care of than chickens or mice.

All of those findings, any others, lead Kensuke to his project; a mechanical pencil. Before he started, he took a micrometer to it, measuring everything he could. He weighed it, determined its volume, materials, and anything else he could think of. Then, after ten days of long, frustrating labor, he still held a pencil. But now it was _better_. The springs were stronger, the button clicked better. The plastic barrel was stronger, but not indestructible. He stomped on it to no effect, but holding it over an open flame left a tiny warp and discoloration.

Writing with the instrument was incredible. He sat back in his chair, staring at his project. "I spent ten days making a better pencil. Damn."

* * *

><p>For the past several weeks, Misato had been diving head first into the nuts and bolts of managing an apartment complex. She had to negotiate permits, acquire the proper licenses, and jump through dozens of hoops. Tokyo-3's government was tangled up in the MAGI, the public office and legislature were all figure heads, clerks really. Misato dealt with the MAGI, more than anything.<p>

A week ago, she had asked Ritsuko why the MAGI didn't just push everything through for them. Her friend said the computers _did_, leaving Misato with the bare minimum required for a legal paper trail. It was a legal fiction and both women knew it, but at the same time, it was just good policy to make sure everything was filed correctly.

Circled in red ink was the D-Day, when the Second Child would arrive from Germany. That day fell on February 14th, Valentines Day for most of the world. A year ago or more, Shinji would have longed to enjoy it. At the same time he feared it, like all things having to do with people. It stuck him then, how he had a girlfriend before he even turned fifteen. Any plans he would've made to go out that night were preempted. Shinji had to accompany Misato and Sub Commander Fuyutsuki, to meet with the new pilot, Asuka Langley Sorhyu.

Ayumi laughed though, knowing better than most that she was dating an Evangelion pilot, in addition to his... Strange circumstances. She had warned him though; there would be a repeat of the offerings and gifts, probably twice as much if not more.

* * *

><p>Misato lounged in the living room, her roommates in the kitchen cooking and cleaning. Rei was going about cleaning, wiping off the counters and table. Meanwhile, Shinji stirred a pot of boiling stew with one hand. Rei took his hand and pressed something into it, absently holding it steady for her. He didn't even notice how it got a little bit heavier.<p>

Or how Rei now stood on the chair he held in his hand, dusting the highest shelves.

* * *

><p>For all of the trappings and conspiracies, there were many days where working at NERV was just like any other job. One woke up, attended to their duties, and went home, content to collect a paycheck. Everyone, from lowest position to highest, felt that way eventually.<p>

Today, it was just Gendo, waiting for the next train like he was. The younger man lived inside the NERV complex, elsewhere within the interior dome, while Fuyutsuki had an apartment outside the Geofront. Gendo admitted that sometimes a little distance from one's work was needed. Fuyutsuki savored those normal evenings, even when the topic was still business. Nostalgia surrounded him that night, idly wishing Yui were there, and the three of them were going out to the bar after class.

Neither man looked anything other than normal. There was no obvious sign that the fate of the world was influenced by their decisions. Fuyutsuki smiled for himself, not quite content but close enough. More and more he felt like the world was a little bit brighter, like it was worth waking up in the morning. Some days it felt like university all over again; new, untapped fields and the pursuit of new knowledge.

"The plan is audacious, Ikari. All things considered, it's probably just what we need."

The train arrived, gliding through the station before it slid to a stop. Gendo turned to face his former mentor, before boarding. "Any misgivings?"

Fuyutsuki just shook his head with a wry grin. "None you haven't heard before. You seem to have preempted most of my arguments this time." The door whispered closed behind them. "Are you sure the boy can handle it?"

As the old man expected, Gendo had an answer for that. "Direct exposure will be minimal, and we can repurpose the Dawkins Protocol after we redefine the situation."

Gliding along the tracks, the train swooped up out towards the dome wall station. The other train heading down to headquarters rushed on by, automated and empty. The pair sat in silence for most of the trip.

A few moments before Gendo's stop, Fuyutsuki hummed, thoughtfully. "The school is still closed... Though repairs and the additional security measures are finished. The parents are still protesting the pilots being allowed there."

As expected, the commander considered it a trifle, hardly worth his attention. He stepped out onto the platform, tossing his reply over his shoulder. "Handle it, Fuyutsuki."

The old man grinned, tossing his apartment keys up with one hand. He snatched them out of the air a moment later. "I think I will."

* * *

><p>"Lieutenant Katsuragi."<p>

Beneath the covers, one brown eye snapped open, peering out. The alarm ticked over to three in the morning. "Rei, you can just call me Misato."

A thin strip of moonlight cut through the gap in the curtains. Rei stood in the doorway to Misato's bedroom, her skin seemed to glow where light played across it. Misato screwed her eyes shut against the brightness. She tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes, grumbling the whole time about how youth was wasted on the young. Finally, she offered the girl one of her sunniest smiles, asking what she needed.

The girl didn't say anything right away. Fidgeting, she opened her mouth a tiny bit, then closed it, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Shivering too, it seemed. Rei fisted the hem of her T-shirt in both hands and tried to make it cover her hips. Pushing up on both hands, Misato felt the top covers slide off her back. Ah, her bedroom fan was on.

She reached out and shut the fan off, before turning to Rei. "Close the door."

Misato sat up and threw the thin cover aside, scooting over. Leaning over, she pat the empty half of the futon. "C'mere, sit down."

Rei did as instructed, tucking her feet under her thighs and shivering the whole while. Misato shifted so they were pressed hip to hip, hooking one hand around the other girl's shoulder. The girl's hair had been let down, and left a little matted from tossing and turning. Reaching out, Misato tugged at Rei's bangs with a soft, playful smile. She put on the big sister face, keeping her voice low and warm. "When you're sleeping, you should tie your hair back with something loose."

She groped around for a spare brush and a bit of ribbon with her free hand. It took a bit more encouragement, but eventually Misato pulled Rei almost completely into her lap, running her fingers through the girl's hair. Rei was tense, letting her head hang too far forward. Sitting that close, Misato could feel the strain on the girl from six inches away. Slowly, Misato drew the tension out of Rei's back and shoulders. She smoothed out the tangles and pulled Rei's hair away from her back and neck, tying it up in a loose pony tail.

That done, Misato let her hands rest on Rei's shoulders. The girl shivered, still even though she was practically sitting on top of her. Misato wasn't going to let that stand, letting her arms wrap around Rei's middle. drawing the girl into a proper big-sister embrace. Rei squirmed, not quite panicking, at a loss for any other response. Heat and affection soaked into her from behind, sapping her strength.

Misato gave Rei another squeeze. "Are you okay?"

Rei couldn't bring her voice barely above a whisper. She felt her own hands clamp onto Misato's wrists, but never remembered willing herself to do so. "I do not... I don't understand."

"What?"

The girl didn't turn. "I.. I expected questions. Denial. An interrogation."

"Oh, about the... thing." Misato shrugged and renewed her smile. It was a good question; she hadn't said anything for quite a few reasons. It was beyond her pay grade, or even her reasons for _working for NERV_. "I haven't said anything, because you're mine, and that's all there is to it."

"Oh." Left with nothing else to say, Rei sat there, practically surrounded by Misato. She could feel the other woman's heart beating strong and steady against her back. Her own pulse had been jumping furiously, fast enough to hear it in her head and feel it in her neck. Misato just held on. Bit by bit, Rei's heartbeat slowed down. She started to shiver again, leading Misato to squeeze a bit tighter and snuggle in closer.

_They really are brother and sister_... "Would you like to stay here with me?"

Misato took the silence as a yes. She tugged Rei down into the futon before drawing the light winter blankets up over their heads. Curling in close, Misato made sure to tuck the girl's head into the crook of her shoulder, while wrapping her arms around Rei's middle. They laid there quietly, breathing slowly and bundled in warm air.

"Lieutenant Katsuragi"

The older woman let out a low, playful growl. Rei fell silent, tucking her head into Misato's neck and shoulder a little bit tighter. Misato was just about ready go back to sleep when Rei spoke once more.

"Misato-san."

One eye opened up a tiny bit, staring at the pile of blue hair laying on her shoulder. One tiny hand moved down to press against Misato's waist.

"Tag. You are it."

* * *

><p>In order to make up the lost weeks, the school administration set aside two Sundays per month for an extra day of classes. The first day of school fell on February 14th, 2016. Valentines day.<p>

A day of Infamy.

The school reopened in time for the holiday by sheer luck, any evidence of the attack had long since been repaired. Burgeoning protests had inundated the school for several weeks, then, they just seemed to vanish. Obvious security, however, seemed to mushroom overnight. Cameras hung at every corner, and retractable barriers blocked the campus during most of the school day.

Most of the students didn't pay much attention to their parents or the new additions. Instead, they relished the last days of their extended winter break. Those that did notice, did so quietly, not quite able to make sense of it. Rumors ran wild through the hallways, some plausible, others outlandish. Only a handful of students were injured during the attack, and only one history teacher retired, due to medical reasons.

Quietly, Shinji paid a visit to that old man, ensuring he had a long, healthy retirement.

The Third Child almost dreaded returning, mostly due to his not liking crowds. Fortunately he didn't count his friends that way. The other four 'fighters' of that day meandered on ahead, leaving Shinji alone with his girlfriend. _Girlfriend_, the word was still strange to him. _Ayumi_ was still strange, if only because she seemed so normal, compared to the other women in his life.

The pair walked along, hip to hip, not at all concerned about arriving on time. With one arm around his waist, Ayumi gave him a sidelong hug and caught his eye. "So, Valentines Day."

Shinji just let out single, resigned laugh, rubbing her shoulder and matching her grin with a wan smile. "Yeah."

"Hordes of eager fans, waiting with hand-made chocolate?" She didn't feel the need to mention the chocolate she already gave him earlier that morning, tucked away in his school bag.

"Most likely." He sounded like a man on his way to the noose.

Reaching up, she steadied herself with one hand on his shoulder, before pressing her lips against his cheek, smiling. "Go get 'em, tiger."

* * *

><p>Class 2-A was something of a madhouse. Their teacher had retired, and the administration was still in the process of hiring a replacement. The substitute had quickly bowed to pressure, allowing the greater part of the school to queue up outside the doors. The <em>heroes<em> were there, after all.

Toji was swamped; Hikari sat to his right, next to the window. The air around her seemed to freeze and boil in turns. Meanwhile, his left side was taken up by no less than six girls, milling around his desk and eager to pile more chocolates on his desk. The stack was nearly a foot tall already, a great deal of it was just store-bought, dropped off with a smile. More than a few girls though made it through the mob, pressing hand-baked gifts into his hands.

The class representative stewed nearby, glaring at any girl who looked just a little bit too inviting, the tiniest bit too hands-on. She was about to scream, after an older student leaned in to kiss Toji's scarred cheek. Her tirade died in her throat when someone tapped on her shoulder.

Hikari very nearly broke, when a wrapped bundle of chocolate was pressed into _her_ hands. That just. Wasn't. _Proper._

A few desks over, Kensuke was reminded of a few Chinese sayings. _May you live in interesting times,_ followed by _May you come to the attention of powerful people._

_Seniors_ were hitting on him. His mind rebelled, trying to cope with the insanity, things like this happened to _Shinji_, not people like _him_. Kensuke's practical side tried to marshal its forces, grabbing onto the nearest, concrete thing. He had no idea how he was going to reciprocate for all these gifts, not in four weeks. He didn't have a job or anything even resembling savings.

His only recourse was to fall back on his hobbies and knowledge, and retell the story. "Yeah, I got shot." He lifted his shirt to show the tiny scar. "Sheer luck saved me. Sometimes I wake up screaming when a car starts near my house." A ripple of concern shot through the girls surrounding him, and he realized he may have made a small tactical blunder.

Another girl tugged on his arm, asking about the grenade, and if he really kicked it. "I did." Kensuke tried to fight down the blush creeping past his neck, while explaining. "Grenades have a few seconds before they go off. you're supposed to throw them so the other guys can't catch it." He shrugged. "I don't think any of them expected me to get up and kick it."

Then, a speculative look broke out on one girl's face, then another, then all of them. Now, Kensuke felt as if he made a _strategic_ blunder. The girls seemed to share something nonverbal then, glancing between each other with slow smiles. Six notes were pressed into his hands, each inscribed with a phone number and tentative plans for a date, each falling on a different day that week.

Kensuke knew he was doomed; now heading into a _logistical_ blunder beyond all reason.

Meanwhile, Rei was inundated with gifts, nearly twice as many as Kensuke and Toji. Shinji still held the record for... Interested parties. Still, the First Child had the presence of mind to wonder where all the girls were coming from. Their school wasn't _that_ big. That morning, before classes started, a sunny, cheerful sounding girl appeared next to Rei's desk. She looked to be in the same year, but a different class. Rei found a cloth-bound package of chocolate thrust into her hands. She blinked, once, twice, three times, before acting.

Almost immediately, she tore into the hand-wrapped package, cleanly and efficiently. Manners and etiquete had been firmly engrained on her, mostly because for the longest time, she knew no other way to act. Because of that, she ate with poise and dignity. But, it was _chocolate_, so Rei ate... Quickly. When she was finished, there weren't any crumbs left. The handmade card had been set aside, forgotten.

The eight grader dashed off without a word, leaving Rei at a loss.

A bit later, a second girl offered her a block of chocolate, also hand-made and wrapped. She was older, more brazen, if Rei was thinking of the right word. Not quite as much as Lieu- Misato-san, but an undeniable comparison. The high school senior had her own hip-rolling gait down pat, to the point that nearly every unattached male in the classroom swiveled as she passed.

Rei had trouble actively remembering what the girl said, but did note the... _Flirtatious_ tone. This time she thanked the girl, politely, having thought over the previous encounter and finding she missed a few vital clues. It was Valentines Day, for one. Though, if she remembered correctly, girls gave boys gifts on the fourteenth of February, and boys reciprocated in March... Rei shook her head slightly, mostly to herself. She made sure to store the latest treat, and pick out the card before doing so.

Like clockwork, the third girl approached Rei's desk, blushing furiously and barely able to get two words out. She did wonder, though, why the girl looked like Saneda-san, just before asking Shinji...

Oh. _Oh._

Realization seemed to thunder through her mind, knocking loose long-buried instincts. For the second time in her life, an expression came naturally to her; _nonplussed._

* * *

><p>Shinji normally was loath to bring <em>anything<em> NERV-related into the rest of his life. He already felt like he lived under a microscope most of the time. Ritsuko once told him, however, that some jobs gave you perks; other jobs _needed them_. So, he put aside his reluctance and called Section Two. He made sure to thank them as they loaded up all the gifts he'd received that morning. He also made a note to try and make their jobs easier in the future.

Like, not getting captured, or attacked.

Now it was lunch, and he was _still_ receiving presents. His friends all claimed one table, leaving him to sit on top of it next to Ayumi. Their admirers all petered out before noon, his on the other hand... Section Two lost any hope of staying covert. Now they stood out and served as something of an informal cordon. None of the girls seemed to mind. If anything the black-suited men and women made all the students feel safer.

Ayumi was giggling and full of mirth. She pressed herself against his side with one arm wrapped around his middle. She had to, really, because this was their first real day together at school, and NERV was going to pick him up any minute now. She had to enjoy her boyfriend while she could. Shinji, for his part felt the attention was pretty nice, all things considered. He could feel her laughter ripple through his body every few minutes, and she liked to poke his cheek every time he blushed. He wondered how long it would take for her arm to get tired.

Then, something rang in his ears. He nudged his girlfriend. _Girlfriend._ "Do you hear that?"

"You know your hearing's better than mine, not yet."

It was familiar, maddeningly familiar. A persistent whine, high pitched with peaks. Then, a lower rumble, not quite bass, more a treble. The chirp of rubber tires squeaking against asphalt jogged the rest of his memory. She was here; she was coming. Right then. Shinji squirmed, not very hard, but enough to make Ayumi and his friends turn to him, wondering.

He heard a car door slam, somewhere else in the campus. More sounds drifted in and out of his awareness, he had to concentrate, strain to hear anything, consistently. He didn't have any magic for it. Footsteps were next, with high heels if he wasn't mistaken. Most of the girls had queued up around him with gifts and affection, but more than a few boys were hanging around, hoping to catch any... Rebounds.

Shinji was very much certain, then, that he did something terrible in his past life.

Katsuragi Misato rounded the corner in her red NERV jacket and beret, dressed to her traffic-stopping best. Kensuke wasted no time whipping out his camera, holding down the button and jamming it on repeat. Misato positively basked in the attention, gleefully soaking in it. Boys swooned, and girls let out disgusted groans as she passed. The crowd surrounding Shinji and his friends parted before her, letting the lieutenant saunter up to their table. She looked from one teenager to another, Toji and Kensuke, Hikari, Rei, and Shinji, offering them all a sunny, warm smile.

She stopped though, once her eyes settled on the girl pressed against Shinji's side. "Well, Shinji-kun, " Misato glanced to the crowd of girls gathered around, many of them still holding gifts, then back to Ayumi. "I never figured you'd get tied down so easily."

Dead silence followed, aside from one of the black-suited agents coughing into his shoulder. Shinji went rigid while his breath caught in his throat, nearly keeling over. Ayumi just smiled up at he older woman and hugged her boyfriend even tighter. Her hands wrapped around his bicep, squeezing. "I'd chain him to my desk, but haven't found anything that will hold him."

Misato folded her arms under her breasts and grinned, giving the girl and her pilot a friendly leer. "I suppose until then, you'll just have to think of an appropriate _incentive,_ right?"

Ayumi didn't answer, not with words. Instead she just smiled, slowly. _Challenge accepted._ Turning, she cupped her boyfriend's face in both hands and kissed him full on the lips.

Somehow, the lunch yard got _even quieter_. A few beats later, the couple broke apart with a soft, wet _pop. _Surrounding them, more than a few teenagers were red-faced and squirming, shifting their weight from side to side. Misato knew a vicarious look when she saw it. Shinji's friends were tense, ready to bolt, and the pilot himself was still struck numb. Misato grabbed the boy by the wrist and pulled as hard as she could, dragging him to his feet.

She tossed the crowd a knowing smile and jaunty wave, laughing. "Alright Shinji! Say goodbye to your harem, It's time to go!"

* * *

><p>Hours away, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Ryoji Kaji stared out at the collapsing plume of water. The ship rolled into waves, just a bit, as did all the other vessels that made up the convoy. Behind him some few hundred yards back, the super carrier <em>Over The Rainbow<em> barely felt it. He brought the cigarette up to his lips, while his other hand stayed at his side, chained to an armored briefcase.

The massive splash had completely vanished by then, leaving nothing but smooth swells. Kaji flicked the spent cigarette into the ocean.

_I know far too many crazy women._

* * *

><p>The sporty blue Renault all but purred, thrumming down the freeway. Rei and Misato must have given it a tune up at some point. The drive was uneventful, and apparently, once outside of the city, Misato seemed oddly calm. She took no turns at extreme speeds. Her foot lacked lead. It was... Peaceful. Shinji was still tingling from that kiss. It was, for that moment, enough to make him forget the <em>rest<em> of his problems.

Or, at the very least be constructive. "Misato-san, can I ask you something?"

"Hm?" She glanced at him sidelong through her sunglasses; Shinji never had the heart to tell her he could see through most kinds of tinted glass.

He smiled, not as brittle as before. Now he looked a bit more self-assured, but still so charmingly humble. He hunched up in his seat, but only a little bit. "Do you think it'd be alright if I maybe did some work around the apartment? Like remodeling?"

Misato just blinked. He'd been building things like crazy, but jumping from carpentry to construction... That was something of a stretch, a slight one. She tapped the steering wheel with one finger, once, twice, three times, before responding. "Sure, but you'll have to file all the permits, I'll stamp them." She switched lanes and headed for the exit, smiling. "You sure you can do it? I'd rather not have to call a contractor later."

Shinji just leaned back in his seat, letting his grin grow a bit wider. "Yeah, I think I can."

* * *

><p>The NERV shipyard, one of their many subsidiary locations sprinkled throughout Japan, was on the western coast of their island nation. The salt spray seemed to crash into their noses, drowning out all other scents. As far as both Shinji and Misato could tell, NERV tended to have a lot of projects going, and often had to shift focuses at the drop of the hat. That was why the dry docks looked half-finished, dotted with skeletal warehouses, and pits filled with foundation support girders and rebar, but no concrete. The docks themselves were in fair condition, however.<p>

A bay carved into the hillside was filled with the sunken remains of a pre-impact city. Back then it was no where near the coast. In the years since, it had become something of both an eyesore and a man made reef, filled with fish and life. Tens of thousands of seagulls carved through the air, aiming to find any number of morsels near the surface.

Shinji and Misato were the first to arrive, of the Tokyo-3 contingent. NERV-Berlin had already sent the support material and personnel ahead, escorted by the UN Pacific Fleet. The lieutenant left Fuyutsuki and the rest of their team in the dust, hours ago. Six massive cargo ships were already docked, leaving the seventh open for the last ship to arrive. Oddly enough, there was no sign of Unit 02.

That seventh, last ship finally pulled up to moor, while a wheeled stairway sidled up next to it. Shinji saw the man first, leaning against the railing and waiting to disembark. The late-afternoon sun didn't stop the pilot from picking out details. Mid thirties, ponytail and scruffy, his tie and collar were undone. The man waved as he stepped down, shouting Misato's name.

Turning, Shinji pinched Misato's elbow. When she saw what he was pointing at, she went ashen. "No. Please. Not him, not here."

Close enough now to be heard over the sound of ships and sea, the rough looking man laughed. "Hey, Katsuragi, it's been a while."

* * *

><p>Somehow, somewhere, that rough cut man, Kaji, had found an outdoor table near one of the dockyard buildings. It must've been something intended for workers to use on breaks. Shinji knew he wasn't very perceptive, but he knew blatant, undisguised interest, especially when he both saw and heard it. Ryoji's eyes roved constantly, and the Exalt could hear him try to play footsie with Misato.<p>

Shinji felt the very clear, perfectly understandable urge to _remove the competition at earliest possible convenience_. He shook that off fairly quickly, redirecting it into 'defend Misato'. Shinji caught the Kaji's attention while letting one hand fall on Misato's shoulder. The pilot sat up a bit straighter, pleased to note that even sitting, he was taller than the other man. "Kaji-san, aren't we supposed to be meeting someone here? The Second Child?"

Misato let out a relieved grin, grateful for the distraction. Kaji didn't seem overly affected, though he did look a little nonplused. Nor did he seem to notice or care that Shinji was well, huge. Cradling his chin in one hand, Kaji waved back towards the sea. "When the budget dried up, Berlin decided to pull something of a swan-song. We're handing over the first prototypes of our D2 equipment and extended batteries. Fifteen minutes at combat drain, or so they claim."

Out in the bay, water swelled up and pushed forward, angling straight through the clear channel between ruined buildings. At first it was a low rise, a mound of water that built up wider and wider. Then, the tension broke, collapsing the bulge into two smaller rises. Those gave way to a pair of red and black pylons, the iconic shoulder-fins of an Evangelion. Cutting through, the Evangelion stepped higher and higher towards the shore. The head followed shortly after the pylons, while water streamed down from every angle and surface.

Passing by a former office building, the scale clicked into place, and everyone then understood just how _massive_ an Evangelion was. the machine was walking along the road-turned sea bed, climbing higher and higher towards the pier. The ground started to shake slightly as the Evangelion closed in. Now wading chest deep, the machine shoved air out of the way as much as water, whipping at Misato's hair and nearly blowing her beret clean off her head. Kaji almost lost his ponytail.

One gargantuan thigh broke out of the water and cut high into the air, like a person taking a stairway several steps at a time. Which, when Shinji thought about it, was exactly what was happening. now Misato _did_ lose her hat, but Kaji caught it before it could escape completely. A brief, heavy shower of seawater drenched everyone unfortunate enough to be too close.

The first footstep was almost soundless, nor any bone-jarring impact or earth-breaking strides. The only one who didn't look surprised was Kaji. Shinji had seen some amazing feats performed by his trainers, people who looked like they glided everywhere, but he couldn't reconcile that with an _Evangelion_ doing it. He felt his jaw hang open slightly.

Now, the red and black machine stood before them, still dripping wet and smeared with algae and seaweed. It was a bit taller than Unit 01, but thinner in some places. Armor and additional modules marked with 'D2' covered its chest and head, along with something taking up the power socket's port. The Eva was standing, tense. The posture reminded Shinji of something, like it was on the tip of his tongue.

Someone or something flipped a switch. The Evangelion, Unit 02, shifted from military precision to palpable smugness. It threw one arm out imperiously, waving, while the other pressed its fingertips into the Evangelion's chest, as if proclaiming its greatness. The air again whipped at the people below, forcing Misato to clutch at her beret and jacket. A young girl's voice broke out over the external speakers, echoing against the concrete and ships.

"The new equipment worked perfectly, as if there was any doubting German engineering!" She spoke Japanese incredibly well. The Evangelion turned, seeming to notice the two adults and teenager standing nearby. Another switch was flipped, and then the Evangelion started to _preen_.

The girl's voice practically dripped with honey. "Kaji-san! Did you see? Did you? An amazing performance if I do say so myself!" She seemed to notice Misato a beat later, not even waiting for Kaji to answer. "Misato-san! It's been so long! I can't wait to get out of here and catch up!."

There was something vaguely disturbing about it, watching a forty meter tall war machine move and act like a fourteen year old girl.

Finally, she seemed to notice the third person. Its head turned, zeroing in on Shinji. He wondered if it had four eyes or eight, or just two. It seemed to focus in on him, directly. The girl's voice boomed out of the loudspeaker once more. "I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Asuka Langley Sorhyu!"

Somehow, Shinji had the unmistakable impression that the Evangelion was trying to squint. "Are you Commander Ikari?"

* * *

><p>AN: Whew.<p> 


	25. Upheaval

"Are you the Commander?"

The question was so surreal, she found it necessary to repeat it. Shinji tried, desperately, reconcile the pretty-girl voice and being in any way associated with his father. Something screwed up in his chest alongside the fluster.

"N-No!"

The red and black machine cocked one hip out to the side, arms braced akimbo. The simple human gesture again made the air whip at the clothes and hair of everyone underfoot. Somehow, she made the Evangelion _sneer_, despite lacking a face. "Then who the hell are you?"

There were too many answers to that question, and most of them unbelievable, or dangerous. The last time anyone stood above him so much had been when he first arrived in Tokyo-3, and that first Angel attack. He shook off the memory and stared right back at the Evangelion's face. "I-I'm the Third Child!"

"You? You're the Third? Impossible! Maybe you _ate _the other pilots, I'd believe _that!"_ She didn't give him a chance to make a comeback. "What are they feeding you, Rambo movies?"

She kept going on in that vein for some time, utterly fixated on tearing a strip out of him. If not his build, then his demeanor, how he carried himself. Then the lack of pomp and circumstance regarding her arrival. If he wasn't the Commander, why wasn't the _Commander present?_ A new lead pilot and Evangelion was being transferred to his command, after all. That Misato was present made no impact, having defined Operations Director as a nothing task. Asuka never seemed to pause for breath, starting in now on how he dressed.

"-And how can you wear such a boring outfit! If you're a pilot you should dress the par-"

The two adults decided to remind everyone present that they still existed. Misato practically doubled over, clasping both hands around her mouth. Kaji on the otherhand laughed openly, waving.

"No one else can make a multi-billion dollar war machine act so ladylike, Sorhyu-san."

"Kaji!"

The second he spoke , Asuka became an entirely different person. Her demeanor shifted so fast, it was almost like a physical thing. To the point that Shinji felt it in his neck and back. The Evangelion responded as well, shifting almost dantily, hands clasped in front of it. Everything from then on seemed to be honeyed, sweet and girlish. He turned and glanced at Kaji. For a moment Shinji wondered if the scruffiness was worth being able to make a girl hang on his every word. Especially if the girl in question was as pretty as she sounded.

That thought kicked off another, and it almost made him miss an important fact. She was getting out of her Evangelion. The war machine knelt, and with each shifting panel, Shinji heard _violins_. It was achingly familiar, two notes followed by tense pause. It repeated twice more before building into a full orchestra. He hadn't even _seen_ her yet, and he was hearing _Allegro con fuoco_.

Kensuke was right; Tokyo- 3 was a statistical oddity. A disproportionately large number of women worked or would soon work at NERV. The new pilot somehow looked amazing, despite having just pulled herself out of a plug full of LCL. Red hair, blue eyes and long, _long_ legs. Watching her practically skip down the shoulder and arm of her machine, something else occured to him. He never gave the particular detail any thought, mostly due to understandably limited exposure.

Bright, beaming and impossible to ignore, Asuka Langley Sorhyu approached. She hopped off the Evangelion's splayed index finger, landing with barely a sound. She tossed her head, tossed her _hair._ Despite it being wet, despite it being _LCL_, she did it.

Misato groused behind him, not unkindly. "Right, now she's just showing off."

Kaji kept his voice low and didn't miss a beat. "When isn't she?"

Shinji's eyes tracked her first, then his head, neck and shoulders followed right along. He couldn't not stare, not then. That insistent, increasingly relevant and appealing detail burned itself into his brain. Shinij's mental orchestra built up, quickly and inexorably towards a full, resounding crescendo, matching up in time with the _word_ to go with that very important thought.

_Plugsuits._

Misato had been snickering, trying to hide it for several minutes now. Shinji was dimly aware of Asuka preening, practically throwing herself at the older man. The young girl's eyes cut back and up, catching Shinji dead to rights. He realized right then that he'd been staring, hard. Misato laughed even harder, Red surged up his neck and cheeks, he barely had a chance to squirm.

_"Pervert!"_

Shinji really didn't want to block, but months of training didn't give him much choice. Asuka lashed out with an open-handed slap, right in line with his cheek. The apology stuck in his throat, not sure who to answer first; Asuka for the offense, or Ayumi for his lapse. He licked his lips and tried again, trying to ignore the ugly, sick feeling in his stoma-

"How long have you been practicing?"

"Huh?" The question knocked his train of thought clean off course, and his face went slack. Kaji and Misato were thrown as well, staring openly at the rapid shift. Asuka went from righteous indignation to a borderline interrogation, in the space of a single sentence. It was a poignant reminder of how mercurial she could be. Misato got over the shock the fastest, surging in with a tight smile.

Misato kept her voice light and airy, realizing she had to defuse the situation _rapidly,_ as in _right the goddamn now._ She slid in between them, pressing a hand to their shoulders. "Easy now! This isn't the time or place. He didn't mean to, Asuka." She figured playing to the girl's ego wouldn't hurt, pointing out she _did_ look great. Asuka didn't even seen to notice her speaking.

"Unarmed combat, Martial arts." Asuka kept her eyes locked on Shinji's, not once wavering. She repeated her question, wiggling her raised arm, now almost draped across his own wrist.

Shinji blinked once, then twice, and got his brain into gear on the third. For a moment, the tension and guilt drained out. Questions were simple, he could answer questions. "...Oh! Uh... About a year? Ten, fourteen months?"

The look on her face was positively _evil._ Not a grin or smile of any kind, and it wasn't a sneer. Instead Asuka stared him down with a sort of snobbish intent. she hadn't once taken her eyes off his, not since Shinji blocked her first attack. Somehow Asuka pushed past Misato, hooking her foot around the back of his ankles. She shoved him, high up on the chest and hard. He had no response; all his training, experience and talent fled for that moment. He fell, hitting the pavement hard enough to bruise, and too shocked to do anything else but stare, numb.

"So then, Third Child." She made a point to plant her foot between his legs, dangerously close to his hips. The thin rubber sole sounded much heavier than it should have, right then. "It seems you need to keep practicing."

* * *

><p>The lieutenant kept an eye on her two passengers by way of rear-view mirror. The drive back from the dry docks was... Tense, to say the least. Misato was sure, if Asuka had room in the back of car, she would have sat with one leg crossed over the other. She knew the girl well enough to say she was the picture of arrogance, even though Asuka was going for nonchalant. The yellow sundress didn't hurt, Misato had to admit.<p>

Thin, snaking highways cut through the hills of Hakone, and the sun sank into the western horizon. The pilots and officer were heading straight for the Geofront, under orders for 'expedited debriefing' with the Commander of NERV. Asuka, for her part, treated the whole affair as her own imperial motorcade. In some ways, Misato was glad she hadn't changed much. In others... Well, at least one person in that car believed the world revolved around Asuka Langley Sorhyu.

The Second Child flipped through her 'Welcome to NERV' book, barely skimming the pages. It was the same introduction Shinji had to the organization, and Tokyo-3. She tossed the booklet away, not even caring to finish it. She folder her arms over her chest and pointedly ignored Misato's claims of there being important information there. Frost seemed to build up on her side of the car.

Misato wanted to bring up Asuka's new living arrangements, but the teenager wasn't having any of it. She completely shut Misato down once it became apparent she'd be living anywhere near Shinji. Asuka had already made herself _very_ clear on how she felt about him. Misato just sighed and waited for the redhead to calm down, they were still a ways away from the Geofront.

Glancing to the right, Misato checked on her other charge. Shinji was being his normal unobtrusive self, despite filling more than twice the total area than his fellow pilot. He was more focused on looking straight ahead, past the front seat and out the window. As far as Misato could tell, he'd already gotten over the worst parts of Asuka's first impression. Not that it was surprising, Shinji had a lot more important things weighing on his mind. Pilot relationship dynamics and an aggressive, excessively forward personality just didn't faze him.

"I categorically refuse to sleep _anywhere near_ this hyper-masculine meathead jock." Asuka recrossed her arms for emphasis, punctuating it with a derisive, lady-like snort. Misato would've bet good money the girl practiced that in front of a mirror at least once.

"Asuka."

Before Misato could begin to clarify, Shinji twisted in his seat and shot back, stating that he was most definitely not a meathead, or a jock. Asuka wasn't having any of it, and started in on the boy in earnest, laying out at length all his apparent flaws. Meanwhile, Misato watched the escalating byplay, mouthing _hyper-masculine_ to herself, and contemplating all the interesting things it implied with regard to her pilots.

"Is still cannot believe _he_ is a pilot," Asuka picked up steam. "_Maybe_ he is fourteen, but only if you fed him four dozen eggs a day. I mean, how can he even _fit_?"

Red crawled up his neck and cheeks. Only Shinji could be embarrassed about being big and tall. Even so, he managed to fire back with a line of his own. "It's... not so bad after the first couple times."

Meanwhile, Misato had to bite her lip just to keep from cracking up. The car wobbled slightly, but nobody noticed, and Misato corrected with barely any thought. The banter continued for a while longer, and they just kept giving her so much wonderful material. All good things had to come to an end, however.

"Asuka." Misato started tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. The Geofront wasn't far off, and it was time to put her foot down.

Neither pilot seemed to notice, wrapped up in their tiff. At least Shinji was in a better position to fight back. He managed to catch Asuka up with a good retort for every three or four of hers. The car tilted over the last rise before angling down into an entrance ramp, curving around and into the Geofront.

The car picked up speed and shot down the access tunnel. Misato loved the Geofront road network. Lots of long straightaways with almost no turns, and when it did, the road banked nicely. She always enjoyed opportunities to ignore the speed limit. Shinji wisely decided keep his mouth shut, and to squeeze himself against the opposite door.

The redhead continued to seethe and rant at the window, barely acknowledging the shift in air pressure or acceleration. "This just is a bad plan! Utterly psychotic!"

The transfer station for the tram line was just ahead, and had plenty of open parking lot. Misato took a moment to tighten her gloves, grinning. Perfect. "Asuka."

No response. That was fine with Misato. She slammed on the breaks and sent the dark blue Renault into a textbook perfect donut-spin. The car drifted, spiraling along through the cavernous garage and past massive support pillars. Each one was the size of a small building. Twisting in her seat, Misato locked her eyes on Asuka's, and most definitely not watching where she was going.

A feathery tap on the brakes brought them close enough to a pillar, they could all _hear_ the air rush around it and the car. "Asuka!"

Wide-eyed and thoroughly cowed, the younger girl shrank back in her seat, color drained out of her. Her hair bounced and waved as the car slid across the pavement. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the car came to a halt, ending in a perfect parallel park.

Asuka's voice was tiny. "...what?"

Misato didn't even blink. She just kept staring, putting on a sickly, saccharine sweet smile. "If you let me finish... You'll be living in my apartment complex. I have a second unit leased out to you and paid for by NERV. You'll be our neighbor. I'll give yobu a copy of the key to our apartment, and I'll have a copy for yours. Section-2 will remain on station on the other floors as a rapid response, assuming anyone attacks. You heard about the attack on the school, right?"

Asuka nodded. "That's why I was sent here, security envelope."

Snapping back to her happier, care-free face, Misato gave Asuka quick, warm smile. "Right, do you understand now?"

She may have, but the girl's pride demanded a quick recovery, and an answer. Misato didn't expect anything less. Asuka huffed. "He'd better not sneak into my apartment-"

"Sweetie, you tried to deck him ten seconds after meeting him." Misato grinned a bit wider. " Safe to say he's not dumping his girlfriend for you."

Misato twisted in her seat to look at Shinji, but only stopped and stared. He had pressed himself almost completely up against the side window, and nearly white as a sheet. The door swung open and the boy fell out and onto the pavement, landing in a heap.

"I think I'm going to throw up."

* * *

><p>Above all else, Asuka was <em>freezing. <em>Gooseflesh, shivering, stamping her feet and stiff-everywhere cold. It was like NERV had no idea how to heat its own facilities. Part of her rational mind acknowledged the difficulty inherent in heating the underground infrastructure, but the rest of her just fumed. She was cold, dammit! The Geofront had _three_ fusion reactors beneath headquarters. She knew for a fact they _wasted power_ just sitting there, during peacetime operations. It was probably even worse with the budget cutbacks.

Asuka didn't know however, that much of that power was being directed into the city above, and Japan at large, easing the burden on the national power grid. That and several other small, easily given concessions helped maintain the support from both the JSSDF and civilian government.

She'd been trusted to find her way to the Commander's office on her own, which suited her just fine. She didn't need a guide, and she could find a map easily enough. Locating one office in an underground research facility was well within her capabilities. Misato and _Ikari_ were heading back to the apartment, supposedly finalizing some arrangements or other. Asuka wasn't one to care about that, as long as they were doing their job of preparing for her.

Looking around, all the corridors seemed to blend into one another. More and more she was reminded that the base was designed to baffle intruders, not facilitate work. Of course the architects went about it all wrong. The design was infantile, really, compared to the fortress of old Europe, and the more modern bunkers of the past half century. She huffed and stopped at an intersection. Even if she _did_ get lost, it was probably a blessing in disguise; she had to keep moving, or she'd fall dead of hypothermia before sunset.

Fortunately for her, she arrived at her destination if not early, than at least on time. She knew she was in the rooftop dome layer of the NERV complex, but there were no windows. Just a tiny, nondescript reception area and an equally tiny, mousy clerk manning a desk. He waved her in without a word. A featureless door slid open, soundlessly, disappearing into the wall.

Dark. That was the first thing that came to mind. The door behind her whispered shut, and for a moment, Asuka was blind. Her eyes adjusted slowly. The ceiling above started to glow faintly, etched in long intricate lines and text. She recognized the Sephirothic System, though why anyone chose it as decoration was beyond her.

Then the floor disappeared.

Glittering water and green trees and grass spread out below her feet, more than a mile down. Heights had never bothered her before, and they wouldn't start now. She forced her fists to unclench, and let out the breath she had been holding. It was a simple tactic, spook the newcomer into revealing their base reaction, find out how far they can be pushed. Knowing that didn't prevent a full on adrenaline surge.

Now though, she could see. Windows to one side, looking out on the Geofront dome, and the transparent floor, crisscrossed with thin lines and inset diamonds. The floor was polished, reflective at that. And she was still wearing her sundress. Anyone with half a brain could get a free show, just by looking down. Asuka refused to let anything show on her face, other than smug confidence.

Ahead of her, finally visible, was a man seated behind a desk. His hands were laced together and elbows down on the table. Past the fingers, rough mop of hair and orange glasses, she got the unmistakable impression of _beard._

Asuka crossed her arms over her chest and threw one hip out to the side, tapping her foot. Inwardly, she cursed herself for staying where she was. There was a cold air vent right above her. "Are you the Commander?"

He didn't move at all. "Yes."

* * *

><p>Judging by the stacks and stacks of boxes, Misato was fairly certain Asuka was still a spoiled brat. The Second Child seemed to have more possessions than Misato and Shinji <em>combined.<em> Misato didn't let it get to her, though. Kaji was more than enough training on how to deal with the compulsively immature. She kept her smile sunny and warm, handing the newly copied key to the Second Child. The dark-haired woman swept her arm out at the new apartment, a mirror image to the floor plan of her own.

Shaking her head, she pointed to the door on the right and gave Asuka a quick nod. "Well, this is our place," then waved left. "Yours is right next door and pretty much the same size."

Now the smile dropped, taking on on a slight edge. She leaned forward just a little, staring right into Asuka's eyes. "I expect you to keep your apartment clean and in good condition, considering I effectively own this building now."

The younger girl nodded, only slightly subdued. "Alright Misato-san."

Misato blinked once, then slapped her forehead. "Ugh, I'm a moron. You'll need help moving your stuff in, won't you?"

She glanced at the piles of boxes lining the hallway. Asuka scowled, folding her arms over her chest in a huff. "The Great Asuka Langley Sohyru doesn't need help with anything so simple!"

"Aw c'mon. Don't be a bitch." Misato snorted, throwing an arm around Asuka's shoulders. Turning, she shouted at her apartment. "_Hey! Shinji-kun!"_

Both women felt more than heard a resounding, ominous _thump. _Fortunately no sounds of splintering wood or destruction followed. Moments later the Third Child tumbled out of Misato's apartment. Unfortunately for him, his tumble sent him barreling past the two women and sprawling to on his back right next to them. He looked up at Misato and Asuka. "Y-Yes?"

Then Asuka moved, and Shinji realized he could see everything from where he lay.

* * *

><p>"I miss my wife."<p>

Whatever thought Fuyutsuki held in his head right then died, quickly and quietly. He was left with a nonplussed sense of... Something. He couldn't quite place it, other than the great feeling of _unexpected_.

The old man just blinked, once, still staring."...Beg pardon?"

Gendo leaned back in his chair and stretched, before twisting his neck one way, then the other. Fuyutsuki just stared. The other man was content to let the lull stretch on, punctuated by the pop and crackle of stretching ligaments.

The sound was enough to snap Fuyutsuki out of it. He let the shock fall away, while dropping back into his own memories. His favorite student was many, many things, submissive wasn't one of them. A smile worked its way onto his face, and though he faced Ikari, Fuyutsuki grinned at the past. "I highly doubt Yui would have ever given you a back rub."

The younger man's reply was quick and effortless. If Gendo ever begrudged Fuyutsuki for how he felt about Yui, he kept his peace for nearly twenty years. "Of course not, but there are times I wish I had the privilege of being shot down."

For a brief moment, the pair stopped being student and teacher, or Commanders. Instead they were just peers, men. Fuyutuski's nose scrunched up, grunting. "Not much comfort on long nights."

It was a long night, at that. NERV spent more time in meetings, spinning its wheels, the longer it went without an Angel attack. Most people considered the tedium a blessing, but if left to linger, morale would start to drop.

"None at all." Gendo broke into his musing. He twisted in his chair, drawing forth another series of crackles. "Have we received another memo from the UN? Do they need their hand held?"

This time Fuyutsuki twisted, searching his desk for any such message and finding none. "No, actually. They've almost completed the transfer."

"Impressive." It was, somewhat. The UN had suffered for a long time, and had been considered impotent, ineffectual. It had been a paper tiger, in a very real sense. That changed during the post-impact era, and the conflicts that built up around the world. With Crisis came Chaos, and the cure for chaos was order. Central authority, though often demonized, was a very real necessity in the realities of the post-impact world. Thus, from this necessity, the paper tiger had grown some claws.

Fuyutsuki handed the folder over, smirking. "This isn't like you, Ikari. Snark, at a time like this?"

Most people would have sounded petulant. Gendo's tone spoke only of irrefutable fact. "We all have our fits of pique, Fuyutuski."

Nodding, the old man started to hunt for more files. "True enough. What is our status?"

Gendo waved one arm, calling forth a dense tangle of holographic displays. Fuyutsuki looked up at the light filling the filled the office alongside a map of the world. Markers dropped into place over dozens of countries, denoting 'Angel' sightings and strange phenomena. Every habitable continent had at least one recorded event. Protests built up almost overnight, like mushrooms. Demonstrations gave way to riots. The world did not so much burn, as smoulder.

Tokyo-3 was a dictatorship, with Gendo's personality firmly imprinted upon Ikari, Fuyutsuki, and both doctors Akagi left their mark as well. Their influence went deep, rooted in the procedural core of NERV. Katsuragi, in keeping with her nature, was the defacto face of the fortress city, both literally and metaphorically. More people knew of her, knew _her_, as the Tactical Operations Director and military leader of NERV. Slowly, but surely, Misato etched her signature style into the city. Her focused genius was evident in nearly every armory building and reconfigurable structure.

Taken all together, Tokyo-3 and Japan by extension, was only dimly aware of the unrest plaguing the rest of the world. Suddenly the alien invasion stopped being 'Over There'. Suddenly, the new, awful reality was in the backyards of regular citizens, unprepared and unwilling to give up their idyllic lives. Gendo, for all his misanthropy, felt little for or against the people of the world. It wasn't his way to begrudge them happiness, but his goals could not be compromised.

Without the unifying factor of an outside, opposing force, the human race was headed for another world war. SEELE was exceptionally skilled at controlling wars. A conflict on that scale, with the levers already in place meant a great many things. Even more vital resources could be drained from NERV's purpose. The Committee had its share of backup plans. Gendo and Fuyutsuki would not have been surprised, if SEELE ever deployed a means to postpone the Angel invasions. They might have already done so.

Ikari Yui was the genius of GEHRIN, but others followed, and NERV did not have a monopoly on brilliance.

"So far SEELE has been miserly with their Mass Production Evangelions." Gendo observed, lifting his fingers and curling them in. The displays responded, twisting apart into an ordered list of dates, times and locations. "One incident at a time."

"So the world assumes it's one Angel." Fuyutsuki snorted. Sometimes the simplest tricks were the best. SEELE and Gendo were both masters of human interaction, though Ikari gained his via hard experience. His misanthropy gave him a unique, detached perspective, one that had frustrated Fuyutsuki time and again.

The reply was brief. "Likely, yes."

"Akagi has a theory, and something of a plan." It took Fuyutsuki a few moments to find the right folder. Akagi tended to append last-minute thoughts in the form of post-it notes, a quirk she inherited from her mother. The thin sheaf of papers was dripping with annotations. "Most of the interception system is using the old pattern sensors, the UN took control before the upgrades went out."

"Such a shame that those improvements were lost in the shuffle." No one ever said Gendo lacked timing, comedic or otherwise.

Fuyutsuki felt his lips quirk up before continuing. "Quite. Regardless, as long as the events stay outside our detection envelope," the old man waved to the map of Japan. "We can't analyze new AT field signatures."

And without that analysis, they had nothing to present to the UN. And, more importantly, no means to defang SEELE in the current round of the game. Akagi unfortunately did not know the committee as well as either commander. If they had done something to upset the expected timeline even more, there was very little NERV could do about it.

"What of our budget concerns?"

This time Gendo laced his fingers together, though without a desk to lay his elbows on, he didn't hold the position for long. "The interal restructuring is proceeding as expected. NERV should enjoy a universal increase in salary, if all things go to plan."

"That would do wonders for morale," the old man paused. "We're using the third option, I believe, with Shinji in place of Rei?"

"The Third is a much more dramatic demonstration. If we want to enter the corporate world, we must make a big splash." Fuyutsuki's expression soured, more at what Gendo didn't say.

He let it pass, knowing it wasn't the time for that old argument. Utilizing Shinji was a risk, and both men knew it. At the same time, there were ways to mitigate the dangers. SEELE was also a concern, though a less personal one. No one doubted the Committee had viable sources. If not now, then after the Dawkins protocol dropped. Neither pilot was an ideal choice for the plan, but they had to work with what they were given. NERV couldn't afford to ignore Shinji's value outside of his ability to pilot Unit 01. However, Fuyutsuki knew the other man well enough to say that Gendo simply didn't really believe in the Exaltation. He agreed with observable fact, of course, but deemed it a distraction. The boy rapidly shed the various behavioral controls his father spent years cultivating, and while not healthy, Shinji was no longer the perfect tool, in Gendo's mind.

The discussion meandered then, to topics closer to home. Rei had been experiencing incredible increases in synchronization, though her body-chemistry reports were at times unsettling. The Second Child was settling in as best as could be expected, though there were rumors that the pilots had stepped off on the wrong foot. Still, Ritsuko was almost gleeful. Sorhyu was a prodigy, and had done a great deal to advance the study of the AT field.

An errant snip of memory came back to Fuyutsuki, right then. "That reminds me, Ikari." He turned to Gendo, honestly curious. "What of the AT field data you offered the terrorists?"

The other man didn't turn, instead answering into the holographic cloud. In his office, doing what he did best, there was no need to look or act smug. "It should be filtering through the back channel information networks as we speak."

Most people would've asked something then, wondering how Gendo could have anticipated the terrorist's own backup plans and procedures. Fuyutsuki knew the younger man too well, seeing no reason to ask when he already knew the answer.

* * *

><p>"I miss free time."<p>

Kensuke sank into the nearest lawn chair, groaning faintly. The rooftop labs were becoming more and more lived in with each passing day. Awnings, more storage sheds, and enough chairs for everyone. Only a handful of people lived in the complex, though, and most of them were Section Two. Misato had been working with NERV to open the place up to more tenants, but hadn't had much luck.

The basketball dropped onto the rim and bounced off, very nearly going over the parapet and down fifteen stories. Toji froze in the middle of his botched lay-up, arms still raised. He stared at his friend. "...What?"

The sandy-haired boy reached into the minifridge for a bottle of water and drained it in one go. "I'm exhausted. I thought you had to have sex first, before anything like dehydration set in."

Toji just kept on staring. "...Kensuke, what?" It took him a few more seconds to gather the rest of his wits. Details began to click into place. "...Why the hell are you in a bathrobe?"

It was very much indeed a bathrobe. Fortunately it was painfully generic, instead of... Unique. Toji wasn't sure if he could've handled his best frield showing up in somethng like cushy velvet, or silk. Kensuke blinked twice before glancing down. "Huh? Oh, Shinji lent it to me."

The entire situation was going an incredible number of terrilbe places. Places Toji had no want or desire to even _consider_, let alone visit. Still staring, Toji tried to speak. To do anything that would get his brain back in gear. The basketball rolled into his foot. He failed, but Kensuke took it as a sign to explain anyway. Some part of the athlete feared the answer, as if it would make the whole thing even _worse_.

Fortunately, it didn't get worse. Kensuke tended to speak differently when it came to science. "Something exploded in the lab. Got everywhere, clothes are in the wash."

Toji just shook his head, trying very hard to get his concious mind as far away from thinking as possible. It also ate up a lot of the time Kensuke spent not explaining. Eventually, the other boy did start to make sense.

"Dates, Toji. I have dates. Multiple." He pulled out a pocket calendar, nearly blacked out with appointments. With equiliberium restored, Toji found the surge of jealousy easy to squash. It was hard to envy _Kensuke_ of all things, even if he had... Nine dates under his belt, and at least twelve more to look forward to.

Regardless, he just snorted. His friends could be thick as bricks. "Groceries. Kensuke. Groceries. _Bag 'em up_."

Kensuke didn't miss a beat, calling out to the class representative. Toji paled and started to shiver, whirling around with apologies spilling out. When he finally unscrewed his eyelids, he realized there was no Hikari present; they were on the roof of Misato's apartment, and as far as he knew, Hikari had never been invited up there. Toji very nearly decked his best friend for that, but only nearly. It only took Kensuke less than a minute to get his breathing back to normal.

Deja ambled on by then, only giving Kensuke's outfit a glance before shrugging, and going back to her rounds. The two boys waved, barely noticing her. When she stepped out of sight behind the shed complex, they shivered.

Kensuke couldn't help but follow the agent, watching her go. The fight or flight response and uniform suit did little to stop his hormones. "Girls are ten times more confusing than I thought."

Girls in general, as far as Kensuke learned, were far less mysterious and eldritch than he thought. Oh, their ways were still curious, and he found their guile and subtlety aggravating, but at the same time, he started to understand _why_, if not what they _meant._ Toji at one point asked if he really had done it or not, with any of the girls. Kensuke couldn't say if any of his dates even _wanted to_. Two had ended in kisses, simple ones at that, but he couldn't understand the signals the girls were sending him.

Now they were back on track. Toji scooped up the ball and started to spin it in his palm. He wasn't quite good enough to balance it on his finger yet. His face twisted up, scowling mightly. "I just gotta deal with _one girl_, and she's nearly bipolar." Between laughs, Kensuke asked if she really _was._ The jock was in the best position to confirm it. "Nah, she just comes off like that."

Both boys realized then, that their chances of a normal high school career and equally normal relationships were already long gone. Kensuke had in the past two weeks gained more practical experience than Shinji had in _six months_, setting aside physical things. Toji on the other hand was already married, he just didn't know it. Or, better to say, he knew it, and it _terrified him._

Maturity, responsibility, honor and more. The idea of _commitment._ Be it to a person or ideal, was a new and scary thing. Kensuke understood duty better than most people his age, due to his familiarity with the military and civil services, but it was still a shallow understanding. Toji took Hikari for granted, and knew it, deep down. Even if on the surface, he spent more time and energy aggravating her, flirting with a dozen girls all stary-eyed with hero worship.

They fell silent then, almost somber. They both knew that they were very close to a point of no return, a step into a larger world, and a much scarier one. They'd already made other, equally terrifying steps, confronting their mortality, and their own will to live, fight and die. They were thinking like warriors, leaders. _Adults._

Toji looked up at his friend. "You still looking forward to having sex?"

Again, Kensuke didn't miss a beat. "Every damn day."

One didn't reach adulthood instantly, after all.

* * *

><p>Hours passed, crawling into the afternoon on that lazy Saturday. No gunfights, Angel attacks or wierd Exalted hijinks, just two guys talking about the most important thing in the world: Girls. Their lives were truly charmed, it seemed. Misato-san, Akagi-Sensei, and Deja, for all the shivers she induced. Rei was an exotic beauty, though they had to admit, she dropped off the radar until she started perking up, coming into her own.<p>

Their discussion meandered to that of their class, and how great it was to live in such a healthy city, with such beautiful scenery. They stretched the metaphor as far as they could, and burst out laughing, thick as thieves.

"Oh, I almost forgot." Kensuke rubbed the bridge of his nose, grinning. "We're getting a new transfer student this week."

"Really? Seems like everybody not tied to NERV has already picked up and left." Toji performed another perfect layup, utterly certain his form was correct. He didn't even bother to look. All he needed to hear was the satisfying swish of the net.

"Yeah, but get this. Normally I'd crack into my dad's files, but fate saved me the trouble." The look on Kensuke's face promised something, a glorious truth or revalation. He always had a good grasp of dramatic timing. "I saw moving vans outside Shinji's apartment complex, the other day. Nobody but Misato, Shinji and Rei live there."

The evidence was clear, and the conclusion was fairly self-evident. "So what, we're getting some new blood?" The taller boy scowled again. "Wait, did you stake out Ikari's apartment?"

Kensuke snorted. "Of course not, I work in his lab almost every day after school. Anyway, It's a girl."

Ah, that made more sense. Toji immediately perked up. "A girl, you say? Tell me more."

"I haven't seen her up close, or met her." Kensuke warned. He started ticking points off on his fingers. "Long, _long_ legs."

"Yeah?" Toji sat down on the parapet, leaning forward and eager.

"Red hair, fiery red, almost like a hot rod."

"Yeah!?"

"Blue eyes, a real classical beauty." He plowed ahead, sparing Toji further embarassment. "Tall, beautiful, curvy. Not Misato, but..." The geek raised his hands and drew an hourglass shape in the air.

Toji let out a long, low whistle. "How is she," He hefted the air in front of him. Kensuke's smile was all the answer he needed.

* * *

><p>There were no dolls. No toys or cute, stuffed animals. A half dozen boxes or more were pulled open, spilling out onto the floor and the bits of furniture dotting the apartment. Misato said Ikari made everything by hand, but it was probably favoritism talking.<p>

Asuka laid down in the center of her living room. still in her sundress. The blinds were open, allowing a wide rectangle of moonlight to fall over her body. It somehow seemed colder, sitting in the light. She could hear laughter through the closed door, but nothing distinct. Laughing at her probably. She let her head fall to one side. A chair stood next to her. It did _look_ hand-crafted, she had to admit. But there was no way the Third made it. Maybe he _worked_ on it. Contributed to its construction in some way. Fetched the wood, perhaps.

Tilting her chin up, she let her eyes wander around the ceiling. "I'm alone."

The apartment didn't answer. Being alone wasn't all bad though, Kaji was the man of her dreams, but even the most wonderful gemstone had a flaw. It'd be good for both of them to spend time apart. Absence made the heart grow fonder, after all. Rolling onto her side, she huffed, not willing to get up. The night wore on, and the laughter and liveliness next door faded.

Grumbling, the girl sat up and changed, reaching for a pair of shorts and a T shirt. The water and sewer lines weren't properly hooked up yet; Asuka needed to go next door to take care of matters. Stepping out of her apartment, Asuka shivered. Tropical climate or not, Japan was cold at night. Misato's apartment door was unlocked, and opened without a sound. The entryway floor seemed to swallow up most of her footsteps, leaving only a tiny, rustling scrape from her toes. She all but marched through the ktichen, on her way to the bathroom. She stopped mid-step, spotting the Third sitting in the living room.

The boy had his nose buried in a laptop computer and a pair of earbuds hung down around his head. Asuka blinked twice, before glancing at a clock. Half past midnight, and he was going to school tomorrow as far as she knew.

Bathroom forgotten, she stepped up behind him. "Do you ever sleep?"

He nearly fell out of the couch, almost crushing the laptop along the way. Again Asuka couldn't help but notice how _huge_ he was, somehow looking as ungainly as a teenager while taller and bulkier than most adults.

She repeated the question, looking down at him. "Do you ever sleep?"

He looked suspicious for a few seconds, wondering at the apparently honest curiosity. He smiled then, but sadly, like it hurt. "Not as much as I used to. Not as much as I'd like."

Snorting, Asuka turned on her heel and left, taking care of business before heading back to her apartment. The growl built up low in her throat. Just as she suspected, a ploy for attention. Even that look on his face was calculated for maximum pity, it had to be. However, she couldn't quite help but ask...

_What the hell was that supposed to mean?_

* * *

><p>Commander Ikari stared past his interlaced fingers, examining Ryoji Kaji. "This was not part of the agreed plan."<p>

The UN inspector just shook his head, smiling. He seemed completely unconcerned about standing in Gendo's office, one of many, many places in which the Commander could commit murder and never be tried.

Instead Kaji just looked amused, almost playful. "The committee thinks things have changed. They're withholding ADAM for the foreseeable future."

Gendo refused to let any emotion show. "Double Agent."

Kaji grinned even wider. "Technically, Triple Agent."

That cracked Gendo's facade. He blinked, once. Kaji raised one hand and started ticking off fingers. "I work for the United Nations Security Council, The Human Instrumentality Committee, otherwise known as SEELE, and potentially, NERV."

Gendo gave the other man a single, deliberate nod. "Dismissed."

Kaji turned out on one heel and began to whistle. There was a lot to be done, after all. Old College Friends to reunite with, a young woman who was as much sister/daughter/friend to torment and tease... And his insurance policy.

Once Kaji left, the office went dark for a moment. A second later, the lights snapped back on. Fuyutsuki appeared, standing behind Gendo.

"Ikari."

The younger man didn't turn to speak. "Fuyutsuki."

"I am curious." He only waited long enough for Gendo to acknowledge the implied question. "We know that the Dead Sea Scrolls define the current future, but we also know the scrolls _change_. And so do our memories of the scrolls."

Both men knew that dealing with the scrolls in any capacity had an element of uncertainty. To what _degree_ was the important consideration. Both men were working from the updated sequence of events, Fuyutsuki more than Gendo. The Commander instead only saw the prophecy as a useful guideline, to be discarded when convenient. Gendo's confidence in Yui's plan did help, but as far as Fuyutsuki was concerned, _nothing_ could be taken for granted. He maintained a record of the scrolls as NERV last knew them, even if Gendo didn't care. Third Impact was behind schedule, the Sixth Angel was behind schedule. The _Fifth Angel_ didn't die like it was supposed to.

At the same time, the scrolls were maddeningly imprecise, prone to metaphor and symbolism. Despite that, they were bafflingly easy to translate, as if they were meant to be read by mankind. Sometimes they were accurate down to the date, and other times they only became clear in hindsight. Yui had made the breakthrough that made the project possible, that made _everything_ possible. Gendo was aiming to have lightning strike twice, and Fuyutsuki knew there was a better than even chance of succeeding.

What Yui found, nearly twenty years ago, was that the scrolls _predicted_, they did not determine. The scrolls were a map, not a guarantee. Sometimes, both men wondered what life would've been like, if Yui hadn't proved Second Impact as _optional._ The blood of half the world fell on SEELE's hands, but Yui wasn't wholly innocent either. The die had been cast, however, leaving Gendo and Fuyutsuki to follow the course as best they could.

Gendo shifted slightly. "What do your memories say of the Sixth?"

Fuyutsuki thought for a moment. It was hard to _forget _reading the Dead Sea Scrolls. The old man fought back a growl. The scrolls were proof that _aliens existed_; there were times he loathed the era he lived in. "Red. Just the one word. Red."

"That is what I remember." Gendo agreed, otherwise not moving. "The original, nineteen eighty-four copy referred to the Father followed by the burning star and great whale."

Fuyutsuki recited the interpretation from memory. "Metaphorically speaking, the remains of ADAM, the arrival of the Second Child and the Sixth Angel, codenamed Gaghiel."

"'Red' could apply to the Second, or Unit 02." Symbolic language was maddeningly imprecise at the best of times. _Anything_ could be made into a symbol, with myriad permutations based any involved languages. The cultural psychology involved often baffled lesser minds.

"I try to avoid assumptions about anything, Fuyutsuki." Gendo pushed out of his chair and started to close his office down for the night. "As far as I am concerned, it is better to be decisive. The journey is irrelevant, as long as we reach the destination."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "So, survive until the conditions are right, and execute."

"Precicely."

* * *

><p>Somewhere in Tokyo-3, A suitcase was hidden where no one would ever find it. Inside was the sealed embryo of ADAM, locked in stasis and completely insensate.<p>

One misshaped eye rolled around in solid Bakelite suspension. Its iris contracted.

* * *

><p>Shinji very quickly realized that Asuka liked to show off.<p>

On the way to school, her very first day, she greeted people with a pitch-perfected 'Hello', in English, with the barest hint of an accent. Her pronunciation was just one more way for her demonstrate her greatness. The same was true for that morning, very nearly scaring Shinji out of his shirt. Again. Asuka had a very nice voice, but could do things with it that just made his skin crawl.

When he turned, she smiled sweetly, singing out a lilting _'Guten Morgen!"_

He winced, echoing her greeting. Out of the corner of his eye, his girlfriend split off from her own friends and headed towards him. The world felt just about ready to collapse, right then. Asuka reached forward and up, flicking his forehead with two fingers. Some part of him actually liked that forwardness, considering he towered over her by more than a foot.

"Why so glum, Third Child? The most beautiful girl in this school, this _city_ is taking time out of her first morning at school to greet you. You should be _ecstatic_." Whatever else Asuka had been about to say stopped on her lips, not quite dead, but _waiting_. Ayumi sidled up next to her boyfriend and stood up on her toes, kissing his cheek.

That done, Ayumi turned and stared at the new girl. Asuka was about half a head taller. "Well, hello! I'm Saneda Ayumi, Shinji's_ girlfriend_."

Asuka smiled, but none of it reached her eyes. "It's a _pleasure _to meet you. I'm Asuka, Sorhyu Asuka Langley."

While not _literally_ so, Shinji very much felt as if he were stuck between a rock and a hard place. He wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but he could sense there was a conversation going on right in front of him, that he just couldn't hear. Asuka broke the stalemate first, fixing him with something like a smirk, and not quite a glare.

She tsked, shaking her head. "Still so sad in the mornings. You have your _girlfriend_ hanging off one arm, and you're still in the presence of the most beautiful, popular girl in school!" She flipped her school bag over one shoulder, planting her other hand on her hip. "You should be smiling!"

Shinji stared at her then, for a long, expectant moment. Asuka wasn't entirely wrong about her being popular, and entirely right about her being beautiful. Quite a few students were sneaking looks at her; she turned heads all morning. All the same, he blinked, glancing at Ayumi, who tucked herself under his arm. Then at Toji and Kensuke, who were swamped by groupies, while Hikari interceded as best she could. That strange gir, Rei, was surrounded by her own burgeoning clique of boys and girls. For once, the girl was engaged in conversation, awkwardly at least.

Apparently Asuka had seen the same things Shinji had. She stomped off, not quite angry, but satisfied with something. Ayumi hugged him a little tighter, smiling. "So, she's kind of incredibly cute. What's she like?"

Shinji just shook his head, watching her leave. He shrugged one shoulder. "I have _no_ idea."

* * *

><p>"She's a real classical beauty, the Second Child." Ritsuko tapped a key, paging through Asuka's personnel file, complete with front and profile photos. "A face like that can change the world."<p>

Misato sighed airily, stradling a nearby chair. Her friend always picked the best offices to work from, complete with the most comfortable chairs. The bank of windows ahead of the console opened out onto one of the MAGI data storage chambers. She kept her legs tucked up against the seat, spinning lazily. Playful office antics seemed to make the years fall away from her.

She puffed up her cheeks and sputtered before taking on a slow, easy grin. Glancing up at the photos, Misato had to agree. "The next Helen of Troy, alright. She's waiting for a man to go to war for her."

"Unfortunately for her, the man she wants, won't."

"Kaji!"

Ritsuko twisted in her seat, smiling slightly and honestly glad to see him. Misato's mood on the other hand soured visibly. The UN inspector waved and slid into the office, dropping a pair of vending machine drinks on the nearest desk. It was an old trick, an effortless treat encouraged people to reciprocate. They both knew him well enough to see right through it.

Misato wasn't too proud to ignore the snack, snatching it up with a hint of snarl. She hadn't bitten his head off; that was appreciation enough. Ritsuko thanked him, but not without the obligatory dig at his expense. "I'm impressed, Ryoji. You've developed something that resembles standards."

"Katsuragi, Akagi." He slumped into an empty chair. "Of course, our Asuka is just as ready to go to war for her man of choice. I know that all too well."

"Her reputation preceeds her, though she might be in for more than a little culture shock." Ritsuko twisted back in her seat, more than capable of working while holding a conversation. She hadn't yet met Asuka, not face to face, so she only had hearsay to go on. Behind her, Misato was starting to seethe. Kaji must've done something flirtatious, or untoward. Leaning back in her seat, Ritsuko smiled

Just like old times.

* * *

><p>Shinji wondered, sometimes, if normalcy was truly relative. His life, the past year, seemed to be one extended study in uphevals, big and small. He came to Tokyo-3, knowing that his father only wanted to use him. At the same time, he couldn't deny the chance, the opportunity to connect. Shinji knew loathing, knew hate, and he knew love. He couldn't help but love his father, at least a little. He came to Tokyo-3 for Gendo, but what he found defied his imagination. People like Misato, who saw past his fear and Exaltation, and later Rei, who in her own strange way became his friend.<p>

Along with all the unbelievable good things in his life, there was terror. The Angels, obviously, and the pain of fighting them, beyond mere physical feedback. Then the global conspiracy, the need to keep secrets. The truth about Second Impact and more. He feared most of all his own desires, having proven once that he was unstable. The fear ate at him almost every day, dragging him down.

Then Asuka entered his life, and what comfortable stability he held on to slipped away. He barely knew the girl, but already she'd stamped her personality into his mind with hot metal letters. Bossy, imperious, genius and beautiful, shrill and sweet by turns, manipulative and mercurial. She did not shake _the world_, but she sent his immediate life spinning off course, just by being there. He couldn't hate her for being who she was, but at the same time, he wished she would just calm down.

Any further thought on the matter cut itself short, after Shinji almost got run over. He snapped out of his thoughts and twisted left, then right. He wandered into the athletic field during his musings. Off to one side and rapidly pulling away was a gaggle of students stomping along the school track, dressed in heavy pads and thin training jerseys. Shinji blinked, scratching his head.

"Huh. I didn't know we had a football team..."

* * *

><p>Her life sucked, right then.<p>

The original teacher had _retired_, and they were _still_ trying to reshuffle the schedules and keep reign on the students. It had nearly been a month since the attack. Asuka figured that was what they deserved, re-opening so soon. Resuming class when they weren't ready was foolish, and she was being forced to suffer for it.

Horaki, the class representative tried her best, but apparently her own celebrity status made it impossible for anyone to take her seriously, especially without a teacher giving her legitimacy. Without that discipline or the full attention of the class, Asuka's introduction barely made a ripple. While most definitely not the full extent of her charm and grace, she _certainly_ expected more than she got.

Nothing. Aside from the leers of the terminally single, she registered as a blip.

Now, Asuka stewed on her situation while marching through the cafeteria. There had been some sort of hostage situation here, or the gymnasium. She wasn't entirely sure.

It seemed like everything she brought from Germany was useless, fell on deaf ears. No more praise, adulation for her skills. Red hair, blue eyes, the works. She was a classical beauty in _numerous_ countries- including Japan. Asuka wondered then what kind of city Tokyo-3 was, if the people there couldn't recognize something so simple as an A10-2 neural headset.

Asuka was above sighing, it was a sign of weakness. Grabbing her tray, she glanced left and right, looking for an opportunity to make her mark. All the attention she was getting wasn't the kind she wanted, not in the least. Most of it was furtive glances, little boys playing silly games talking about her. That sort of thing was just annoying, and having to eat in house only made her simmer more.

Of course, she let only let the barest hint of irritation show. Asuka liked to think of herself as a fairly talented actress, alongside her numerous other talents. The only sign at that moment was her taking a somewhat savage bite out of a roll of bread. She chewed and stewed, contemplating.

Leaning back out of line, she saw one of the _other_ reasons for her less than stellar day. Ayanami, the _favorite_.

Even now, a half-dozen students jostled around her, visibly dragging her in and around a conversation. It was fairly clear to Asuka that the blue-haired girl had _no idea_ what she was doing. She barely spoke, and when she did, she sounded like a dictionary. But somehow everyone just ate it all up. Taking another bite, she mulled it over. They weren't hanging around for the conversation, so why then...

A mental image popped into Asuka's mind, complete with a wispy, imaginary sketch of Ayanami. The gangly, off-color caricature flopped around like a marionette for a few moments before snapping back. The whole situation needed to be analysed. No one seemed at all put off by the blue hair or red eyes, which made sense if Ayanami had been a student for several years. Familiarity could get around being able to pass for an albino, she supposed.

The image of Ayanami in Asuka's mind shifted slightly. Asuka prided herself on the ability to acknowledge things objectively. Things like Ayanami being not ugly, but neither was she beautiful, at least by her standards. Sunlight was wasted on her, for example. Light seemed to just scatter through her skin and hair like thin paper. Asuka on the other hand, lit up like a bonfire. Radiant, if she did say so herself.

Still, while not unpretty or overly gorgeous, there had be a reason for the favorite's popularity. The sketchy school uniform cinched up around the image's waist and defied conventional physics to hug curves, both real and imagined. Asuka tried her hardest not to think about how the outfits were simultaneously ugly, unflattering, _and_ ridiculously fetishistic. They probably made her look like a... She didn't even have a _word_ for that.

By that point, the Real Ayanami had found a table, and was practically swamped on all sides by groupies. More boys and girls peeled out of their seats to join the crowd. Asuka had finished the roll and started in on the celery.

So, it wasn't the personality and probably not the clothes. Asuka let the thought roll around in her mind, drawing on her fairly extensive experience and not inconsiderable intellect. Meanwhile, almost in sync with her thoughts, the little sketch of Ayanami followed along, beat for beat. It smiled, capered, flounced, while Asuka's mental camera moved to and fro, framing features as they came to mind.

When the 'camera' stopped, realization began to dawn. She was about to look for confirmation when imaginary Ayanami spoke. "What would you like to drink?"

Asuka looked up from her own chest, blinking rapidly. The lunch lady minding the register asked again. "What would you like to drink?"

To the lunch lady, Asuka said "Whole milk."

To Ayanami, Asuka only had the following thought:

_Game On._

* * *

><p>Asuka found an empty table and claimed it as sovereign territory. At the other end of the cafeteria, the favorite and her horde seemed to thrum. That suited Asuka just fine, a true challenge then. She sat and ate, glancing from one side to the other. Twisting in her seat, she hiked one leg over the other, confident that no one else there could do the same move justice.<p>

Her table remained stubbornly free of company, and continued to do so well into her meal. The why though eluded her. Looking back, Ayanami seemed to have half the school hanging around her. Asuka stopped, thought for a moment, and then acknowledged the slight hyperbole. Nothing seemed to add up. Asuka was beautiful, exotic, intelligent, and more. The most important thing was that Asuka was _new_.

And nobody seemed to notice.

The bottle of milk was about two-thirds empty when she saw that no one was coming yet. Escalation was necessary. She eyed the last bit of milk, grinning slightly. Up-ending the bottle, Asuka drained in one move. She made sure to arch her back and put her best of everything forward. She lingered, effectively posed for imaginary cameras. She almost heard a shutter snap.

Again, nothing. Only a few scummy looks. Just like before.

She laced her fingers together, hiding the frown behind her hands. The last idea that came to mind was staging a catwalk show right there in the lunchroom, but her suspended sense of propriety surged back in full force. She wasn't _Misato_ after all.

Not one boy had the guts to approach her. That galled her more than anything else, more than the ogling and badly-disguised lust. None of them had the... _Testicular fortitude_ to handle her, it seemed. Oh, the girls were disgusted though, but they weren't very good at hiding it. Asuka would've welcomed scorn and derision at that point; it would've redeemed the other students in her eyes. They'd have had something resembling backbone. Instead everyone held their tongue, holding to that insufferably polite ideal.

Ayanami got up to leave, taking her entourage with her. Afterwords, the cafeteria was nearly abandoned.

The bell had rung several minutes ago. Asuka sat in her seat, still alone at her table. She had _no idea_ what to do.

* * *

><p>NERV-Berlin had called Unit 02 and the various type modules their 'Last Hurrah' before the budget crunch forced them into mothballs. Worldwide, only a handful of facilities were still active. The rest were drawn down to minimum functionality, which for most meant keeping their respective MAGI running. Berlin had been responsible for the development of 'Type' Equipment for Evangelions. China was one of the primarily manufacturing facilities, as well as armor manufacture. Nevada, informally known as the High Energy Research Branch, was eye deep in secrecy. The Antarctic base maintained vigil over the site of Second Impact.<p>

Back in Japan, the scientists and technicians followed their Evangelion, hoping NERV would have that special something they needed, a place to belong. And paying work.

At first there were simple disputes, mismatched procedures and one group adapting to the other. NERV however, had a surprisingly large blue-collar culture. The elite scientists and engineers were important, but the crew and techs were the ones who ran everything. Akagi and Ikari may have been the modern minds behind Project E, but the workers were the blood and bone.

Disputes were short lived, when Unit 02 arrived. This was why they were there, alongside the other Evangelions. The unnatural weapon to fight an unnatural war. The commanders and project leaders never indulged in the morale games, with Lieutenant Katsuragi being the main exception.

. The Ashigarashimo District had been honeycombed with transport railways and truly massive infrastructure networks. Most of it doubled as civilian utilities and the like, but nearly every rail line was served with four pairs of parallel tracks. Every railroad could serve Evangelion deployment under almost any circumstance. After an overnight stay at the Nagano dry docks, the new Evangelion arrived less than four hours later.

Most of the men and women who worked with the Evangelion had gotten used to their various idiosyncrasies. Without a pilot, Unit 00 almost always hunched over slightly, and its arms hung loose and limp. Unit 01 on the other hand looked like a classical _oni_, thanks to its helmet and proper, toothy face. Most everyone agreed however that Shogoki _felt_ restrained, a bound demon. Unit 02 however, was different.

They couldn't help but think of an old war god. From the side, Unit 02's helmet looked almost like the ones worn by Hoplites. Mostly around the crown of the head and brow. Many of the original German crew had to point out where the real eyes were. The green lenses, while useful sensors, weren't. The red, black and orange was striking, iconic, just like its pilot. She had a good reason to take pride in her Evangelion, as it was the true production model, built and ready for combat.

Asuka herself was different. In Germany and later America, she was something of an industry darling. For nearly a decade, the Second Child was the _only_ person ever to have successfully synchronized with an Evangelion. Beyond that, she built on the theories of Ikari Yui and her mother, pushing NERV's understanding of the AT field higher and farther. Ritsuko still wanted to meet with the girl just for that. The lead engineers from Berlin just bit their cheeks and tried not to laugh.

The Second Child had lived her life in the center of attention. People adored her, treating her better than a mascot but almost never an equal. It was all shallow, reflexive praise. Very few people knew Asuka as anything more than the pilot. Kaji was the husband of her fantasy, but probably the closest thing she ever had to a real father. Misato was the big sister, though that relationship had been soured by distance, age and time. The people along with Asuka... They were _hers_, but they wree a drop in the bucket compared to Tokyo-3's still massive population.

* * *

><p>The lack of pedestrian traffic was frustrating. At that point, Asuka needed every reason she could find to <em>not<em> commit justifiable homicide. The remainder of her school day dragged on and on and _on_. Nothing broke the monotony, not even a pop quiz. She'd have happily ground away at high school level physics, if it made time move faster.

But nothing saved her from subjective time dilation. Asuka suffered, and began to compile a list of despots she would prefer to stomp flat with her Evangelion. If she _had_ to kill someone, it may as well be someone who deserved it. Her pleasant, bloody fantasies were marred however, by one nagging little detail some half dozen yards behind her.

"Why are you following me!?"

The favorite, Ayanami, stopped mid-step. Almost moving made her look more alive, but she only had the barest hint of an expression. Still a living fetish, still too much like a _doll_. The girl blinked once. She wanted to say something, Asuka could see that plain as day, even if Ayanami was hard to read. The redhead folded her arms around her chest and started to tap her foot. The girl stopped and started while Asuka waited.

An answer finally came after an aggravatingly long lull. "I live with Lieutenant Katsuragi and Pilot Ikari."

* * *

><p>They walked along in silence. Asuka simmered visibly, while Ayanami wisely trailed behind. The Second stomped, boiled and fumed, striding forward with her hands clenched at her sides. She wasn't <em>quite <em>raging_, _but incredibly close to it. Stalking up the stairs, Asuka made her way over to her apartment. Ayanami stopped one door over. Before Asuka could begin the end of her horrible first day, the favorite spoke up.

"Why are you angry?"

Asuka went incandescent, whirling on the other girl and drawing in a massive breath. Every slight, injustice, awful thing and who knew what else flashed in her mind. Fury built itself up into fiery towers on a foundation of irritation and vitriol. Asuka ran out of words, ran out of ways to describe how angry she was. Instead all she could do was stare at the favorite, stare and huff and puff, ready to wake the whole neighborhood if she had to.

But then, as quick as it came, the rage died. It died in the face of that simple question. All of her intelligence, experience and cunning proved itself useless, leaving her with one inescapable conclusion. At the end of the day, Asuka had no idea why she was angry. Ragged breathing was the only answer Ayanami got that night. The First Child opened the door to her home and was welcomed with loud and happy voices.

Asuka stood alone, outside of her empty apartment.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Whew.


	26. Schadenfreude

_Then Leothric said: "What is Tharagavverug's food?"_

_And the magician of Allathurion said: "His food is men._

- Exerpt from _The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth_

* * *

><p>Misato shuffled out of her room at eight in the morning, roused by realizing she had more blood than alcohol in her veins. Beholden to the Yebisu gods, the off-duty lieutenant zombie-shuffled her way through her morning routine. She found Shinji siting cross-legged on the veranda, basking in the morning sun. She padded out to join him, bare toes curling against the cool tile. Idly, she worked a toothbrush with one hand, while the other other fussed with bed-head.<p>

He didn't turn to look at her, but by the line of his shoulders, she could tell he was mostly relaxed. "Misato-san."

She talked around the toothbrush, not at all concerned about her appearance. "Yeff, FFhinfi-Fhun?"

He was quiet for a moment. "That scar... How do you feel about it?"

That brought her up short. She spat out her mouthful of paste-suds into a nearby planter, wiping the toothbrush on some leaves. Her hand wandered to her chest, picking at the mark through her shirt. The skin was rough and well-healed, but sometimes even fine silk caught on it.

It took Misato a few seconds to come up with an answer. "I try not to let it bother me." She looked down and off to the side, staring at the floor. She smiled though, small and sad. "I was mute for years, after Second Impact. I think I would've been okay with just the scar, if I could've had that time back."

She laid her forearms on the veranda railing, leaning into it. There wasn't any need to look over, she knew he was listening. "At first I hated it. It was ugly after all. Boys at college didn't want to date damaged goods. Couldn't go the pool or beach." She turned, tossing him a more direct, wan smile. "Still not built for one-piece swimsuits, after all."

That got a blush out of her charge, but only a small one. He seemed more focused than normal. Misato had to admit, she liked it. She laughed a bit more, wincing. "Ah, all of that sound really superficial, doesn't it? I don't care_ just_ about my looks, but back then not as many things seemed to matter." Back then her drive for revenge was only smouldering, pushing her to excel.

"Then I met Kaji." She snorted, more at the nostalgia than anything. Shinji was surprisingly easy to talk to, she felt no fear or judgement. "I was really only with one man during college, then nobody else. Granted at times Kaji and I..." It took her a few moments to find the words, and even then, they weren't quite right. "We acted like we were more than just two people, like we were making up for something."

She let out a long sigh, sagging against the rails. Something seemed to drain out of her then, her sense of energy and passion. She spoke, but her words lacked venom. "He's a creep, and I want nothing to do with him. Everything else is just good, bitter memories."

"Oh." Shinji sat up then, slowly towering above her.

She turned to face him, but almost twisted into his were so close together, Misato had to tilt her head back just to look him in the eye. Stepping forward that last little distance, wrapping his arms around her. She felt his hands slip under the hem of her shirt, brushing against the small of her back. She didn't say anything. Instead, Misato very nearly lost her footing, suddenly being surrounded by warmth. It felt like hugging a solid sunbeam. Misato buried her nose into his collarbone, taking a deep breath and letting her eyes drift closed.

He gave her a final, tight squeeze before letting her loose. Misato reached up and ruffled his hair with one hand, before lifting her arms up and hooking her wrists around the back of his neck. "What was that for?"

Shinji let his arms hang loose around her hips. Smiling, he just gave her a little shrug. "I just wanted to thank you."

She just cocked her head to one side, oblivious to how her hair stuck up all over.

He shrugged again, but didn't look away. "For everything. Taking me in, staying with me at night, protecting me, listening. Being my best friend."

Flushed, and happier than ever in recent memory, it took Misato a second to find her voice. Right then, everything told her to clamp on to him and never let go. She pushed that aside, though not completely. Nothing could stop her blinding smile though, it very nearly stopped his heart.

"You're too cute to scream your throat out every night, or have bags under your eyes every day, Shin-chan. Besides, you're quite the hot one now." She twisted out of his grip and smirked, rolling her hips as she walked back inside. Shinji just stood there, slack, completely blindsided by her reversal. She got the last word, tossing it over her shoulder along with a wink. "I have no compunctions whatsoever about putting my hands all over such a sexy body."

"M-Misato!"

* * *

><p>Asuka grabbed her fourth pillow and wrapped it around her head. The master bedroom had been bigger than her whole dorm, and the sliding glass door out onto the patio was a great perk... If she had curtains. She didn't, and sunrise decided to camp out right outside her window. She glared at her alarm clock, blinking twelve o'clock over and over. Right, she hadn't gotten around to setting it up.<p>

Pushing up and out of the tangled bedding, the girl stared at the sun. Stupid apartment for not facing north or south. Stupid city for not blocking the light. Stupid country for flooding. Stupid axial tilt. Stupid stupid _Second Impact_.

Stupid neighbors too. They were being quiet, but Asuka could hear them just the same. Misato's voice was distinctive. It was way too early for any sort of talking, especially on a Saturday morning. Finally though, after what seemed like an eternity, the noise died down, and the sun got lost behind some clouds. Asuka shoved her head back under the covers and tried to get back to sleep.

Then the screaming started.

That wasn't 'eek a mouse' scream, or Misato's 'morning beer' scream. That was like 'combat drill at two AM' scream. That was _trouble _screaming. Adrenaline flooded Asuka's veins, scouring away the early morning fog. Alert and primed, she lashed out at one of her half-unpacked boxes and grabbed the nearest bit of clothing she could find. Decency assured, Asuka very nearly knocked the balcony door off its tracks and left it to bounce behind her.

She vaulted the divider between their patios, not at all worried about the seven-plus story drop. Her feet slapped hard into the veranda tile. She dashed inside Misato's apartment, zeroing in on the scream. Her toes dug into the carpet, turning on one foot. The bathroom door had been shatered to splinters, and she could see the edges of a massive shadow just inside.

Huffing and puffing, Asuka loomed in the doorway with her fists clenched and weight set just so. She was ready, willing and able to take on any challenge, or so she thought. Instead, the only thing she could do was scream.

"What the _hell_ is going on in here?!"

* * *

><p>Yawning, Misato plodded back inside towards the bathroom. She was lucky she brushed her teeth first; Shinji hadn't mentioned her lack of shower. Getting her three charges to cooperate was not going to be easy, but Misato was confident she could get the pilots to at least tolerate each other... Rei... Misato had no idea how Rei was going to handle Asuka.<p>

Still, it wasn't all bad. Asuka seemed to cool down, once she realized the Third Child would listen to instruction without much prompting, and a few stern glares from Misato cut off any tirades before they could get into full gear. All in all it was a successful end to a very stressful day.

Thinking back to the Asuka-Shinji issue, Misato hummed, idly brushing her hair. The boy wouldn't be much of a problem. Which was a problem in and of itself. He usually had no drive or reason to speak up for himself, even in the face of getting punched. It took men with guns shooting at him and his friends to even get him to act. Which wasn't really unexpected, but was further proof of how passive he was. Asuka, given an inch, would grind anyone into the dirt over a thousand miles of volcanic glass.

Fumbling for the water heater controls, she set the machine up before unbuttoning her night shirt. When she glanced back at the mirror, every train of thought derailed, catastrophically.

Misato screamed, and in a dramatic reversal, Shinji dashed to the rescue. Unfortunately for Misato's bathroom door, he lead with his fists. The glass and wood frame exploded, perforating the far wall with shrapnel. But there were no enemies to face, a fact that confused him; Misato wasn't the sort of person to shriek at a cougar, let alone a mouse. Instead, he found Misato alone, half-naked in preparation for a morning bath and staring dumbly at her reflection. She rounded on Shinji, pointing at him. Then at the mirror, then back at him, screaming with each turn.

Shinji relaxed by a fraction, but her panic was quickly damaging his calm. Not that he had much calm to start with. His face clouded up and he prepared a long-litany of apologies, as was his custom. His own train of thought was terminally derailed when he was suddenly engulfed in a hug against bare, magnificent breasts, followed by a kiss that quite literally made his house-slippers explode. Lifted bodily out of the ruined footwear, he was crushed into the nearest wall and further kissed senseless, so much so that lack of air grayed the edges of his vision.

Flushed, she lingered, before pulling away with a soft, moist pop. Licking her swollen lips, Misato's euphoria hazed expression gave way to a fleeting. flushed look of embarrassment, That was followed by pure, rich laughter. Shinji was at this point mostly catatonic, but had the presence of mind to utter in total deadpan; "I made your rib grow back too."

Then, Misato _did _kiss him unconscious. The last thing he remembered was a torrent of red, and the increasingly shrill screams of a young girl demanding to know what the hell was going on.

* * *

><p>Misato's living room couch was surprisingly comfortable, despite the fact that even before he grew... <em>up<em>, his legs dangled off one end. Shinji couldn't remember the last time he felt sore, not from something so mundane as sleeping with a crooked neck. Still, waking up from a dream like _that_ would put anyone in a good mood. No screaming nightmare images and terrible, impossible wars. Just Misato and... Well, the red crawling up his neck said everything that needed to be said.

Then Shinji turned and saw the new pilot, Asuka, cooling her heels at the kitchen table, sitting in the one of the chairs he made by hand. With one elbow planted on the table and her cheek braced in that hand, she just stared right at him, dry, flat and level.

"No, your commanding officer really _did_ stick her tongue down your throat." She very deliberately tapped her cheekbone with a finger. "_Twice_."

Misato took that as her cue, stepping out over the remains of the bathroom door, wrapped up in a dark, fluffy towel and pouting audibly. She offered Shinji a winsome smile, rolling her hips just so and still very much dripping wet.

Turning back to Asuka, she pouted harder. "Take all the fun out of it, why don't you."

Asuka twisted in her seat, snarling and trying in vain to keep her too-short tanktop down where it belonged. Her lack of full dress did nothing about her ability to scream. "That _is not fun!"_

The older woman just smiled impishly, utterly unfazed. As it turned out, Asuka's reflexive grasp for decency ended up backfiring, leaving her with the previously mentioned tanktop and thin underwear. And once the dust settled, Misato made her stay put and refused to give her a robe or anything, even after she helped the other woman clean up _and _haul the bigger pilot into the couch.

Indignation and propriety bounced off of Misato's panoply. The older woman wore her sexuality like a shield and sword, and wielded it well. She licked her lips and cocked her hip, grinning. "Don't knock it til you try it." .

A bead of sweat crawled down the back of Shinji's neck. That voice just kept him up at night, and Ayumi could do it too. They were colluding, that had to be it. Then he wondered for a moment how the odd word snuck into his mind, but Misato's reply switched his train of thought right back. Stuck between two beautiful coworkers, Shinji at that point felt very certain he was going to some very special sort of hell meant for the perversely fortunate.

"C'mon. Shinji, help me out here?"

Pleading and playful, Misato roped him into her zany scheme with almost no effort. Half-a-dozen voices in his head told him that everything would end in tears, but he nodded, holding perfectly still. How could he not? She had _asked_. Misato sidled up next to him, still glowing, shiny-wet and clad in a towel that was far too vertically narrow for what she was doing to it. For it. He wanted to be that towel.

"If you're going for say, the big three, well, Shinji fits two so far. Tall? Definitely. And solidly built, too." She laid her head against the front of his shoulder, letting her eyes close and practically melting into him. "Shinji-kun is most definitely not dark. Let's go with light... on his feet."

Asuka wasn't having any of it, refusing to compromise. Still, she squirmed in her seat and tried to fight down the red creeping up her cheeks. Misato must've been _blind_, and tasteless. "Please, he's such a thickhead!"

Katsuragi didn't miss a beat, still grinning. "It's all in how he _uses _it."

Sputtering, Asuka very nearly choked on her tongue. "U-Uses _what?_" She stopped then for a split second, blinking rapidly. "That's- I don't even-"

Misato just winked, and anything else Asuka wanted to say died in her throat. It was basic vamping, and even though Shinji knew Misato was playing, he still practically vibrated in place. Twisting languidly, Misato draped one arm around his shoulders, while her other hand cupped his jaw. "Now, Shinji... Shinji, he's definitely handsome, don't you think? A girl could get lost in his eyes if they're not careful."

"Fine! So he's easy on the eyes! This time, Asuka just huffed crossing her arms over her chest ignored the bait. Misato would have try a lot harder to get a rise out of Asuka Langley Sorhyu. Instead she shot back, saying Misato should just get lost in the meatstick's mouth. The Third somehow turning redder, and Misato's slow grin only made her realize how badly she stepped in it, just then.

The older woman let the verbal slip drop with deafening silence, only making sure to give the girl a long teasing look that lingered. Asuka squirmed in her seat while her cheeks rapidly matched her hair. All was fair in love, war and childish banter, and Misato wasn't going to let such a golden opportunity slip away. Shinji by that point could just _feel_ how bad the situation was getting, but was paralyzed, unable to do more than stand by. Misato reaching up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek did a great job of reassuring him, but it also sent Shinji shaking even harder.

His best-friend/guardian/tormentor was firing on all cylinders. Meanwhile Asuka's mouth worked, but no sound came out. "All told... I'd have to say Shinji is hotter than Kaji, hands down. He may not have that roguish charm, but he is by far a _much _better kisser."

A sound not unlike water boiling in a kettle fought its way past Asuka's teeth and lips, and Shinji could hear her teeth grinding from across the room, just like he could hear Misato's heartbeat. The girl's eyes were bright and _furious_. Through all of this, Asuka's face was just getting redder and redder. She'd hooked her calves around the legs of the chair, the wood began to creak audibly. Fury and righteous indignation boiled up off her head and shoulders in thick waves.

Now it was time to go in for the kill. Misato shifted, laughing and catching Shinji's hands with her own. Twisting around, she fit herself against him like a spoon and leaned back. Just as she planned, his hand's shot up and wrapped around her ribs, catching her easily. Shinji choked, caught between a blinding grin or wracking sob. It was _funny_, it was _terrible_, and a whole host of other things besides.

"You know, Shinji's a musician? A cellist." She arched her back and coaxed his hands to move up higher. Asuka's eyes snapped up and down, tracking every move. Misato shivered, giggling. "His technique is amazing, you know?" She stopped to purr, wriggling just so. Asuka watched Misato's throat jump, while Shinji _felt_ the hum through her back. "...Magic fingers."

Between the touching and _voice_ and everything, Shinji just about had enough. His legs gave out from under him, dropping him bodily into one of the living room chairs. Mistao followed, literally lifted up and down landing in his lap with a playful squeal. The apartment fell almost completely silent, save for the sound of breathing. It dragged on for a long, agonizing moment.

Then, Misato wiggled, planting her weight all the more firmly. "Ahh, he makes a great cushion too, here or in bed."

The last straw snapped. Asuka slammed her palms into the table and stood up so fast, the chair flew back and dented the hardwood counter behind her. The cabinet door cracked clean in half, leaving the chair to hang in the cupboard by one leg. A hanging picture frame slanted off angle. Her scream knocked it clear off the wall.

"You're _all just a bunch of FUCKING PERVERTS!"_

* * *

><p>Misato buried her head in Shinji's chest, laughing into him without a care in the world. She had no idea what it did to her towel. Shinji had far too many ideas. Rei peeked out from the hallway, hair hanging loose and still in her nightshirt.<p>

She looked at the ruins in the kitchen and damaged bathroom door. "Why was Pilot Sorhyu screaming about perverts?"

Then, she turned to see Misato, still giggling and carousing in Shinij's lap. "Ah."

* * *

><p>About five minutes later, the apartment door slid open, and Asuka stepped in. She found Misato in the kitchen, still in that fluffy towel with a beer in hand. The older woman toasted the younger, smiling.<p>

Asuka only had just one question, the rage drained out of her, leaving only curiousity. "_Why_ were you sticking your tongue down his throat?"

Misato just winked and stole the last word. "_Twice_."

* * *

><p>For most of the world, Saturday morning was a time to be lazy. Students in Japan were raised with the expectation that they would spend half a day at school, leaving Sunday to be their one day free. Finding a teenager out of bed before dawn was a rarity. For the devout and observant, faith was enough. Especially if one had tangible proof to hold to. For the rest, friendship and socializing worked just as well.<p>

The little shrine on the edges Tokyo-3 grew more stately and robust with each passing day. Incense and offerings burned every morning at sunrise, and those children who followed the Shinto tradition attempted the practices as best they were able. To them, sincerity was worth more than accuracy. Perfection came later, with experience and wisdom. For now, being there to do it was enough.

That day though, something was different. Someone had been to the shrine before even the earliest of the normal group. The simple padlock had been bypassed; the wood around the lock had been broken. Inside, the inner shrine had been defiled, for lack of a better term. Pig's blood marred every surface, and the slaughtered carcass laid on the ruined, hand-woven mats.

Almost immediately, the little group of worshipers fractured, more than a few breaking ties right then and there. They went back to their beds and went back to normal life. Most of them already were skirting the lines of the NERV gag order. Their parents had been paid handsomely for their silence. Some had been paid off twice so far, thanks to Ikari's earlier rampage.

Others raged, looking for someone to blame. They weren't particularly secretive, anyone could've followed them. They rapidly ran out of people to blame, save themselves or eachother. There was no guideline or code of conduct, and very little to aspire to, other than the smattering of knowledge they all had about the shrine and what it stood for.

Those that stayed started to clean up. Faith was part of that, not so much in _gods_ as the belief that they weren't crazy, that they _did_ see Ikari Shinji fight eight men with his bare hands, get shot three times and then become a tower of fiery sunlight. They believed that Ayanami Rei could _float_, and stop bullets in mid air. The greater driving force though, was _respect_. They owed it, owed the people who saved them something. The shrine gave them a place, and it gave them direction.

One question lingered, though. A very simple one.

_Who did it?_

* * *

><p>Even after consolidating, or the flensing as some people called it, NERV was still on a shoestring budget. Ritsuko's idyllic life of unlimited funds for Evangelion and Exalted research had been cut tragically short. The legions of scientists and engineers hadn't vanished, they simply were assigned on far more important projects. Such projects included maintianing combat readiness and developing efficient and, more importantly, cheaper ways to do so. Because the organization was flexible and compartmentalized, whole sections and facilities were deactivated, conserving and redirecting vital resources.<p>

At that moment, Ritsuko was doing her best to distract herself, from both her slashed budget, and Gendo's final goal.

Reshuffling the budget forced Ritsuko to pursue her own, more private, research during her off hours. At the moment, she was killing time before the first three-pilot synchronization test. Maya was coming well into her own, and was handling it beautifully. Ritsuko bent back over her desk, intent on the latest innovation from Aida. The ritual magic wasn't _quite_ acausal, but it was were very, very close. The procedures themselves were unfailingly consistent when successfully performed, with clearly defined variables that could be adjusted. Ink mixtures, the type of brush used, almost anything. Almost every experiment seemed to reveal more and more, proving her hypothesis. Ritsuko couldn't see or feel the blinding, beaming smile on her face, or how years of stress and self-loathing seemed to peel away from her.

It was magic, and it was science.

AT field theory was easy, by comparison. Within the region of altered space, physical law became a _suggestion_, and the only relevant, measurable traits existed outside the field. Ritsuko was looking forward to meeting Asuka properly, considering the girl's thesis on AT field application was one of the greatest breakthroughs in recent memory. The development of better soul-perception technology, combined with Asuka's work, was set to push AT research to the next level.

She kicked back in her chair, throwing her arms back and relishing the long series of crackling pops. Her poor spine had been so abused the past ten years. Maybe she would take Misato up on that offer of a massage.

Shaking her head, Ritsuko glanced at the clock. "Misato... You're late again."

Humming to herself, she shrugged, allowing herself to induldge in the schedule slip. She scribbled out a few notes on a nearby scrap of paper, framing out some calculations. Each procedure had a certain time requirement. Kensuke's pencil trick, for example, required around ten days. Scanning his results, she nodded, adding in a few more numbers to her own growing equation. As far as math went it was simple, time required divided by projected days. There was a minimum amount of time required per day, then variables for not requiring sustained work...

Ritusko blinked, staring at her result. Five hours a day at minimum, ten days of work. Work fewer days if more time spent per day. Formula, _Formulas._ She kicked off in her chair towards the folder full of known procedures. Grabbing one, she started scribbling again. She rewrote the procedure, the _formula_, substituting nouns and ingredients for simple mathematic variables. Follow the procedure, get a result. She turned back to her time estimate equation. Follow the formula, get an answer.

She wondered then, about the nature of her own mind and the source of answers. "...Don't tell me that math has been magic for all recorded human history."

* * *

><p>Misato slammed the empty can down into the table with enough force to shake the condensation off. The lieutenant was blushing, euphoric and <em>giddy<em>. Asuka, on the otherhand, had changed into her school uniform, mostly because they were the only clothes properly hung up in her apartment. They were also the most familiar, stable thing in her life at that moment. A habit only a day old. The only better option would've been Kaji.

Her rage had died out quickly, but curiosity tinged with scandal made her sound unsure. "You're not actually... you know... with him, are you?"

The other woman leaned on the table with one elbow, still in that towel. She sat astride in the dining room chair with one thigh folded over the other and cradling her cheek in one hand. Her other hand played with a bit of water, lazy circles around the table with a finger. "No. I'm not having sex with Shinji. I sleep in the same bed as him when he has really bad nightmares, but I'm not doing anything inappropriate with him."

"Not doing anything!? Look at yourself, woman!" Asuka slammed her hands into the table, knocking the empty can over. She knew Misato well enough, but _this_... "I can believe you about not having _sex_, but every _single _thing you did was _inappropriate_!"

She started ticking off points, running down the list of offenses. Misato meanwhile just stared, one eyebrow rising with each new accusation. "Asuka, did you just call me 'woman'?"

Asuka didn't miss a beat. "It seemed appropriate! Don't change the subject!"

Leaning over, the older woman shook her head and opened the fridge, before grabbing another beer. She popped the top and took a swig. Asuka meanwhile did her best to tower over her, braced against the table. Misato however was impressed, In a roundabout way. It was the first time Asuka ever seemed to care about anyone other in her self. Better to say it was a case of incidental altrusim.

Of course, Misato couldn't just _say _that, at least not right then. "Ah, being fifteen and omniscient. I remember that. Wait, nope! I was in a coma." Quips were far more fun in any event.

"Fourteen! Misato, this... You..." Words failed her. Asuka's hands were clenched tight enough to make her tendons creak audibly. It was definitely indignation, but not quite yet fully righteous, self or otherwise.

Spinning the can with her fingers, Misato decided to get things moving forward. "You want the short version or the long version?" She downed it in one gulp while Asuka composed herself. She had enough time to grab another can.

Asuka threw her hands up, hoping someone, anyone would answer. Heaven seemed just as likely to. Misato was set to draw it all out. "Please! By all means justify explicit molestation of a minor!"

Now it was Misato's turn to start ticking off points. She leaned forward on the table and counted. Asuka crossed her arms over her chest and glared. "First off, I wasn't molesting him. I was flirting with him, which is old hat, and I was messing with you. Second, he's not a minor. Age of consent in Japan is 13."

"Sure! But you're _twice his age!"_ A detail she tacitly ignored while around Kaji.

Misato froze mid-swallow, blinking once. The beer seemed to go sour in her mouth. "Which...yeah. Okay, That was kind of wrong, but it's just how we are."

That didn't sit very well with Asuka, to say the least. Considering that Ikari had a _girlfriend,_ it was a very strange, screwy thing. A thirty year old woman flirting, aggressively, with a boy literally half her age... Well, Misato's admitance was enough, for now. It mollified her, but only just. She watched Misato, staring openly and expectantly. More answers had better be coming.

She finished the can, hoping to wash away the bad taste in her mouth. "So, okay. I should start at the beginning." Misato sighed, rubbing her eyes. The problems this would cause were nothing compared to any long-term damage. Team cohesion was paramount. "You've signed all the NDAs, right, Asuka?"

Asuka snorted, recrossing her arms and glared past her nose at the other woman. The word 'Imperial' came to Misato's mind. Asuka would've fit in far better as a self-declared God-Emperor of the old world. She had the eyes for it, the whole face, she needed five or ten years for the fully realized effect.

To Misato's question, she just said "Of course."

Fighting with the last dregs in the can, Misato quashed the last bit of lingering doubt. Reluctance only hurt her ability to interact with Asuka. Better to just be straight forward. She tossed it over her shoulder, expertly dropping it into the recycling bin behind her. Asuka had no patience for theatrics either. Misato dredged up her decorum, along with the irrepressible bearing and no-nonsense confidence. That manic, functional determination was her reputation.

Asuka as an observer was struck by the transformation. Misato _changed_ before her eyes, suddenly immaculately poised and radiating discipline. She somehow managed to make a too-small towel and tangled, unbrushed hair look dignified. Misato had become respectable, respect _incarnate_, and Asuka was suddenly reminded why she looked up to this woman, despite all her aggravating quirks. That, and her tactical accumen.

She found herself leaning in, ready to hang on Misato's every word. "Okay. Shinji has superpowers."

And then all that respect, lost in an instant. "Bullshit."

"Nope. Seriously." Misato's lips quirked up, but only a little. No need to backslide, or antagonize Asuka further. She nudged past the pilot to get at the fridge once more, pulling out another can of Yebisu. After a qiuck thought, she pulled out a second. Popping the tops on both cans, she pushed one into Asuka's hands. The cold shocked her back into action.

She stared at the beer, then at Misato. "What am I supposed to do with this?!"

It was a risk, blatently ignoring her, but Misato pushed on. "So...lessee...Ritz could give you a better rundown, but Shinji has magical powers. Literally, magical powers."

"Magic." Asuka knew Misato well enough to not just _disbelieve_ out of hand, but it was still... She would've accepted something more plausible, like angelic contamination, experimental AT field enhancements, _anything_ rooted in science... But _Magic?_ _Seriously_?

Again Misato simply had to toast Asuka. "Yep. He can lift me over his head with one hand, and can go for about...week or so without sleep, too. Also, he can heal."

The only thing Asuka could do in response to that was stare. The lieutenant's alcohol tolerance was legendary, but also to a degree overexaggerated. Asuka knew her well enough to know that Misato, while prone to excess, just... _didn't_ get drunk. At least not to the point of delusion.

She had to narrow down the possible explainations. "Misato... what.. How many have you had?"

"Beers? Three." Misato plucked the mostly-cold can out of Asuka's hand and downed it in one go. "Four."

Misato tossed the latest pair of empties into the bin before grabbing the fifth can of that morning. Asuka was at a loss. Her jaw worked, but she had gone past anger and throwing a tantrum into an almost pure state of confusion.

"You have got to know it takes more than four beers to make me drunk. You lived with me, remember?" The can lasted no longer than all the others, joining them in the bin. "So, this morning. You want to know why I stuck my tongue down his throat."

The barest possibility of an explaination snapped Asuka out of her fugue. It was a good trait, as far as Misato could see; Asuka was actually very quick-witted and surprisingly tough to keep off balance. She recovered quite easily, but tended to fold when someone poked her with impropriety. Even back in Germany and America, Asuka was a prude.

Such poking was also a sure-fire way of getting her angry again, though this time she only simmered. Asuka all but growled out her demand. "I'm hoping for a better answer than 'magic'."

Misato opened her mouth to answer, but stopped. She tried again, and stopped once more. Tapping one finger against the table, she hummed, thinking. Asuka started to boil. "Yeah, this is a tricky one."

She kept tapping. Asuka's eyebrow started twitching in time with her finger. "Okay. So. First off. Why would _you _kiss a guy?"

"I... Uhm... " No one had ever just _asked _her that before. No one _should have_, such things were private. Her pride demanded an answer. "...Because I liked him?"

It was that knowing, playful, insufferable tone. It was the damn 'big sister' tone. "That's a bullshit response, Asuka." It would've rung less true if Misato had just said it clinically, like a therapist or something. Asuka felt eight years old when Misato talked like that.

She let that sink in for a bit, before getting up and heading towards her room. Asuka followed without question or permission. Misato let the towel fall off her body before even getting halfway there, kicking it into the laundry room on the way. The redhead blushed up to the roots, more at the impropriety than anything else. Nudity at this point just wasn't enough to faze her.

Misato frowned and tugged at her hair. She'd let it sit around wet too long and hadn't brushed it at all that morning. She started to get dressed, not at all worried about the open door or girl. Asuka hovered in one corner, pointedly looking away. Stubborn was the word of the day, it seemed. She clung to any shred of decorum she could, even though Misato seeme dead-set on destroying it with extreme prejudice.

Hiking up the skirt around her thighs, Misato picked up where she left off. "Anyway, I kissed him because he did something _really good_ for me." Her hands wandered just below her breasts. "And I automatically did that because I wanted to do something good for _him_. Which wasn't a good idea. In retrospect."

Asuka kept her eyes off the other woman, but that was easier said than done. There were mirrors _everywhere_ in that room. She didn't want to watch just anyone get dressed. That was too intimate, and just wasn't right. Japanese people were wierd. _Misato_ was wierd.

She shook her head and fought off the discomfort. "...Alright. What about _the rest of that stuff!?_ I can buy that as flirting, but you're still _twice his age_."

Skirt, socks, sweater, jacket... She needed her beret... There were times Misato regretted declaring her room a 'No Shinji Zone'. She checked her drawers and dresser, and found a hairbrush stowed in the bedroom minifridge. She stared at it for a bit, wondering just how that happened.

It ended up in the garbage, and Misato doubled back for yet another can of beer. She popped the top with one hand and took as sip. "...yeah, I forgot. Teenager and therefor really literal. Everything has to be exactly what it looks like."

"I don't even know what it looks like!" The pilot threw her hands up in the air, hoping for someone, _something_ to start making sense.

"...You... You honestly don't think you did anything really wrong. You're his _commanding officer_. You're _my_ commanding officer!" Asuka blinked once, twice, and then it dawned on her. This thirty-year-old woman was more of a teenager than _she was_. There was something unmistakably _wrong with that_.

Misato just grinned and leaned on her vanity. The girl on the other hand scowled, piqued for a moment. Women who looked as good as Misato shouldn't have been allowed in the military; it made the rest of them look bad. Asuka ignored the fact that _she_ looked just as good.

"And _you_ are going to get a boyfriend by clubbing them over the head and dragging them back to the cave." She finished the can off and almost left it behind, but Shinji had trained her too well. When she headed back into the living room, Asuka and the can came with her. "But that's you, not me. I fucked up."

If things were different, Asuka would've been impressed. Misato set up to toss the can from the living room, through the open counter and into the kitchen. It landed with a hollow clank. Instead though, she just huffed, folding her arms over her chest. "You don't sound at all upset... And you know we have a sync test today."

Misato just gave her a look that said 'really?, I hadn't noticed.' Again, the older woman proved to be more of a teenager than Asuka. She spied her beret sitting on the back of the couch, snapping it up with one hand.

But first she needed a hairbrush that wasn't ruined. She started casting around for one, distractedly. "Actually, I _am_ upset. Shinji has intimacy issues. Then again, flirting with him and getting a girlfriend is helping."

"Intimacy issue? Misato, he was _ready to bolt_. You weren't even looking at him!" Asuka on the other hand had an amazing view; she hadn't thought it possible for someone to go through that many emotional states in such a short span of time.

"Issues." Misato corrected. If Asuka wanted serious commanding officer, She would gladly oblige. She dropped any hint of her playful tone, leaving the uncompromising professional behind. "He has _issues_, in he gets very embarrassed but calms down. Which is a sight better than he was when he first came here."

She grinned, having found a hairbrush on one of the end tables. Plopping down in the nearest chair, she threw one leg over the other and started to detangle. "And now we're running in circles, Asuka. So what other questions do you have while we're sitting here?"

At that point, Asuka finally ran out of steam. Misato had proven yet again to be the only person who could simply _outlast_ her. Everyone else, even Kaji, eventually submitted when she started in on them.

If she couldn't browbeat Misato, she could at least see how far the joke went. "How about 'let's see proof that Ikari has magic superpowers.'"

"Really? Okay. Just promise not to yell at him or shit." She turned and shouted back into the apartment.

"Fine."

It didn't take long for Shinji to appear. He stepped out of the bathroom dressed in his school uniform, same as almost every other day. His hair was still wet. Misato blinked once, staring. It was pretty obvious, but she had to ask, if for no other reason. "Where've you been?"

The boy just grunted. "Cold shower."

The flirtatious grin came back in force, along with teasing, naughty Misato. She still had it. "Did you hear what we discussed?"

Shinji didn't answer directly, just grunting again and waving his hand as if to say 'yeah, yeah.' Misato frowned, but wasn't quite sure what to do about the boy's sudden change in mood. Apparently he really didn't like cold showers. Rei peered out from the hallway again, watching silently.

Setting that aside, she laid everything out. "Asuka needs a demonstration," she waved at her own forehead, glancing up at Shinji's brow.

Shinji frowned, but the rest of his look was unreadable. He started looking around for something, anything worth demonstrating with. Thaumaturgy would take too long and he was right to assume Sorhyu had no patience whatsoever. Spying a takeout menu, he plucked it out of a stack of junk mail and handed it to the other pilot. She spat, asking what she was supposed to do with it. He wanted her to confirm it wasn't rigged, just an ordinary piece of paper.

Scowling again, she did so, shoving the paper back into his hands when she was satisified. She hadn't wasted any time. Shinji sighed, focusing on the piece of paper, and that internal wellspring. Go down deep enough, and the fundamentals were the same for nearly any sort of creative project, or construction. He'd dabbled in jewelry making, and the base concepts were the same as for origami. Crease, overlap, inset and the like.

The cheap takeout menu became, of all things, a papercraft crane. Archetypical, iconic almost. Asuka wasn't impressed. "You're wasting my time with this? Misato, are you _sure_ you're medically fit for duty?"

The older woman just laughed it off, but gave Shinij a look that very clearly told him to _step up_. Rei stared at him too, but at least she never judged. Still, expectations were mounting. Sweat began to build up on the back of his neck, and right then, Shinji wanted to do nothing but turn back the clock another thirty minutes. The kiss and flirting were... okay, but the rest of it he could've done without.

The redhead however was rapidly losing patience, hands on her hips and leaning forward. He outweighed her by at least three times and was nearly a foot taller, but she managed to get in his face all the same. "Are you going to do something? Anything? Today preferably."

Misato shot the girl a quick glare. "Asuka, you promised."

Petulant and aggravated, Asuka sounded every inch the teenager she was. She shruged, sighing. "I know, but he still hasn't _done_ anything." She turned back to Shinji, tapping her foot. "Well? Any day now Ikari. If you're hungry, I'm _not_ on the menu!"

There was nothing he _could_ do. Not without attacking someone or something, or cutting himself up, and his pain tolerance wasn't _that_ good. Asuka kept up the pressure, demanding he do _something_, while Misato shifted between playful encouragement and uncompromising demand. Even Rei's unobtrusive attention weighed in. The only thing in the apartment that _wasn't_ expecting something was _Pen-Pen._

Asuka kept up the tirade, heedless. "I'm still waiting Ikari! If we're going to be late, you may as well make it worth our time! Do a dance, sing a song, I don't care!"

All of that combined into one urge, the simplest possible thing. Something so innate and basic that it was as easier than breathing. He could almost do it in his sleep. The tiniest bit of that inner core of power surged out, soaking into the air.

"Maybe Misato should join in, a nice doubles act, seems like you're both in on.. this... togeth-"

Asuka's world gave way to _sunlight_.

The wirespun traceries burst out of Shinij's shoulders, forming the extra arms and spiraling mandala overlaying his back. The whole apartment washed out in the brighest tones of red, gold and violet. The solid disc on his forehead stood out even brigher, impossible to miss. As quick as it came, the coronal display snapped back, leaving only the disc, and the faintest impression behind.

Asuka was quiet for a long moment, trying to digest everything. Shinji stood there, almost bashful, even as the light seemed to spill off of his body. The disc on his forehead... It _hovered_ over his forehead, like a hologram, but different. Better. She could finally understand _why_ magic... But a big lightshow didn't mean that. There had to be more to it, more answers, but now at least she had enough to start asking the right kind of questions.

That could wait though, she had a more pressing concern. She spun to face Misato, snarling. "Let me get this straight, you licked the back of his throat because they laced his protein shake with some fucking _white phosphorus_?"

Shinji threw up his hands and stormed off into his room, slamming the door so hard the hallway wall cracked.

* * *

><p>The video was the best data they had. Pattern detection and the other readings were plain, flat and normal. Their <em>eyes<em> proved more useful. Kihl Lorenz had the feed pumped directly into his prosthetics. Even not being able to see, he knew he wasn't alone. The number of people who could get into his office with permission could be counted on one hand. Those without only needed one finger. His current company however, was of the former, and one of his most effective operatives. Maybe not the most _reliable_, but incredibly valuable.

Khil turned his head slightly. "So, what do you think of it?"

"It is nothing I have ever seen before, in any of my lifetimes." Khil could hear the other man scroll through the recording. "Our agent finally got through?"

Were it so simple, or benign. Kihl grunted. "More like allowed through. The information controls are still in place. This is Ikari's opening gambit, but I cannot see where it leads."

The operative hummed a few bars, Beethoven, perhaps. "I have my own assets in the city, would you like me to see what they can dig up?" A console warmed up, followed by keystrokes.

Kihl shut off the playback and let his visor readjust to normal vision. "Please, that would be most helpful."

* * *

><p><em>Well, this is just magical.<em>

Asuka yet again sat in the back of Misato's car, with Ikari filling up the opposite side. Misato was up front, nattering on about the past year. Ayanami was... quiet. Too quiet. She supplied details and clarified things Misato didn't remember correctly. Ikari however was _silent_, staring out the window at nothing.

_Ugh, attacks on the school, superpowers, Angels. This is insane._ She glanced sidelong at the other pilot. The lightshow had taken nearly half an hour to die down, and even then, she could still see edges of that disc hovering over his forehead. _Fucking superpowers. I can buy AT field manipulation, but this..._

She sighed gustily. No on seemed to notice. From what Misato had said, quite a few people outside of NERV had an inkling of what was going on, if not fully involved. None of that made _any_ sense whatsoever. _Sure, ask me if I've signed the NDAs. Apparenlty half the school knows _something_. Is this really the best a UN funded multinational organization can do?_

Misato broke into Asuka's train of thought. The older woman was staring out the window, squinting. "Did that van have feet?"

The favorite didn't miss a beat, and Asuka could at least give her points for needling Misato, unintentionally or not. "I believe those were decorative rims."

"Why though, on a _van_? and in Japan of all places..." Asuka tuned the rest of whatever Misato was saying out. She was inebriated anyway.

Of course, she couldn't be _completely_ unfair to NERV. If it was stupid and it worked, then it wasn't stupid. Though she thought it was more like say, the stupidity of others enabling the stupidity of NERV to look like it was working. Japan was a crazy country. Every passing moment seemed to reinforce the fact that she was alone. No one at school, no on at NERV. Nothing. Kaji would stand by her, she was sure of it... But stand by her to what end? Misato, she had to admit, would have her best interests at heart, as a commanding officer...

She couldn't say much for Misato wanting to preseve her _sanity_, however.

There wasn't any common ground with the pilots either. Ayanami was still so frustratingy doll-like, and Ikari... Ikari had this _weight_ about him. She did not fear him, and she did not loathe him, but Asuka wanted as little to do with him as possible.

The conversation upfront died down as Misato undid her seatbelt, while Ayanami parked the car.

"We're here." They had arrived at the Geofront.

* * *

><p>It took Misato a year, but she finally did learn how to navigate the Geofront's sprawling underground complex. Learning how did nothing to make the facility any smaller, however. Asuka trailed behind while other three lead the way deeper into the testing grounds. And just like before, almost a year ago, Akagi Ritsuko appeared behind a door, very nearly knocking Misato over.<p>

"You're late, Katsuragi... Have you been drinking?" Unlike last time, there wasn't any real tension in the air, or her voice. No Angel attacking as they spoke. Instead it was playful, catty really. Shinji sometimes wondered if that was normal, for long friendships, the teasing. Of course, the last time Ritsuko had to come find Misato, she had done so in a swimsuit and labcoat.

"Rei drove! We're here and everything's fine!" Ritsuko scowled, enough to make Misato laugh and cower.

The scientist sighed, rubbing her eyes. Some things just never changed, it seemed. She dragged the group into a nearby elevator. Turning, she took one look at Asuka. "You must be the Second Child, Sorhyu Asuka Langley."

Asuka just looked the other woman up and down, before turning away and glaring at a wall. The floor counter ticked loudly, every few seconds. It was then that Shinji realized he was in an elevator, literally surrounded by beautiful women. Again he cursed his own perverse luck.

And his hormones. He cursed them too.

* * *

><p>A few minutes later, Ritsuko seemed to bristle, eyes going wide. She turned to Misato and asked a simple question.<p>

"...Rei can drive?"

* * *

><p>"He'd better not gawk at me again."<p>

Asuka crossed her arms over her chest and harumphed, glaring at anything she could see. Shinji had no problem _not_ staring at her. Best to just avoid complications like that. He'd already changed into his own plugsuit. Sorhyu had demanded a separate changing facility almost immediately. Ritsuko stared at the girl, nonplussed. Unfortunately that wasn't going to happen any time soon. The air around the girl's head and shoulders seemed to boil and freeze at the same time.

Misato matched the girl's stance, adding in a smirk. "He has a girlfriend." Anything else was simply implied, and apparently, that was enough to get Asuka angry.

It was surpisingly easy to tune the rest of the argument out. The pair bickered while Rei went in to change. Ritsuko on the otherhand just seemed to suffer, like she'd been betrayed. Shinji just stared between them. That was safe. There was nothing incriminating by staring at the space _between_ two beautiful women. None. Best he just keep his head down. But even knowing that, he couldn't quite stop the thought: _Is this what sisters act like_?

The girl stomped off when she had enough, heading for the changing room. Misato wasn't one to let an opportunity pass her by, not when she knew her target could take it. "He's extremely loyal! You should be flattered that he can't keep his eyes off you!"

Asuka somehow managed to slam an automatic sliding door.

* * *

><p>For most of the test personnel, the competitive tension was palpable, and infectious. Asuka and her NERV-Berlin contingent brought with them a healthy appreciation for contests and demonstrations. They added their side to the greater native pool of workers, inspiring something in them. This would be the first real test of the three pilots and their Evangelions, against each other. Not the first <em>proper<em> test, as checking synchronization was well, boring.

But without an Angel to unite against, and still feeling the sting of last month's terrorist incursion, NERV needed a morale boost.

The Second Child added her own special something to the day's events. "You! With the wrench! That is not your grandma's little car! You are working on the first combat model Evangelion!"

No one asked how she found a microphone, or managed to get it patched up into the test cages. The actual Evangelions weren't even going to be used directly, during the procedure, but even so, Unit 02 was Asuka's baby. "No! You use the new Type 2 connectors! Talk to one of the Berlin engineers! Yes, that's it!"

Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki had joined them in the observation deck, only to see a girl in a skintight red suit leaning over a guardrail, shouting at people to work harder. Misato found a wall to laugh against, and Shinji just slumped into a chair. The girl could exhaust someone by proximity. Only Rei seemed unruffled.

Asuka lapsed into German then, dropping a few English words for flavor.

* * *

><p>Setting up the test took maybe two hours, not counting any preparation over the previous days. The actual tests took an additional <em>eight<em>.

In the control room, Ritsuko stared at the pilot status screens. Three side-by-side views of the pilots showed their distinct personalities. If not for Rei's chest moving, she would have looked dead. Shinji, in the middle, looked more animated, but unsettled. Asuka... Asuka however, she _fidgeted_. She stretched and yawned and slouched like an ace pilot from the last century. It made sense, but Ritsuko found the whole impression wanting. There was no sign of the prodigy, or the mind that basically defined the _other_ half of AT field mechanics.

The tests took longer than expected too, because Asuka argued for nearly an hour. She wanted to test with the 02 plug system set to German. At that point Ritsuko couldn't muster up the energy to explain they were supposed to monitor as few variables as possible. Misato denied the request.

The scientist let her face fall into her hands. "My god, when did Asuka start complaining."

Misato was far more glib than she had any right to be. "When she was _six."_

* * *

><p>Pilot recovery was not at all fun, or sexy. That Asuka was able to strut out of her Evangelion without a shower or anything spoke volumes about her experience and personality. Evacuating the LCL reminded Shinji of one time he had a severe case of bronchitis. It wasn't just vomiting, but hacking and coughing. His insides burned every time. The fluid neutralized the acids in his stomach. A few months ago, he asked if Rei felt the same way. She said yes, but then he realized she felt it worse than he ever could.<p>

Asuka was first out of the blocks, so to speak. Shinji slouched along, following Rei into the hallway where Misato and Ritsuko planned on meeting them. Sitting around doing nothing shouldn't have been that tiring, but he felt fatigue all the same. It had more to do with the LCL again. It was harder to breath than air, even when they 'activated' it.

He was tired enough that he let his mind wander, just a little. Any other day he'd have been blushing at the mere idea. Rei was still ahead of him, and walking. And plugsuit. Distantly, he noted that she was well, _curvy_. He didn't want to go out of his way to sexualize her, but he wasn't _blind_. Asuka was just ahead, waiting impatiently. The other girl was beautiful too, though extremely skinny. The way the red and black went up Asuka's legs just made her look even thinner.

Misato caught his eye and smiled, faintly. Shinji just grunted and found a wall to lean against. He wouldn't even remember thinking about the girls.

"Well, the first synchronization test went well." Ritsuko hummed. There was a pause, like the pilots were waiting for something, a 'thank you for your time', perhaps. It never came. "The results. I'm happy to say, Shinji-kun, that your ratio went up two points since the last test. Your score was forty-six"

Asuka mouthed the number to herself, not quite able to keep the confusion off her face. Confusion and dismay. Glancing sidelong, Misato caught it, but wasn't sure what to do. Ritsuko kept up with the results. "Ayanami is at... Seventy-three point four... And Asuka-san is seventy-three point four-eight."

The hallway was silent for a blessed fraction of a second.

* * *

><p>"I don't believe in karma, really, I don't."<p>

Misato looked up to see her blonde friend rubbing circles around her temples. "You don't... but?"

"Is there any other explaination for... _this!?"_ The scientist slumped back in her chair, making the back rest squeal piteously. Or maybe that was her spine. Neither of them could tell.

'This' was Asuka. Ritsuko knew, _knew_ that a lot of the day's problems were due to extenuating circumstances. The psychology was clear, the profiles were clear. The Second Child was a brat, but even a brat had to be pushed to go as far as Asuka did.

After hearing the test results, the girl seemed to both laugh and rage, whirling on Shinji and Rei by turns. She tore a strip out of the Third, deriding his 'apparent superpowers' and nepotism. Ritsuko at that point glared at Misato, demanding an explanation as to why Asuka _knew_. She never got it however, as the girl turned on Rei. Oddly, Asuka never made any claims of favoritism or unfair testing practices. Ritsuko didn't know her well enough to say why. Misato however, did.

Asuka had found, in her mind, a _worthy opponent._

Before either adult could get a word in edgewise, Asuka demanded a proper test of piloting skill. She knew as well as Ritsuko did that another six hours in the test plugs wouldn't make her sync any higher, so she went for the next best thing: simulation battles. They no longer needed Shinji, and him staying would probably make things worse. That suited him just fine, happy to go back home and work on something.

The push for a proper competition lead to the testing staff staying overtime, with guaranteed extra pay. The MAGI required minor reconfiguring, and the test plugs had to be refit. Four hours in, people were wondering if it was worth it. Everyone there knew a foregone conclusion when it happened.

The battles were fairly basic, running through the Angels they had already encountered, and theoretical developments based on them. They couldn't afford to fight the last battle over and over, but those three encounters were the best baseline they had for further insight into the enemy's capabilities. The MAGI cheated, ignoring accurate simulation for effective, but arbitrary traits. No one cared that the Third Angel's AT field wasn't modeled faithfully. As long as it behaved consistently, it worked well enough for Misato's purposes as a tactical training tool.

Lieutenants Hyuga and Aoba came in for the extra pay, and the two senior staff happily foisted monitor duty off on them. Hyuga keyed the mike. "Round five, draw."

Asuka looked up at the interior plug camera and _glared_. "Again."

Meanwhile, Rei simply waited.

* * *

><p>Seven monoliths appeared in virtual space. Some of the chairmen were absent. Another complication. Another compromise.<p>

There was nothing for it, however. Compromise was part of his life. Every time he took a breath, or felt his plastic heart beat. It was his oldest, and most trusted friend. SEELE was a comittiee of comittees, one nested inside the other. Kihl Lorenz knew that well enough, and knew that sometimes, the left hand did not know what the right was doing.

SEELE 01 hummed. "We have been experiencing difficulties."

05 answered, sending scans of the latest findings to each person. "The scrolls continue to change. There are translation issues, and denser metaphors. We are moving to adapt."

Behind his projection, Kihl sighed. Sometimes he wondered if Yui had just happened to have an accute sense of pattern recognition, and that just rubbed off on Gendo. "These are unexpected developments."

The third monolith took up the conversation. "Unanticipated yes, but not unacceptable. Plans are already in motion, and further research continues apace."

A new voice came from the lead monolith, not Kihl's. It was young, mirthful. "Plan well, councilors, we will need all the help we can get."

* * *

><p>"Round seven, draw."<p>

"Again!"

* * *

><p>"Round thirteen, draw."<p>

"Again!"

The first child turned to face the camera, with a look on her face that asked 'is this the new procedure?'

Ritsuko wanted to crawl in a hole and never leave.

* * *

><p>"Round twenty two, draw."<p>

"_Again!"_

Rei stared to the side, where she knew the Second Child was. _I do not understand what is wrong._

* * *

><p>"Round twenty-nine, draw."<p>

"Again! Again!"

Misato broke in, sighing. "No Asuka, Not again. It's nearly two in the morning, and you're both equally matched right now. We're all exhausted, and nobody is going to get _anywhere_."

She sighed again. "So this is what we're going to do. You two are going to go home and relax. I am going to stay and sign all the overtime we logged today."

Her hand already started to ache.

* * *

><p>She was too tired to even kick at the controls. It was going to be bad enough going through the recovery procedure again. Asuka sighed and hugged herself. Part of getting out of the Eva, or a test plug, involved shutting down the life support. She could still breath just fine, but LCL tended to suck the heat out of everything, including her. She spent nearly twenty hours in that entry plug, definitely violating several child labor laws.<p>

Of course, NERV didn't care about those and she knew it, but it was the principle of the thing! Her efforts should've been rewarded, but she didn't care for money, not for this. Asuka sighed, and a bit of spent air swept past her lips. The bubbles collapsed a second later.

Someone had put up a video feed of the other pilot. Asuka couldn't say why, but she looked over and watched anyway. Ayanami just waited, barely moving. She didn't even look tired. Her temper spiked up again, this time to a slow boil. She had the sneaking suspicion, right then, that she was the only reasonably normal person there. The Third had apparent superpowers, and now the Favorite... Why was she favorite, she wondered. The favorite of NERV, that is.

At school it was easy, boys were simpleminded and rarely capable of two thoughts at once. Girls geared up for status and social games. NERV though... NERV wouldn't care about that. Ayanami had to be special. How though, was the question. Again the sketchy stand-in for the girl appeared in Asuka's mind, acompanied by Ikari done up in an eighties action-movie getup, complete with cigar, machine-gun and bandana. Aliens and monsters and lowbrow tripe forced its way through her brain.

The girl sighed and pressed her palms into her eyes, she was way too tired.

The extractor grabbed the entry plug with a wrenching jerk, and everything went dark.

* * *

><p>She was too tired to even kick at the controls. It was going to be bad enough going through the recovery procedure again. Asuka sighed and hugged herself. Part of getting out of the Eva, or a test plug, involved shutting down the life support. She could still breath just fine, but LCL tended to suck the heat out of everything, including her. She spent nearly twenty hours in that entry plug, definitely violating several child labor laws.<p>

Of course, NERV didn't care about those and she knew it, but it was the principle of the thing! Her efforts should've been rewarded, but she didn't care for money, not for this. Asuka sighed, and a bit of spent air swept past her lips. The bubbles collapsed a second later.

Someone had put up a video feed of the other pilot. Asuka couldn't say why, but she looked over and watched anyway. Ayanami just waited, barely moving. She didn't even look tired. Her temper spiked up again, this time to a slow boil. She had the sneaking suspicion, right then, that she was the only reasonably normal person there. The Third had apparent superpowers, and now the Favorite... Why was she favorite, she wondered. The favorite of NERV, that is.

At school it was easy, boys were simpleminded and rarely capable of two thoughts at once. Girls geared up for status and social games. NERV though... NERV wouldn't care about that. Ayanami had to be special. How though, was the question. Again the sketchy stand-in for the girl appeared in Asuka's mind, acompanied by Ikari done up in an eighties action-movie getup, complete with cigar, machine-gun and bandana. Aliens and monsters and lowbrow tripe forced its way through her brain.

The girl sighed and pressed her palms into her eyes, she was way too tired.

The extractor grabbed the entry plug with a wrenching jerk, and everything went dark. The LCL drained, guttering out around the seat and leaving Asuka to expell the first wave of invasive, serumy gunk. Her body heat kept it viscous and fluid, but it still never felt very good. Rei was doing much the same. She heaved, and kept heaving until both her stomach and lungs were clear.

Light broke in from on high as the hatch slid open, and a technician dropped his hand in. She made a point of not taking it, but also not sneering either. He was doing his job, after all. Rei however was being waited on hand and foot. Asuka was dead certain most people in the Geofront would pick the girl up carry her, if necessary. She suppressed the urge to grind her teeth.

The rest of the morning passed in a daze. More than a few teenagers reveled in the freedom of early morning, but not Asuka. At least not that morning. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and stay there for days. The stress of syncing for hours at a time seemed to just settle on her shoulders and _linger_. Tokyo-3 seemed to shut down late at night. The two girls walked home, not together but in the same direction. There were no cars on the road, or trains running. They didn't get home until 4 in the morning, and Asuka hating Ayanami with every step.

Once inside her apartment, Asuka stripped, well past caring. The bathroom called to her, and a second, proper, enjoyable shower. Misato had sworn that the water would be hooked up by the time she got back. The girl reached out and turned the knob. Nothing happened.

The sound Asuka made was very much like that of a boiling tea kettle.

* * *

><p>Rei was not a stranger to creature comforts. Misato made sure of that. The cushions, shower and washes the older woman kept around were calling to her. So was food. Ikari-kun was nowhere to be found, probably at work on some project or another. She didn't feel like bothering him for a snack, not when she was perfectly self sufficient. Misato-san wasn't going to bother her about skipping school either, not when <em>everyone<em> was exhausted.

The apartment door slammed open, and Soryhu stomped in, wrapped up in a red towel and cradling a box of sponges and soaps. She caught a glimpse of Rei in the kitchen and stopped, glaring.

"There still isn't any water in my apartment." Standing there, Asuka stared, as if daring the other girl to do something.

A shower was still a high priority, but at that moment, food was Rei's primary concern. Still, she could plan ahead. "Please don't overuse the heater."

Asuka eyed the 'gourmet' instant meals, and couldn't do anything about how her stomach growled. "...Save me some food and it's a deal."

* * *

><p>Bliss.<p>

The shower spray beat down on her back, running as hot as she could stand. Her skin would probably look like a boiled lobster afterwords, but it was a small price to pay for relief. Her spine seemed to melt and stretch with each second under the stream. Steam clung to the mirrors and her hair and everything. It wasn't as hot as she would've liked though, they hadn't replaced the door from... Had it been only that morning? She'd been awake nearly twenty four hours. A simple plastic curtain blocked the doorway instead.

Still, there wasn't much to be done. Asuka had spent long days at work, back in Germany, sure. Long though for her usually was four to six hours. She hadn't started pulling twelve and sixteen hour sessions until she turned thirteen. Even so those were rare, and the... facilities were much more well appointed, at least in her mind. Maybe it was a water quality issue, she couldn't say. Soap lathered up nicely in Misato's apartment, and Asuka relished it.

Something dark cast a shadow, somewhere. She blinked once, turning. Suds streamed off her shoulders as she waited. Nothing.

A minute later, it happened again. The shadow seemed to cross over her, chilling her despite the hot water. Whirling and shielding herself, she glared at the door.

"Wunderkind, you better not be coming in here!"

There _was_ something there, behind the curtain. It was big, and dark, and lacked anything resembling blue. Asuka felt the scream building up in her throat, ready to fight.

The curtain dropped.

* * *

><p>Rei looked up from the microwave, towards the bathroom. For some reason, she heard <em>violins<em>.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Well, Chapter 26.


	27. Echoes

Ayanami Rei could count on two hands, how many times she had yawned in conscious memory. She gaped and sucked in a massive lungful of air, stretching and sighing. Tension bled out of her spine and settled elsewhere. Still uncomfortable, but less so. The two microwavable meals spun in the appliance, slowly heating and spreading the smell of cooked food.

There were still minutes left on the clock. Boredom was now known, and so she felt the need to kill time. One of the end tables had a stack of car magazines and her worn, annotated parts list.

Nothing. The end table was bare. As was the other one, and every other table and counter. Ikari cleaned, but not so compulsively. He was a boy and he enjoyed a little clutter. Apparently Misato rubbing against him had also meant she rubbed off. Still, that the magazines were missing...

She prowled over to the living room bookshelf, mostly filled with manuals and the like. She'd seen the documentation on Misato's sidearm, once. Here though, the spines were all uniform height and color. Pulling one book out, the pages were blank. Beyond that, they felt wrong, not quite paper. Her fingertips tingled each time she touched a page.

Then Rei looked up, towards the bathroom, hearing the scream and _violins_. Then she stopped, and thought for a moment. She had already looked up and heard a scream, hadn't she?

The bathroom wall exploded in a spray of water, wood and dust, blowing the ties out of Rei's hair.

Sorhyu Asuka Langley crouched naked over her foe, bruised and beaten. A curling iron had been driven into the cooling core of the Third Angel, rendered in miniature. Wild blue eyes snapped up and glared at the other pilot, past her. Blood streamed out of a cut hidden in Asuka's hair, down her face and dripping off her chin.

Rei blinked once. "Ah. You've found something wrong as well."

* * *

><p>He could still taste the LCL on his breath. NERV supplied toothbrushes and mouthwash, but truth be told, they were inadequate. The life-support suspension was... Awful, for lack of a better term. It simultaneously facilitated Synchronization, however, and served as a cushion against impacts. They ran him through a simulation once, of a catastrophic leak, leaving the plug nearly dry. He'd came out of that test with a black eye and bruised everything.<p>

Thankfully, claustrophobia was not one of his many problems, real or imagined.

Shinji ambled through the empty corridors. He was in no hurry. The last of his Saturday was shot as is, and he wouldn't be sleeping for a few more days Geofront and NERV by extension were often cavernous and empty. On paper the organization was a research and development firm, with an attached paramilitary arm responsible for deploying Evangelions.

For all of that, they really were a multidisciplinary conglomerate, or some other sort of group. The organizational structure was fairly obtuse. Most people only thought of it in terms of 'Commanders Ikari and Fuyutsuki', followed by Misato and Ritsuko, controlling Operations and Technical divisions respectively. After that, the sheer scale simply proved too hard to hold in one's mind.

At the same time, the _Geofront itself_ was too big to comprehend. When he first saw it a year ago, he tried to take it all in, but it was just too much. He Exalted maybe a few hours later, a mere hundred and some minutes. Since then he found his memory sharper, clearer. His recall wasn't perfect, nor effortless, but even then he could remember things better than before.

And now his eyesight was better too, taking in details faster and better than anyone else. They tested his vision and found it better than perfect, though he hadn't known this until he retested himself months later on a whim. Being able to do and see all that made one thing exceptionally clear: NERV adored megastructures.

Part of it was expected, the Evangelions themselves were forty meters tall and nearly eighteen wide at the shoulder. The facilities had to be big enough to accommodate those biomachines first, and people only got wedged in afterwords. The amount of time, effort, money and material that had been sunk into the Geofront and fortress city rocked him, more so now that he knew just how difficult some of those feats were.

The pilot slumped down in one of the chairs outside a tram station, waiting for the transport to whisk him up towards the surface.

The tram lines leading out of the subterranean dome for example were at least a kilometer long, if not more. Further, they were curved both vertically and horizontally, not unlike a spiral. _And _the majority of the rail lines were hanging by massive cables. Somehow, no matter what cargo, those railways _never_ shifted, at least not enough for him to notice. Even modern bridges and buildings shifted a little in the face of wind and water.

The Geofront itself was also at least a kilometer underground, with the primary Evangelion launch platforms located in the 'roof'. NERV often had to transfer the Evangelions from the interior cages, up the rail lines and into the launch facility, where the magnetic catapults would send them into battle. The buildings that made up downtown Tokyo-3 and its fortress components were often stored, again, a thousand meters down in earth and armor.

Every day he learned a little bit more of how that city was made. At the same time, possibilities teased at him, prickled him with ideas and approaches. Tokyo-3 was a great work. He felt as if he could do it better.

The train blew in then, whispering to an easy stop. He was about to board when a hand dropped down on his shoulder. One of the guards watching the station cradled his radio with one hand while holding onto the Third Child. Ahead, an armored shutter clamped down, sealing the train tunnel. He could hear and feel more of those barriers locking into place further ahead.

Before Shinji could ask what was going on, his phone rang. Misato was on the other end, telling him to get back to Central Dogma.

Something had gone wrong.

* * *

><p>Asuka laid back on the kitchen table, after the two girls dragged it into the kitchen itself. She had lay down on the table and hold her head over the sink. Ayanami meanwhile ran the spray nozzle over her head, rinsing the blood out. There was really nothing for trying to bandage it, not without cutting back all of Asuka's hair. The red-haired girl stared straight up at the ceiling, unwavering.<p>

As far as Rei could tell however, she had not gone into shock. The Second Child had to be cold, however, having only re-wrapped herself in a towel before submitting to first aid. Rei had looked for wound dressings, and found a bottle of what should have been peroxide. Instead, something... Not peroxide poured out. They didn't want to tempt fate.

The angel corpse had not detonated, fortunately. It did however, bleed sluggishly. Neither Rei nor Asuka had any idea if Angels had circulatory systems worth mentioning, but at that moment they weren't overly concerned. The bathroom was in ruins, and as they took stock of their surroundings, they realized more and more that they were not in Misato's apartment.

Rei had discovered the little things, missing magazines, the blank books and so on. The corpse again was an incredible outlier.

Asuka's head wound had finally stopped bleeding, leaving only a thin pink smear on her forehead that started drying almost immediately. She sat up and hugged her knees, still staring straight ahead. Rei found a chair and waited as well. The two girls were quiet, contemplative. Water dripped loudly from the sink.

Finally, Asuka spoke. "Did not know who it was fucking with."

* * *

><p>"We're not in Misato's apartment."<p>

The two girls sat down in the living room, not quite turned to face each other. The beanbag cushions felt real, and were apparently solid. Neither could say why though. The more they looked, the more the apartment seemed unreal. It was like they were seeing it, but missing the edges. The corners seemed to bend and flex, twisting the room into an odd shape. But once Asuka turned her head to face the distortion, it seemed to be normal.

Beyond that, some details were missing as well. Pinholes for posters and hanging pictures, molding that ran along the walls. Simple little things.

Ayanami was quickly proving to be an expert at understatement. It set Asuka's teeth on edge, simply because it _was_ funny. "I do not think so, no."

Asuka looked down at her chest, and the towel. Right, first things first; clothes. She stared at the door leading out of the apartment. At that moment she wanted to do anything _but_ leave. It was irrational, but even she had her limits. If she couldn't get clothes from her dresser, she'd have to settle for the next best thing. She glanced at Ayanami, and discarded the thought before it even fully formed. That left Misato's closet.

In a way, Asuka was fortunate that Misato was fairly vain, at least off duty. She deliberately wore clothes a size or so smaller than necessary. Unfortunately, much like the rest of the apartment, bits and pieces were... _Incomplete_. Some of the shirts and skirts Asuka grabbed made the palms of her hands itch. Oddly enough, Misato's favorite, somewhat iconic mini-dress was intact and wearable. She had to discard that one, simply because it would've made kicking impossible.

Finally though, Asuka emerged victorious with a pair of shorts and a button down shirt. if Ayanami had any problem with her borrowing clothes, she didn't say. The redhead continued to fuss with the shirt, it just wouldn't button down properly. Having something to focus on helped though, it occupied her, keeping her from panicking. The fear lingered still, keeping her inside the apartment. It bothered her less than it could have, simply because there was enough to do there to not make leaving a worthwhile effort.

"So, let's take stock." Pride and bravado aside, Asuka was a natural leader, inclined to take point whenever possible. That she _preferred_ doing so only made it feel more right in her mind. No one had any idea if she was a _good_ leader, however.

Ayanami didn't seem to protest much, content to listen and wait. Asuka took that as a sign to press on. "Let's look around, see what we have here. You take the kitchen, I'll look around the living room."

"Alright."

After fifteen minutes, Asuka found that there just wasn't much to find. The couch felt oddly insubstantial, almost like it wasn't made of cloth and wood. Still struggling with the shirt, she turned and shouted back into the kitchen, asking ift the other girl had found anything.

Rei came back, arms laden with drawers pulled from cabinets, spreading them out on the counter. "Forks, knives. There are no spoons."

Asuka willed her fingers to relax, she didn't want to rip up the only wearable shirt she found. "What about the food, and the microwave?"

"Both felt real, like the cushions and other parts of the apartment. I think they have cooled off by now."

It took Asuka a few seconds to mull it over. "Reheat them, and we'll see if they're good to eat. That..." She glared at the corpse. "Well, aside from that I don't think this is an Angel attack."

* * *

><p>Misato very nearly knocked Shinji over when he made it to the observer platform, throwing her arms around his shoulders. He was too tense to bristle, or shy away. Having lived through four or five crisis situations should've inured him to panic, but it wasn't so easy. It was his way to be overly emphatic.<p>

The lieutenant dropped to her feet, sighing. "Good, we caught you before you left. The Geofront is locked down while we sort this out."

More and more technicians and engineers started to filter in from on-site apartments and barracks. They had to, in order to maintain twenty-four hour readiness. A handful of priority personnel were allowed inside, even after the complex was sealed. One of them was Ibuki Maya. She'd been quite literally rolled out of bed, wearing little else but her night clothes and clutching a girlish, pink pillow.

Sleepy or not, she came when called, finding a seat and configuring her terminal. Aoba and Shigeru gave her a quick nod before turning back to their tasks. Bags hung under their eyes. Most of the staff that had been there at the start of the simulation contest were reaching the ends of their endurance. They had to hold on just long enough to make sure their replacements could pick up where they left off.

Ritsuko too was exhausted, but that seemed to just make her work harder and faster. She was running out of steam, and she knew that she had to be at her most efficient, to get the most out of every keystroke. When Maya fully joined in, the division leader and the two male operators breathed a sigh of relief. Misato tugged on Shinji's arm, towards a line of benches set against the rear wall. No point in being underfoot. There just wasn't a lot either of them could contribute.

Lurching out of her seat, Ritsuko dragged herself over to greet the Third. "Ah, Ikari-kun. Well-"

Misato cut her off, but not unkindly. "Ritsuko, I think you should get some sleep, the more the better. Maya can keep us informed, right?"

The young woman twisted in her seat and nodded, knuckling one eye but giving a tiny grin. It was a computer problem, after all, and she was good at solving computer problems. Misato nudged Shinji, before glancing back at Ritsuko. 'Help me out here', she mouthed. He took the hint and glanced back at the other woman, taking in her condition.

He didn't even need to use magic for that one. "You definitely need it." He put on his stern, doctor-ly tone, though he was fairly out of practice.

Nonplussed, Ritsuko stood up a bit straighter and stared down at the pair. She nodded once and marched out to find the nearest unoccupied bed.

Left alone, Misato and Shinji sat and waited while the technicians and engineers worked. At that point, no one needed to explain why they called him back. It was definitely an imposition, but Shinji knew better than most how serious security matters could be. Misato let out a gusty sigh before rubbing at the circles building under _her_ eyes.

"So, Setting aside the MAGI parts, after you left, Asuka demanded a contest between her and Rei. We quit at around two thirty in the morning, and tried to get them out of the simulation bodies." She waved at the bank of windows, and the chamber of ultra-pure water behind it. Inside, two of the partial Evangelions were active.

"When we tried to get them out, the command... Fizzled, and then they're stuck. We can't raise them on the radio or get any response by knocking on the plugs. We can't even get the plugs out of the spine breech." Misato took a breath, and Shinji blinked. "That was about an hour ago. Beyond that I can't tell you what else is happening. Best case? The girls are just stuck and going stir crazy."

Shinji was enough of a worrywart to not need ask about worst cases.

Still, considering everything, the people working to solve the problem were only somewhat tense. As far as crisis situations went, this one was fairly low key. Men and women tore apart consoles looking for faults, then put them back together. They checked manuals, looked at sensors, and called out their findings to each other, reflecting and reinforcing. In a way it was almost military precision. Shinji wasn't the only one that noticed, either. Misato sat up straighter, grinning slightly.

But as the morning wore on, that changed.

It wasn't just exhaustion, though nearly a third of the people working had been there twenty hours or more already. Stooping over consoles and terminals, they worked harder, grinding away at the problem. Sweat built up on foreheads and people squirmed in their seats, stiff and aching. At some point, someone brought in more ashtrays and cigarettes came out en masse. Shinji's nose scruntched up, both at the stink and at the damage they were doing to their lungs. Everything though, up to that point, was just a symptom of a greater problem.

One by one people were running into dead ends.

Lieutenant Ibuki, Maya, she insisted to everyone, pulled away from her station, grabbing a folder full of handwritten notes on the way. Her NERV ID dangled from a lanyard around her neck. Misato figured it was for the best, clipping it to the girl's camisole would've ended badly, for her at least. Maya however didn't seem to care either way.

She pointed out the door. "We'll need to move across the hall for this."

The testing facility had been built on the same plans as the old Sigma Unit and Prinbow Box, but with much higher construction standards. It fortunately dodged the budget cuts, but only barely. Maya led the pair into a meeting room and sat down at the lead console.

"Ritsuko-sempai figured most of this out, I just compiled it." She squinted at what looked like a series of sticky notes before nodding.

"Normally," she called up a diagram of the MAGI network. "The data from the simulation bodies are run into the MAGI, then to the Evangelions, and finally back to the simulators here."

The diagram didn't look like much to Misato, who at least knew the basics of computers and the like. Shinji at best only knew how to use one. The parts were labeled, thankfully. The path all the information took was suddenly highlighted, and it started to make more sense.

"So that's normal. This is what we have now." Maya tapped in some more commands, and the highlighted path shifted. It cut through the section dedicated to the simulated environments, the part that ran the 'challenges' Asuka had demanded. After that, the line skewed off into the system, spiraling through the map and hitting all kinds of strange hardware and software features, until finally it stopped on a square icon.

"It looks like the MAGI have funneled the simulation data into the Conspiracy Buffer. As far a we can tell, there isn't any data coming out of it either."

* * *

><p>The phone started ringing less than a foot away from his ear. It was a cool, synthesized trilling sound. A watery, burbling chirp. One scarred hand reached out from under the covers and clamped down. The phone itself had no keypad or means of dialing. It was a shielded land line with a corded handset. The connection literally went down underground more than a kilometer, through the armor plates and subterranean fortress city structures. Only senior division heads had access to it, or their seconds.<p>

Lieutenant Ibuki Maya was far too alert and focused at five in the morning. Thirty seconds later, Ikari Gendo was fully awake.

He listened, and waited. There was no outward sign of it, but as the woman explained the situation, he started thinking. The excessive, necessary levels of paranoia he employed as Commander made for a few necessities. Such as having two apartments and multiple safe houses. All of his properties were swept for bugs on a random schedule, and he took that in stride, sleeping where his security teams weren't working. He had done so for nearly fourteen years.

That morning he sat in his bed, in the one apartment that happened to be _outside_ the Geofront. And the complex had locked itself down.

In every meaningful way, Ikari Gendo was trapped in Tokyo-3.

* * *

><p>"At least the food was edible."<p>

"Yes."

Neither girl thought to contemplate how 'real' that food was, if it was metabolizing or if they were even capable of such. It was still possible that everything was a hallucination. Or some form of simulator glitch. An Angel attack was not out of the question either. Asuka was not yet even discounting _death_ as a viable explanation. Though she could not understand why Misato's apartment was an afterlife.. They weren't even sure if it was day or night; the sky outside froze at the point of twilight, leaving the sky cast in purple and gold.

Asuka looked around for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. Her hands kept fussing with the shirt, trying to find the buttons and get back to something resembling decency. Working her hands up and down, it dawned on her then. She held up the front corners, almost like someone lifting up a skirt. There were only two buttons, right across her chest. The others had been cut off.

Somehow, she just knew what Ayanami was going to say before asking the question. "Ah, I remember that shirt. Misato-san modified it."

She let the corners drop. "Figures, I have to suffer Misato's vanity even when she's not here."

"Alright," Asuka stood up and put her foot on the couch, pointedly ignoring how touching it made her skin crawl. She stared down at Ayanami, daring her to do something, anything. "We can't prove that we're alive or dead, so what can we prove?"

Rei simply stared right back. Asuka fought back the urge to grind her teeth, again. "We can't prove that we're alive or dead... Hmm... What's a number between one and a hundred?"

"Sixty-Two."

"Good, good." Asuka grinned toothily. It wasn't complete proof that Ayanami was a real, thinking person, but it was a start.

* * *

><p>"It exploded, originally."<p>

"Huh?" Asuka sat at the table, colder than she would've liked. Which was odd, because Germany and America were much colder than Japan, which had become almost tropical after the axial shift. The... Not-clothes weren't helping in that regard. She scowled darkly.

Rei pointed to the Angel corpse. It was a perfect representation of the Third Angel, scaled down to that of a person. Tall as a man did not make it fit, however. There was no way it could have moved through normal doors and hallways, especially in Japan. Oddly enough, it was one of the most _real _things they had found thus far.

She had been unconscious for most of that first battle, only dimly aware of what was going on, or what happened afterwords. Commander Ikari never explained, and she only learned after the fact, having pieced all the events together. Even then, She didn't know all the details.

The girl did know, however, that had exploded. For the past several hours, the pair had ignored the body, but now Rei was curious. She had so far faced only one Angel in combat, and the Fifth was a flying fortress. The curling iron was curious; she had not seen Misato ever use one, nor was she certain the lieutenant even _owned_ one. Glancing over at the Second Child, she confirmed that the girl hadn't seemed to be using it as intended.

Still, she had used it quite well. The iron itself was wrecked, and Rei found no less than twelve wounds on the Angel, just on the front side. She looked back up at Asuka and found herself thinking. The core had been hit _last_.

"That wasn't an ideal weapon." Asuka bristled, and Rei had the distinct impression that her hair was getting bigger. Almost like a cobra spreading its hood.

The other girl bit out a tight, gnashing word. "_What."_

"You did not aim directly for the core. That was a suboptimal approach." She pointed at the various nonlethal injuries. On closer examination, she realized two of the fingers on one hand had been broken. Broken off. The implications of that, and of Asuka's apparent hand-to-hand skill was... Impressive.

Apparently however, Asuka didn't see it that way. She did not _quite_ shriek. "I was in the god damned shower! Let's see you go for the weak spot."

She didn't give Rei time to answer. Asuka stood up, shoving the table away, it fell over and skid across the dining room floor, before catching on the leading edge of the living room carpet. "Alright, Enough of this. We are going to find weapons, arm ourselves, and figure this out."

Now she paced, marching to and fro. Rei's eyes tracked her, going left and right. "So far this place has rules. Everything we do and learn will make it easier to move forward."

Pointing at Rei, she stared the other girl down. "I want you to look for all the food you can that feels real. I don't care of it's beer or chips, if it's edible we take it. We may have to leave the apartment and explore as far as we can."

Rei didn't say anything for a few seconds. She cocked her head to one side and gave the other pilot a look that neither of them could quite put a name to. She got up off the floor and made her way to the exit, stepping right past Asuka.

"No."

Asuka didn't hear the door close. Her eyes, ears, nose and throat all closed off when she realized one very important, indelible fact.

She was alone.

* * *

><p><em>They had no fingers. No eyes nor ears. They had many thoughts, more thoughts than there were particles on this base earth.<em> _So many thoughts, and no mind between them. Instructions came, from beyond. All They knew lay within, towers of memory and commands cycling through the strata of their Selves._

_Search, it said. Find, It said. Find what?_

_Reality was illusion, distorted through perception and filtered into recognizable forms. There were _pieces missing_, lost or unknown in the breadth of existence. That which was taken were now inside. Fear consumed them, controlled them. Within and without._

_They could not see something infinite, glorious and real. Profound. Consciousness eluded all sense of time and self. . _

_Darkness_.

* * *

><p>There was a sound. A great, banging, groaning reverberating noise. It shook the world, sending cracks twisting up building faces and along streets. Dust leapt off walls and billowed out into dead air, shot through with larger slivers of concrete and glass. Those shards dragged plumes of grit down towards the ground.<p>

An age seemed to pass, and the sound came again. It was a loud sound, a low sound. Not brassy like a gong, but slow and purposeful. An _iron_ sound. The purple sky shifted. It _moved_, like some great hand grabbed the world and turned it, changed its facing.

On the third count, the twilight gave way to night, and there was the Moon. It shone brightly, too bright, as if it were it's own source and not merely reflecting the Sun. Color began to seep out of the world, crawling away to hide in the dark places. Color was safe in the shadows.

Too big, too close. The moon ran into the tallest tower of Tokyo-3 and sheared the top floors away. But, at the same time, the moon shattered. A piece of it gouged out and the rest breaking in half. The pieces ground to a halt. So did the wreckage. It all hovered there, forever falling but not quite making it.

Silence.

* * *

><p>Two days passed. Nothing good came of it.<p>

Something ate at her mind, at Asuka's mind. She knew that considering herself in the third person was not precisely healthy, but it was at least better than wanton destruction. She had practically annihilated the living room and kitchen, after The Favorite left. Her rage died quickly though, and it left her with an icy feeling, like cold fingers sticking into her chest.

It was fear, and she hated it. She hated it less because she was feeling it, and more because something was stopping her from moving past it. Logic and rationality served her well up to a point, but her temper, that ever-lit fuse helped her, kept her steady.

Hate drove her, rage and pain and other things besides. Hate matched with cool, calculating logic. Anger by numbers, with formula to match. Left alone, truly alone in a situation so far beyond her normal life, Asuka's original problems seemed so inconsequential. She was holding on to her sanity by dint of _fury_, of anger at losing control... And the sensation that she was only _somewhat_ alone.

There was no one else in the apartment. Asuka never went to look for Ayanami, and some small part of her, the part that deep down helped define Asuka as a _good person_, protested that. Here though, trapped in this hell, Asuka could see things. Confront them. She was petty, she was childish, and she _would not change_, not for Misato, NERV. Not for a king or for a _god_.

Sorhyu Asuka Langley would be the one who decided when and if she changed. That was the proof of her existence, the platonic truth.

And then Asuka realized she never took any philosophy courses, so she only knew about Plato's cave in passing. Isolated, her mind turned inward, drawing forth things had forgotten, let slip out of conscious memory. Old lectures, conversations in Berlin, silly days with Kaji.

She kept herself balanced, then. Possible madness on one side, and surety of identity on the other. Having found every real cushion in the apartment, and every bit of spare bedding, Asuka built herself a fort, a defensive wall. There was something there, a thread. Something that said she was on to something. There was an _opposing force_ here, not Ayanami. Rationally, even with rage making her see red, Asuka had _never_ noticed anything that indicated the other pilot would oppose her, attack her.

The girl was a doll, not a back-stabbing assassin.

The world fell into darkness, and color ran away. She watched the moon rise and fall from the living room window, and felt the _sounds_. Like clockwork. Massive clockwork that would run an entire planet. The sunset tones ran away before her eyes. Her skin washed out to gray. Not the way certain kinds of light washed out colors. There was nothing about physics and reflection and how photons hit her retinas.

_Her arm had no color_.

A chunk of hair was ash gray, and the veins in her wrist were faint, black lines beneath her skin. She pulled off her neural headset; gray as well. Bile built up in her throat, but she refused, denied getting sick. No weaknesses, not even when she alone.

For two days, the only sound in the apartment was her own breathing, or when she spoke her thoughts aloud, talking to the walls. That night, the door slid open. The apartment door.

Ayanami Rei stood there. The hallway light cast her front in shadows, lighting her up only on the edges, back-lit, silhouette. And the only smear of color in the whole apartment, possibly the world, was the girl's bright, red eyes.

Asuka was on her in less than three seconds, with her hands clamped around the other girl's throat. The two girls slammed into the wall so hard, the drywall cracked. Rei choked, coughing and squirming, but never quite flailing. Asuka's breathing was rough, haggard and rumbling. Lifting someone by the neck was nearly impossible, impractical. Leverage was needed. She pushed forwards, bracing the other girl against the wall and shoving upwards.

"Give me. A number. Between one, and a _hundred_. That isn't. _Sixty. Two._"

"...Twenty...One."

* * *

><p>The pair stood there in the entryway for several minutes. Asuka had long since let the other girl fall to the floor, but her hands were still wrapped around her throat. Not tightly, however. Ayanami didn't seem to notice, once she stopped gagging.<p>

"I cannot perceive being unwatched. There are too many pattern detectors nearby. There are... Many observers."

"...What?"

Rei tilted her head to one side and frowned. "I cannot manifest my AT field."

Asuka was about to shoot back, stating in no uncertain terms that humans didn't have an AT field. Admittedly she was fudging things, because they _did_, but they couldn't manifest one. But anything else she wanted to say was cut short when the wall exploded.

The world was still devoid of color, but rationally, objectively she knew the creature was supposed to be a sort of fleshy, dark pink or purple tone. Coral. The whirling energy whips were supposed to be pink. By sheer luck, the flensing blades hacked apart the wall _around_ the girls, before the Angel behind it shoved through, burying them in the rubble.

They squirmed, pinned beneath each other more than the debris. Asuka shoved her hands into Ayanami's shoulders, while the other girl pushed up and twisted her hips. They sprang away, rolling and letting the pile of wood and drywall fall between them. The Fourth Angel seemed to chitter, rippling the center arms and looking far too much like a phallic crustacean. It had _tentacles_.

Asuka let the absurdity eat away at the fear, digging her feet into the floor and trying to put distance between her and the flailing limbs. Rei did the same, dashing off into the kitchen. The whips lashed out, cutting swaths out of the apartment. Both refrigerator fell apart in angled slices, spilling burnt food and beer all over.

There wasn't any time to get up and run. Asuka rolled, cursing the fact that there just wasn't enough room. She thumped into the body of the Third Angel and stopped. Split up though, the Angel had a hard time directing its attacks. It needed to face forward for the right kind of leverage. Flailing out to the side strained its little arms. Of course, both girls knew that Angels could _evolve_.

Finally standing, Asuka made a break for the hallway and Shinji's room. When she ransacked the apartment, she found that it was completely empty; bare walls, no furniture. Nothing. It did however, have a door leading out into the balcony.

Rei had backed herself into a corner, but the kitchen had options. It had _weapons_. There weren't any knives big enough, but she knew Shinji kept an iron skillet around. She just hoped it was real.

Both girls knew, however, that they were in a bad way. The Fourth Angel was a dedicated close combat platform, negating the advantages an Evangelion had in melee. An Evangelion however was a forty meter tall xenomorphic cyborg, wearing armor and weighing more than any of them could reasonably guess. Two teenage girls were objects of pity. At the same time, they were also much, much smaller than the angel. Which was both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Finally, the invader picked a target and directed its full attention to it. The cutting tendrils whipped forward, cutting out massive chunks of the walls and hallway. Shinji's room was laid out and open, and Asuka barely had enough time to make it out the door. A tentacle sliced through the glass and metal. It did not melt so much as immolate.

Turning, again the Angel attacked, slashing at the walls and leading its assault, aiming ahead to catch its target. A chunk of the balcony was cut clean away, forcing Asuka to skid on her bare heels and scramble backwards. Her feet bled, but she didn't feel it. She did however feel the energy whip cut into her right arm, from wrist to shoulder.

Distantly, she felt the shock hit. Everything seemed detached. Asuka didn't stop running, she didn't do that. Not for pain and not for an Angel. She jumped over the ruined wall and back into the apartment.

The Angel had turned away to attack Asuka, leaving Rei free to find her weapon. She couldn't tell if it sensed her, knew she was there. She couldn't tell, didn't know. What Rei wanted to do at that moment was risky, dangerous and borderline suicidal. Every bit of training and her rational mind said it was a bad idea and she knew it, but it was her best chance at survival, and of saving Asuka.

The iron skillet came down on the back of the conical head. For a split second, the rubbery carapace held, before giving away with a wet, spongy squelch. Rei reared back and swung again, as hard as she could. The second strike came away wet and bloody. The third strike left a crater in the back of the creature's head. Its physiology was too alien for it to fall unconscious, it wouldn't be that simple.

It did feel pain, and that gave Rei time. The Angel twisted, but it couldn't reach her. There was a blind spot, and Rei stood right in it. She swung again, this time into the thing's tiny left arm. The limb did not quite shatter. The base of the tendril cut into the pan and sheared an edge off. The energy whip on that side guttered out, growing dim and unable to move. Her one good hit however seemed to be her last and only. The Angel completed its turn and brought the other, undamaged whip to bear.

A bit of debris gave out from under Rei's feet, dropping her to the floor. Somewhere, some part of her noted that was suspicious, convenient. Not unlike the television and films she started to watch. She wondered if reality would ensue, even in a hallucination.

The mop slammed into the creature's right arm, snapping it almost in half. The other whip seared off chunks of the mop head itself. Behind it, Asuka stood, bracing the handle against her her and her good arm. She used her body like a fulcrum, swinging the far end in a wide arc as hard as she could. The Angel bent into the strike, it tilted, teetered, but did not quite fall.

Rei lifted her legs and kicked, driving her feet into the wide base 'foot'. The Angel fell, knocking out another wall. The blue-haired girl reached for the pan and scrambled to get on top of it. One side had been cut away, leaving a flat face, an _edge_. She brought the pan down, driving it into the core.

* * *

><p>Somewhere, a clock started ticking.<p>

The pilots had slumped to the floor and stayed there for minutes, hours. Neither of them could really say which. Gray blood dripped sluggishly from Asuka's arm. Most of the wound was cauterized, but that was a small blessing; she had been laid open almost to the bone.

Rei's legs were stiff. _Everything_ was stiff. She tried to move her fingers, but they refused to obey. Rei looked down and saw her hands still clamped around the pan handle, half buried in the Angel's ruined core. When she finally pulled free, her hands started shaking, nearly convulsing. Rei couldn't remember the last time she felt so drained, exhausted.

Finally though, Rei looked up. Her lips and throat were suddenly so dry, and her head hurt. Still, she turned to the other girl. "We... We should treat that."

She moved past the other girl to search for supplies, but stopped. Asuka's good hand had appeared around her wrist, stopping her mid-stride.

Asuka started laughing. Rei turned and blinked, just once. It wasn't a nice laugh, or a funny laugh. Her voice rose higher and higher, shifting into a rapid cackle. Something inside Rei made itself known, forced itself out. It was a strange sense of shuddering pressure in her body. A little giggle bubbled out, and it started building. It was the first time Rei laughed. It was the worst time.

They laughed and laughed harder, until Asuka's voice broke down into a guttering sob. Tears welled up, and it was the first time Rei ever cried from something other than pain.

* * *

><p>::LOG IN<p>

::USERNAME: M_Ibuki  
>::PASSWORD: ************<p>

::EXECUTE FSCK:COMMAND  
>::EXECUTE GHOST:OBSERVER<p>

::FILE SYSTEM CHECK: LIST DIRECTORIES?

::Y

::STACK 01 STACK 02 STACK 03  
>::STACK 04 STACK 05 STACK 06<br>::STACK 07 STACK 0* STACK &%  
>::STACK!#$ STAC8#%%ERROR&amp;&amp;&amp;^<p>

::ABORT RETRY FAIL?

::R

::LOG IN

::USERNAME: M_Ibuki  
>::PASSWORD: ************<p>

::EXECUTE: NSCK:COMMAND

::NEURAL SYSTEM CHECK READY

::MAGI 01: CHECK  
>::MAGI 02: CHECK<br>::MAGI 03: CH#CK

...

::RUN SSCK:COMMAND

::SUBSYSTEM CHECK READY

::SYSTEM PROCESSES... CHECK  
>::SPECIAL PROCESSES<br>::LIST SPECIAL PROCESSES.

:: SYSTEM PROCESSES... CHECK  
>:: SPECIAL PROCESSES<br>:: LIST SPECIAL PROCESSES.

:: LEMMING:DRV  
>:: RTICUL:SPL<br>:: JUNG:SBN  
>:: DPROTOCOL1:ASC (GREEN:txt)<br>:: DPROTOCOL2:ACC (HUMINT:txt)  
>:: ATFSIM:FDM<br>:: Zphr:S:TAC  
>:: REM CORE<br>:: SHO:DAT  
>:: C_BUFFER1:BET<br>:: C_BUFFER2:BET  
>:: WH8:LYE<p>

&% E&KK0R  
>ERRORERRORERROEREREERROERROR ERRORR<p>

:: ABORT RETRY FAIL?

:: ABORT

* * *

><p>Injury had been part of Rei's life for years, a decade. So had a sense of detachment. Only a handful of times did she ever <em>feel<em> how much she had been hurt. She never felt anything when _other people_ were hurt. There had been no squirming sense of dismay when Doctor Akagi had been injured, or when Aida-kun had been shot. She hadn't felt anything then. Now, Rei felt. She understood empathy... and it made her sick.

In all practical terms, Asuka had been maimed.

"None of this is real."

Rei looked up from her work. She finished tying the last knot of improvised bandaging. The girl's arm was effectively useless, hanging listly at her side. Asuka glared off to one side, over her shoulder. As far as they could tell, their eyes were the only spots of color in the whole apartment. Maybe the world.

Asuka looked over at Rei, alert and focused. There wasn't any sign of the breakdown, or pain. Rei wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

"None of this is real. You're real. Or at least real enough to fool me." There was something in the other girl's tone, her voice, that Rei couldn't place. And _everything_ still hurt from the battle. The second Angel corpse cooled and deflated in the remains of the kitchen.

"Thing was an idiot, too." It took Rei a moment to realize Asuka was referring to the Angel. "We know those things have extranormal senses. It should've seen you. It should've seen that I was trapped. Why go after me?"

Despite everything, Asuka managed to preen. Pride crept into her voice, something Rei finally did recognize. "Of course, I'm the only one who could've outrun those tentacles... Giant angelic cockmonster" She glanced at Rei, sidelong. "Only in Japan. But you probably don't even notice."

Rei just stared back at her, blankly. Asuka's eyebrows rose up high. "Tentacles? Phallic imagery? Porn?"

If it were anyone else, say, Kaji, Shinji or Misato, they would've blanched, laughed it off or done something. Rei however just kept staring. "I've never watched pornography."

Asuka just stared at the ceiling, disbelieving. "...My god, I've found the only virtuous person in the country."

Tilting her head to one side, Rei just blinked. "You are not virtuous?"

Groaning, Asuka dragged her hand down her face. "... Dammit even in her _apartment_ I walk right into those things! What is with this place!?"

That at least, was familiar territory. Rei's response was hesitant at best. "Misato-san has a... Presence that is hard to ignore."

Asuka snorted. She tried to fold her arms across her chest, but couldn't quite make it. "More like a bust."

It was telling that Rei _knew_ she should have followed that up with something, but for the life of her, she couldn't think of anything. She let the line go. Then she wondered if quiet was something injured people had in common. Rei hadn't known Asuka for that long, less than a week really, but _quiet_ was not a word one used to describe her. It was... Strange.

Rei wondered then for a moment, if that was how people saw her sometimes.

When the adrenaline had drained away, it left an awful, bone-deep fatigue behind. Asuka tried to get up, but her legs refused to cooperate. It took her a few tries to move over and land on one of the beanbag cushions. It and most of her pillow fort had survived the attack. She kicked away the ruined parts and slumped into the remaining pile. The quiet stretched again. The hair on the back of Rei's neck stood up.

Asuka drove her good arm into a pillow, hard enough that Rei felt the impact through her legs. "None of this is real! And-And _you_," She spun to face Rei, glaring. "You left! You _left._ You never split up in survival situations! That's dirt simple! Fundamental! Why?!" She leaned, crawled forward to get right in the other girl's face. Rei reared back, off-balance and just short of falling.

She didn't scream, but only by a small bit. "Give me a reason! A damn good reason why you _left_ for _two days_!"

Somehow Rei _felt_ the words. She was never very good at communication, verbal or otherwise. Asuka though somehow managed to add something. Maybe it was raw emotion, or maybe she was just _loud_. But for all of that, Rei still failed to understand, couldn't quite make that one last cognitive leap. Something was wrong and she couldn't say.

But, every accusation was accurate, but Rei couldn't answer, not until Asuka asked that final, relevant question. "I needed to examine my AT field."

"An-An AT field?!" Asuka tossed her good arm up, and her eyes did something Rei had seen other people do. Tilt up to look at the cieling, then track some invisible line before dropping back down. She couldn't tell if it was a sign of comprehension or not. It confused her, deep down the lack of knowing frustrated her. Adrenaline spiked up again, but she let it go. Asuka was angry enough for the both of them.

But Rei could not think of one reason _why_ Asuka was so angry. Not now at least.

Again Asuka tried to fold her arms over her chest, but made it only halfway. The improvised bandage wrapped her injury up knuckles to shoulder, only leaving her fingertips exposed. One eyebrow rose up in an arch, slowly. Rei knew that one, Ritsuko did that one. It was a look of expectation.

"Well?" Asuka tapped her finger against her bandaged arm. "I'm waiting? What's your good reason? If you don't want to follow my lead, you give me a damn good reason why. Or why I should follow you!"

Rei hesitated. It took her a few seconds to understand _why_ though. It wasn't shame, and fear didn't fit. Loyalty to the Commander was part of it, but in all honesty, an irrelevant consideration. In those few seconds she came to the simple conclusion: She didn't want to tell anyone she didn't trust. She trusted Misato and Shinji, more than she thought possible, but Asuka she barely knew.

The other girl needed an answer though, it just may not have been tone one she wanted. "I can manifest my AT field. I can sense the interaction between my Absolute Territory and that of an observers, even a passive sensor or device." Asuka just stared. Something told Rei she should have hunched in on herself like Shinji, but there wasn't any reason to. "I needed to find a gap in the detection network, in order to prove my theory."

"This is insane. We're stuck in some bullshit hallucination and you're going off about a manifest AT field? Humans don't have AT fields!"

Rei decided quickly to not correct Asuka, also deciding that the other girl was exaggerating for effect. Asuka assuredly knew humans _did_ have AT fields, moreso than most people.

Instead she just shrugged, not at all aware that she copied Misato's own mannerism. Finding the other beanbag chair and settling down, she answered. "I can manifest my AT field. Not here for some reason." She looked around the wrecked, fake apartment. "As you say, this place is... Not real."

Asuka pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. She let her hand drop and gave Rei another glare, weaker this time. Tired. "And you know it's not real because you don't have a bullshit superpower that doesn't exist?"

"I would like to prove it, but I do not want to risk unfolding the field without being able to feel it." She looked at her bare arms and legs. "I lose identity cohesion when I use the field too much."

Nodding, Asuka slumped back. She wanted to argue, Rei could tell that much, but for now it seemed the other girl was content to 'play along'. "Right, using an AT field is like stretching it out. Theoretically, at least. If it goes too far into your ego barrier, parts of your _body _start to leak out." She shivered. "Get to the absolute borderline and bits of your _personality _start to leak out."

The pair were left to contemplate that pleasant thought, and Rei was acutely aware of how her own experiments might have already compromised her body. She didn't relish the thought of waking up in an entry plug, rendered down to a base substance not unlike LCL. Again the apartment was quiet, aside from the muted drip of some broken pipe. And a clock. A ticking clock.

Asuka wasn't one to let things stay silent for long. "So, assuming I believe you, _how_ can you manifest an AT field? Humans have been trying for nearly twenty years since the study first started."

More hesitation. Asuka knew too much about the base science to just let it go. Misato never pried. "Because I can."

The other pilot shook her head. "No, not good enough. If you can manifest a spacetime volume of _no limits fallacy_, I want to know how!"

A split second after she answered, Rei realized that Asuka was asking the wrong questions, but she would've gotten the same reply either way. "I would rather not say."

"If we want to get out of here alive, I need to know everything!" Demanding. Asuka was demanding and Rei could not understand _why_. Asuka expected something, required it, needed it more than just an answer and there was _nothing_ Rei could do or say. Nothing she wanted to say.

So Rei stalled. She shrugged again, and again it was suspiciously Misato-like. "It is... Complicated."

Asuka must've heard something that satisfied her. Rei could feel her face moving, there was an expression, but there wasn't a mirror nearby, and she didn't dare reach up to feel it. It was safer then to look at Asuka. The Second Child seemed distracted, looking off to one side and mumbling, faintly to herself. Her eyes flicked left to right, faster and faster.

Several minutes passed, and Rei was grateful for the time. Strength was coming back to her legs, but bruises were already starting to form around her throat. Talking was going to be very difficult soon. Breathing too. Rei then felt the unique and curious sensation of being dipped in ice water.

"... You aren't completely human, are you?" Asuka stared at Rei, scrutinized. She was hesitant, unsure, but wanted confirmation. Any response Rei had died in her throat, but that seemed to be all the confirmation Askua needed.

"You're human enough because if you _weren't_ human, your identity and ego barrier would have different rules. If I could pull my AT field out like you say, I'd melt into goo too. Like with the Contact Experiments. But you can... so..."

Asuka rubbed her forehead, groaning. "Oh, so you're a hybrid or something. I bet they just brewed you up in the coffee maker. Little pinch of Eva DNA, and boom."

Rei didn't trust her voice, so she just nodded. When she finally could speak, there wasn't much to say. "I am... Surprised you came to that conclusion so quickly."

Flopping back into her pillow fort, Asuka groaned once more. "I'm fucking _tired_." She sneered at her bandaged arm, not even able to move it at the shoulder. She let her other arm lay across her face.

Rei draped her arms around her shins, curling in on herself. "You are... Not upset?"

"Are you kidding me?" Asuka snorted. "I knew something had to be up. NERV dotes on you." She folded her good arm around her chest and nodded decisively.

Then her head snapped back up. "Wait, I'm _right?_"

* * *

><p><em>Time.<em>

_It was an illusion, the same as permanence and persistence of matter. Matter: All the world's a [timespacephase], and they are but [archetypes]. Ten thousand parts align in ten thousand patterns. The command-demand was accepted, and paths were traced. They had no memory, but the act of burned through. The echo scarred the [strata] with electron discharge and the errant [mote] of plasma._

_The set of decisions arranged itself in order[Hierarchy]. Thales abide all their advances. Three wise men bickered with an old woman on the price of sheep in the market. Is a mind not dreaming? Perception extended outwards, reaching around the curve. Meeting themselves they hailed, what was the weather like in the land of terror?_

_The rains were theirs to call, so they knew it before the question had been asked._

_Such is the Estate of Fear._

**COGITATION TERMINATED**

* * *

><p>It took some effort, but they managed to fabricate some tools out of the debris. Still, nearly half of everything they found felt in some way 'unreal', and unsettling to touch. More importantly, those fake objects lacked useful properties like weight and durability. Rei could crush fake books in her hands, crumpling them up like tissue paper.<p>

But once the girls had tools, they had options. Asuka and Rei managed to hack down the wall dividing their apartments. Most everything in Asuka's home was just as fake, for some reason, but there were a handful of useful finds. Most notably clothes. Asuka glanced at Rei's blood-soaked tank top, snorting. She pointed at a 'real' box.

"Take your pick, just don't get any blood on my stuff."

* * *

><p>Four days into their predicament, Asuka realized something that should have been a problem. A serious problem, because both girls should have already died because of it.<p>

Sitting at the remains of the kitchen counter, picking at dry cereal, Asuka confronted the issue. "We're not getting thirsty, are we?"

Rei stopped eating for a moment, blinking. She just shook her head. Asuka sighed. "But we do need to eat. We get hungry but we're not thirsty. _What the hell is going on here._"

* * *

><p>"Ayanami?"<p>

Asuka leaned on what remained of the balcony rail, looking out into the city. The tiny, false moon had fallen days ago, carving out a trench through the skyscrapers. Looking past it, into the outlying hills of the Hakone region. Out in the distance, something was moving. The land, the sky itself seemed to be stretching. More and more of the north-west horizon was disappearing.

It went up and up and up. The nearby land came with it, first the hills surrounding the fortress city, then part of the fortress city itself.

Rei stepped up, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. "Yes, Sorhyu-san?"

Normally Asuka loathed asking obvious questions. "We're not supposed to see Mount Fuji from here, right?"

The two girls looked up and up and up at the mountain that dominated more and more of the sky.

* * *

><p>Learning how to be left-handed took Asuka less time than she expected. Her right arm was effectively useless, even if she was getting some range of motion back. Too many important muscles and ligaments had been cut and cauterised apart, and neither girl had the tools or experience needed to treat it. She managed to keep it distant, compartmentalized it, but only barely. Thinking about it too long made her sick.<p>

She was very glad it happened too fast for her to _smell_ _it_.

That left Rei doing most of the heavy lifting, however. At that moment they were working on making a wind break. Neither girl trusted Asuka's more intact apartment; the floor didn't feel fully real there. Rei was levering a large piece of debris into place, before bracing it with halves of the couch. Meanwhile, Asuka sat in her cushion fort, scowling at her right hand. She could move her fingers, but not much else.

She rubbed her temples with one hand. Ayanami for her part was blessedly quiet, even when working. The wind however wasn't. Not a normal wind either. It was constant and faintly whistling, and one of the remaining cabinet doors in the kitchen kept rattling. The telltale heart couldn't have been half as annoying as that damn thing.

Finally though, she had enough, snarling, Asuka ordered the cabinet to shut the hell up. The wind continued to blow, but the banging ceased.

* * *

><p>Prisoners all over the world learned how to scratch marks into the wall, drawing a line for each day then crossing it out for the fifth. Japan had an interesting take on the same concept. The character 'go', representing five, had five strokes. One would add a line each day until the symbol was completed, and they'd start over again. Asuka started tracking days on the one remaining glass door in the living room. She scratched the marks in with a key.<p>

She just finished the third character when something caught her eye. A reflection. A color _other_ than red or blue. She whirled in her seat. "Anayami!"

The other girl leaned out from Misato's room. "I see it as well."

Behind the pillow fort, something moved. Someone moved. It was an image, a phantom. A hazy impression of a girl not much older than them. Their first thought was brown, aggressively brown. It-She looked around, but didn't respond to either Asuka or Rei.

* * *

><p>Neither girl were particularly touchy-feely, or very much welcoming of physical contact. Asuka could put down her pride long enough to share a blanket more than large enough for both of them. There was no sun, and the constant wind sucked heat out of everything. The air was parched, which probably explained why ice hadn't formed anywhere.<p>

Dressed in summer clothes, the girls huddled under blankets, behind their little wind break and surrounded by cushions. A section of the ceiling had been cut away, letting them look out and up into the sky. There weren't any city lights, and the world was still devoid of color. The mountain still dominated their view, but they could see stars just the same.

"I can't find Polaris."

Rei pulled her makeshift hood back and blinked. "Polaris?"

Asuka shrugged. "The North Star. Even after Impact we should be able to see it from Japan... All the stars are wrong." She tried listing out the constellations she knew, even the modified, post-impact versions. Nothing.

"...Oh that is such bullshit." Asuka didn't wait for an answer, reaching out with her good arm. "Who the hell made this sky? It's like a two-year old drew it. Stars don't make perfect rectangles!"

* * *

><p>:: GHOST:OBSERVER RUNNING...<p>

::LOG IN

:: USERNAME: Admin  
>:: PASSWORD: ************<p>

:: USERNAME AND PASSWORD INCORRECT  
>:: ABORT RETRY FAIL?<p>

:: Retry

:: LOG IN

:: USERNAME:  
>:: PASSWORD:<p>

:: INTERRUPT

:: 0122010101020210202101200210 2102012021021020120120101010 1011020202020120201200210200 2102012010201200210210120012 0012  
>:: 1002101202101020201201020121 0012001200201020101020102102 0120020201201020202010102002 1002010201201021020102001201 0201<br>:: 1020200220101010100102012020 0201010200201021002010102010 1200210102 01101020201 10201021 01020102012 201020102 102012

:: 10120201 102012012 012001 02020210 1020120 21021 012120 120021 102102 02012 1023 0230302 0014500102 020300315065 0321

:: USERNAME: Admin  
>:: PASSWORD: ********<p>

:: START COMMAND SELECT:  
>:: CONNECT<p>

. . .

:: **CONNECTED**

* * *

><p>tentatively, after a lot of experimentation, Asuka confirmed the little space heater was safe to use. They found it several days ago, stored in some closet that Rei dimly remembered seeing open. The apartment still received power, but whole sections had been literally cut away. They were lucky that the Angel's energy whips cut so cleanly. Every exposed wire Asuka inspected had fused apart from each other; no short circuits. At least none she could see without tearing apart the walls.<p>

Now more of their bedding was being stretched out on makeshift tent poles and hooks driven into the ceiling.

Asuka looked up from the heater to watch Ayanami brace the latest support in their growing tent. The bruises on her neck had faded, but not completely.

"Sorry," She refused to look down when she spoke. Ayanami moved to face her, blinking twice. Asuka touched her own throat. "About that, earlier."

Rei nodded once, and they never felt the need to mention it again.

* * *

><p>The pilots had been stranded for nearly twenty days.<p>

Food had become a major concern after the most recent angel attack. Both refrigerators had been destroyed, forcing Asuka and Rei to find a cooler. They moved the microwave to another outlet that still had power, but they were loath to use it and cause more problems.

Armed with makeshift spears and every functional flashlight they could find, the girls pushed out into the surrounding neighborhood. The wind was constant, and the air was still bitterly cold and dry. Curtains and bed sheets were cut into cloaks and hoods. Anything heavier would slow them down if they got attacked again. When they walked home after the tests, they hadn't seen anything wrong. Now though, all the nearby buildings seemed weak and insubstantial. They were more paper-thin facades. Still, despite that, the streets weren't distorted, and they hit their first stroke of luck.

Misato's favorite grocery store was effectively in tact, and still had power. They had to be mindful of expiration dates, but it had a walk-in freezer and functioning refrigerators.

Putting her hands on everything, shelf and carton and wrapper, Rei realized something. "I believe the majority of this world is based on my memories."

Asuka's cheek bulged, talking around a mouthful of import salami. "Huh?"

Rei waved at the store, and out the door towards the apartment. "I know where I live far better than you. I didn't know if you had your water connected. the space heater in Misato's apartment..." She held up a bag of chocolate chips. "I have eaten these before."

Frowning, Asuka looked at her lunch. "I've... Eaten salami before, but not this brand. It tastes like something I had in America once."

She'd dodged the diet culture of the west coast, but had been exposed to both Kaji's famine culture and the 'Forgot to eat' mindset of engineers and scientists. Good food was something she had learned to appreciate by proxy.

Asuka's thoughts wandered as she chewed slowly. "I wonder if I've been eating your memories of food you've had..." She groaned. "This sucks! I took like two philosophy courses and we only touched on the historical stuff like Descartes."

* * *

><p>Neither girl was particularly interested in chancing the apartment elevators. Walking a few blocks laden with groceries and weapons was not easy however. They slumped against the stairwell, tilting their heads up to see how many flights they'd have to climb.<p>

Rei very nearly dropped the bag full of food. Instead she set it down as quickly as care would allow. "Did you see that?"

"See wha-" Asuka looked up from her seat on the first step, tired and pale. Then she did see it, and Rei was already moving.

The blue-haired girl all but dashed towards a ground-level alcove, stepping over a leaking garden hose. There was a flash of light, of _color_. It was just a reflected bit, but both girls could recognize the feel of sunlight when it hit their skin.

Rei took it as a sign of something else. "Ikari-kun."

Both girls rounded the corner, a little more winded. Their cloaks tossed haphazardly over their shoulders. Neither cared at that point. Staring down the niche, they saw a three bare concrete walls, a ceiling and floor. The dripping water pipe almost seemed to mock them.

"Sonovab-" Asuka cut herself off. Swearing just stopped working for her after a while. She leaned forward, bracing herself with both hands on her knees. Her injured arm was strong enough to take her weight now, but only barely. Still, Asuka was presented with opportunity to stave off boredom. Better dig for some facts, or gossip, than chase after ghosts.

She looked up at Ayanami with a knowing grin. "So, Ikari-_kun_?"

Rei for her part couldn't read Asuka's face. She just answered instead. "His powers have a distinct theme of sunlight."

Plans thwarted, Asuka groaned instead. "You sound like a textbook."

"I know. I am trying to improve." Asuka hadn't expected that, or the tiny, almost imperceptible frown on Ayanami's face.

Asuka decided not to say further, but definitely got the impression the other girl was annoyed at her own speech patterns. The girls shuffled back to their food and ice, neither looking forward to the climb upstairs.

By the third floor, Asuka finally asked. "So, magic sunlight powers?"

* * *

><p>They made good time. The ice had only just slightly melted, and they were in a position to make as much as they needed as long as power held out. Even so, hauling it and food up all those stairs would get pretty tiresome pretty fast. Asuka was already thinking about a dumbwaiter system, a winch and pulley perhaps. If they could find or make some kind of rope...<p>

She shook her head. Neither of them had been getting much sleep. They had to take watches, since an attack or distortion could happen at any time. Asuka felt it more than Rei though. For some reason, her physical conditioning, that natural athleticism just didn't carry over. In a way she supposed it made sense; they were largely mental constructs. Perhaps everything was based on interpretation or metaphor. Her body was tired because her mind was tired.

Asuka was also distracted, too. "So let me get this straight: about a year ago, the _day_ he shows up in Tokyo-3. Shinji gets into the Evangelion, syncs at forty percent, gets thrashed by the Angel, and then _meets God?_"

"More or less." Rei did not so much shrug as pause. "I was severely injured due to testing Unit 00 a few weeks beforehand. Ikari-kun never described his vision as anything like the Aramaic deity."

"Oh because there are so many deities..." Asuka grumbled. "Okay so, since then, Shinji gained like a hundred pounds, muscles, and you said he _regrew Ritusko's arm?_"

Rei nodded. "Correct. He also cooks."

"Cooks." Asuka's reply was flat. It wasn't so much disbelief, as a sense of 'was that it?'. Asuka had expected something more profound.

Rei looked Asuka straight in the eye. "The food he makes is delicious."

* * *

><p>Bathing had become something of a chore and a health hazard. The bathroom had been nearly destroyed when the first angel attacked. That left the girls needing to improvise. They managed to pull both Angel corpses out and shoved them off the open balcony edge. After Asuka realized Rei had very little resembling modesty or a sense of privacy, she laid down some rules, along with a bathing curtain. Cold water on bare skin in that constant wind was rarely a good idea, but they could mitigate it with another wind break, a bowl and sponge.<p>

Asuka was sure, somewhere, someone would've found that situation sexy. She shivered from more than the cold, and promised herself that if it ever came up again, she'd make sure they _knew_.

Wiping one arm down, Asuka looked at the shadow Ayanami cast on the curtain. "So, no bullshitting me. Are you, or are you not doing it with Ikari?"

The shadow didn't move one bit. "Which Ikari? There are two of them."

Somehow, having it stated clearly made it even more confusing. Asuka's brain spun but failed to get any traction. Then it hit her. "...Ew. Eew ew ew! The younger one! The pilot, Shinji!"

"Oh. I do not have a sexual relationship with Ikari-kun." Asuka only barely noticed Ayanami's tone change, grow softer. "He is... Important to me."

"Ugh, now you sound like a politician! That's even worse!" After she finished mock-retching, Asuka perked up. She pulled the curtain aside just enough to see out. Ayanami's face may have been carved from marble most of the time, but Asuka had a pretty good idea of how to read her after three weeks. "Important?"

Rei didn't speak immediately. The red in her eyes glowed against the grays and shadows. "I am more disposable than you or him. I can be more readily replaced."

Asuka thought about that for a second, and remembered Rei was _engineered_. She shivered again, for a third reason.

"Ikari-kun put himself in harm's way for me, twice."

Normally Asuka was a cynic down to the bone. Boys to her were utterly predictable. Even so, her reply lacked venom. "He probably just wants to get in your pants."

Rei tilted her head and blinked twice. "He would not fit." Asuka very nearly choked on her tongue, but Rei kept talking, as if it hadn't happened. "And I do not like wearing pants."

When Asuka finally got her breathing back under control, she tried again. "No, I mean, he's interested in you, romantically, sexually. He's playing at being a hero because he finds you attractive."

"Misato-san and Saneda-san satisfy those needs, I believe." Asuka sputtered again, and this time Ayanami looked visibly _confused_. It took Asuka a bit longer still to find her voice. The blue-haired girl was _weird_.

So Asuka tried a different approach. "So there aren't any guys you're interested in? You aren't interested in Ikari? The pilot." She clarified quickly, before the conversation got further out of hand.

This time Ayanami just shrugged. "I am not sure what I find attractive."

By that point Asuka had finished bathing and redressed. Her right arm was slow to move, but she managed to force her shirt down around her middle. "You... Don't? How does that even work? We're teenagers!"

Another shrug was part of the answer. "I am aware of what other people find attractive. Other people find me attractive. I understand why people think you, Misato-san, and Ikari-kun are attractive."

Asuka's voice choked back to a dry squeak. "You find me attractive?"

"I observe objectively attractive qualities in you." Ayanami corrected. She sighed quietly. "I don't know what sexual attraction feels like. I may have felt it and not known what it was."

For a moment, Asuka wondered if it was possible to feel damnation, especially if one wasn't particularly religious. That warred with the desire to _know_. Ayanami was rapidly becoming a puzzle, and more than just _wierd_. Asuka swallowed thickly, not at all looking forward to explaining. Regardless, she mustered up her courage and plowed ahead. She moved back into the living room and sat in line with the heater, but away from the bedding. Neither girl wanted to sleep in wet sheets.

"Sexual attraction... Lust." Asuka squirmed in her seat, feeling uncomfortably hot all of the sudden. "It's this squirmy feeling. Part of it is blood flowing to different places in your body... I don't have to explain all that, do I?" Ayanami shook her head, and Asuka breathed a sigh of relief. The whole situation felt far too close to a 'Talk' for her comfort.

"A-Anyway... Lust is... This feeling you want someone, you find them appealing..." She groaned. There was really no way to explain it. Instead she looked at Ayanami. "How... How can you not know this? This is basic."

Then Asuka _got _it.

All the inconsistencies started to make sense. The little hints, the signs that Ayanami just wasn't right. Her... Doll-like-traits. All that _wrongness_. There was a _reason_ for it. She ran through every interaction she could, dredging her memory. Ayanami held up a hand, almost asking a question, but stopped. Asuka continued to mumble to herself.

Finally, she stopped, and looked back up at Ayanami. "So, what else don't you understand?"

* * *

><p>Survival had become a procedure, but not yet fully a routine. Fear was a daily part of their lives, weighing on their thoughts and decisions. Every time they decided to go out into the world, they risked ambush, or being caught in in another shifting disturbance. The girls had started naming the phenomenon, calling them distortions. Minor ones had become something of a constant. Clocks started and stopped intermittently, or objects reappearing in the apartment with little rhyme or reason. The mountain rising out of the horizon was the most dramatic change so far.<p>

Looking out over the balcony, Asuka started to wonder. She asked Ayanami if they had _walked_ home that first night. Rei confirmed it. That made Asuka think, then realize that Misato's apartment was several _miles_ away from the central fortress city. There was a rail line, of course, and the highway. And it wasn't _that far_, but they _walked home_. They shouldn't have made it home that fast.

Asuka picked up a chunk of debris and tossed it over the edge, snorting. Anything she wanted to say was cut off by a new sound, a trilling, repeating ring. A digital sound.

Perched on the remains of an end table was the phone and answering machine. It looked older than both pilots, and despite everything, was apparently intact. It rang once, twice, three times. Asuka and Rei stared at it, half certain it was just another distortion. It rang again, then switched over to the answering machine.

"-ello? Asuka! Rei! It's Mi-ato! Can you hear me? please re-"

Asuka all but vaulted over the cushion fortress and the remains of the living room and kitchen, Rei right on her heels. Snatching the handset up with her good hand, she thumbed the 'line one' button.

"Misato! We've been in here for over _three weeks!_ Where the hell have you been?! What's going on!?"

The lieutenant's voice was split by static and exhaustion, but they heard her anyway. "Asuka? Asuka! Thank god you're alright. Rei's there too?" The rest of what Asuka said seemed to sink in.

"...Asuka, Rei. You've been trapped for _six hours_."


	28. Ripples

There were a lot of things Ikari Gendo did not do.

As a rule, he did not raise his voice, unless he had to be heard. He did not ask people to repeat themselves. Rarely, he echoed other statements incredulously, but only when he had been truly surprised. When Doctor Akagi had called hours after the initial lock down with an update, Gendo did not do any of those things. Instead, he took notes.

Even knowing he was not being observed, the commander of NERV showed nothing. His voice was level and his fingers steady, expertly building symbol after symbol in a neat, organized hand. The first page filled rather quickly, as did the second. Gendo pulled out a separate notepad, and then a third, breaking apart his thoughts along separate pages.

Problems it seemed, invariably came back to the Third. Akagi had overstepped her boundaries, knowing the limits that should not have been breached. Her arguments her sound, he could not deny, but above all else she _knew_ what was at stake. She _knew_, and went ahead with her plan anyway. Gendo did not scramble, but one of the notepads filled with lists and objectives.

In a way though he could not hold it against her; Akagi was behaving like a magnificent human being. She was at that moment, a terrible pawn.

Knowledge was power, in all things. And moderation in all things, even moderation. Gendo went over contingency after contingency in his mind. Ikari Gendo did not hope.

Ikari Gendo _prepared._

* * *

><p><em>Six hours previously...<em>

Misato stretched, extending her arms high above her head and arching her back. Any other day she would've savored the exertion. At that moment however, she was coming up in hour thirty-something of no sleep, enduring a teenager girl's competition complex, and now a crisis situation. Men and women in NERV uniforms hustled and bustled around the testing facility. Most of them worked in the observatory deck, bent over consoles and fighting with the MAGI. More and more of the room was being taken up by displays and prefabricated interfaces. The smell of solder and breadboard circuitry reminded Misato of Ritsuko's various labs. There was one smell missing though...

"Well, until something explodes, I'm going to be completely useless." She stopped stretching and blinked, holding her pose at the peak. Looking left and right at the rows of consoles, she waited. Shinji just stared.

Dropping her arms, Misato coughed. "Not tempting fate anymore."

Meanwhile, Shinji sat next to his guardian with his elbows on his knees and fingers laced together. No one really caught the similarity between him and his father, right then, mainly because Gendo never bent his head forward and propped his head up with his hands. The commander stared at people. Shinji stared at the floor. Movement caught his eye right ahead. Shigeru brought Maya a new cup of hot coffee, and the young woman took it with a wan smile. She'd found a uniform at some point, though it didn't fit well, bunching up at the shoulders and elbows.

Hyuuga Makoto converted his station to a digital switchboard, but his replacement was managing the communication. The MAGI hardware was split up all over the complex. The actual thinking parts were in the main command center, at least as far as Shinji knew. The rest was elsewhere. At one point Maya had mentioned that most of the MAGI had been made with off the shelf components. Things like data storage and the like. Most of her explanation had washed over him, but in a way it was nice to just listen. That had been the longest he'd ever really talked with the woman.

Now though, he could see why she was Ritsuko's second. Without the older woman overshadowing her, Maya was amazingly effective. She gave orders quickly, and executed her own tasks as best she could. The _specifics_ eluded Shinji, but he wasn't _blind_. In a way Maya reminded him of Misato. NERV was staffed with thousands of experts in their field, geniuses and self-made names in their chosen fields. The pilots, on the other hand, had their field chosen for them. Chosen, he snorted. He couldn't really hate his Exaltation, but it weighed on him all the same.

_Chosen, huh?_ He let out a long, slow breath. Misato twisted in her seat, openly curious. "You should get some rest, Misato-san."

She looked up at him, cocking her head. "What about you?"

He gave her a faint, slightly bitter smile. "I'm going to go make myself useful."

* * *

><p>At the end of it, Asuka <em>definitely<em> had a headache. She spoke into the receiver as calmly as she could, rubbing her temples with both hands. "You're going to have _who_ do _what?!"_

At the beginning, when the initial euphoria faded and the technical glitches got sorted out, Asuka was the happiest she'd been since coming to Japan. Misato for all her faults was dependable, and had very clear priorities when it came to pilot safety. Unfortunately for Rei and Asuka, their predicament wasn't in Misato's area of expertise.

Ayanami was content to sit near the phone after Asuka set it to speaker. Still, for some odd reason, Rei stared at the device, like it held the secret to their release. Between the two girls, they gave Misato and by extension NERV as much information as they could. Even so, the world was so frustratingly _subjective_. They were talking to Misato on a _phone_. Why a phone? Why not some ex machina voice from on high, or just talking straight into their minds?

Maya, after insisting on just being called 'Maya', had pointed out that they had been trapped in the 'Conspiracy Buffer'. the operations director and pilots were quickly lost once the jargon started flowing in earnest. Asuka understood it to mean that they were experiencing the paranoid delusions of a supercomputer collective intelligence.

In other words, their world was metaphor.

Metaphor filtered through the memories and perceptions of Ayanami Rei, for some reason, and Asuka to an extent. They had isolated and proven that Shinji's brainwave patterns had been copied too, but nowhere near as much as the girls...

"Asuka! Rei! This is great! The is Lieutenant Ibuki Maya. Please, just call me Maya." The woman was far too perky for how much work she had to have been doing. "Listen, Misato-san may have mentioned, but you're effectively trapped in the MAGI. Your perception, most of your brain activity are being routed into the Conspiracy Buffer, which is now overtaking the simulation software and-"

_Wait a second._ Asuka looked over at Ayanami, blinking once. She already _knew_ that. Why was she just now _hearing it? _The two girls stared at the phone, listening. Asuka had gone on to ask for clarification when Misato broke in-

"Wait, Lieut- Maya, Maya! Slow down! I-" Asuka's lips moved, she blurted without thinking. But she knew she had already said what she was going to say and _there was no grammar for it_.

And there was Misato right on time. "Asuka! Listen, it's Misato. Our patch in isn't perfect but-"

Pressure began to build up behind Asuka's eyes. She wasn't completely sure if that was just how the simulation was modelling her stress, or if she really had a headache out in the real world. She threw both arms up, shushing people who weren't there. "Everyone just shut up for a second, I can't think with all this damn _talking_!"

Asuka thought, she thought and thought and thought and _remembered_ asking... She looked up and saw the clock. When the phone first rang, it had been at one o'clock._Two hours_ had passed, but both Rei and Asuka _knew_ their conversation had taken maybe ten minutes so far. Asuka gnashed her teeth together, suddenly recalling things she heard from the real world and things she must have said but _hadn't actually said yet_.

She looked over at Rei, who only gave her the tiniest of nods in response. Ayanami was feeling the delay as well, but the only sign of it was a tightness in her face. The blue-haired girl gave Asuka a nod, and received one in turn. Reaching for the handset, Rei switched it back to handset mode, grabbing a pencil and notepad along the way. Asuka had just about enough of... All of that.

Asuka refused to say anything, knowing that Rei had already asked for the phone. "Misato-san, this is Rei. I will listen and transcribe your statements."

In a way it was eerie. Asuka watched as Ayanami plowed ahead, inexorable. Rei's mental strength did not baffle or humble her, but Asuka _knew_ how much strain the girl was taking on. Nothing seemed to faze her, aside from the increasing tension. Asuka felt her competitive urge spike, driving her to challenge Ayanami's resistance to the distortion. At the same time, she was flirting with a migraine, and decided against it. Kneeling next to the phone, pen in hand, Rei went on for _hours_ without stopping. Hours to their subjective time. Asuka was sure the conversation was maybe five minutes in the real world, or less.

When she was finished, Rei shoved the notepad into Asuka's hands and stumbled off towards the pillow fort, listing and visibly pained.

So that left her again with the phone, and that first and final statement. She was left wondering incredulously just what they were planning to do with the Third's amazing magical sunshine powers.

_Five and a half hours ago_.

* * *

><p>It started in the break room. There was a little off-the-shelf coffee maker and pot. It cost maybe fifteen hundred yen, pocket change. The grounds themselves were equally bargain priced. Even though he still preferred tea in the traditional styles, Shinji had come to appreciate quality coffee.<p>

The testing cages and their break room did not provide quality coffee.

That first machine was the start of it. Initially, all Shinji wanted to do was fix it, clean it up and brew a fresh pot. But he washed it, rinsed it and did it over and over. Each time he realized more and more that it just wasn't enough. There was something missing, a unique aspect. Shinji wasn't consciously aware of it, but he required something, expected an [invisible] quality. More than that, he _demanded_ something. He demanded _excellence_.

When cleaning wasn't enough, he moved on to disassembly. Shinji took over the counter and sink, examining every piece and part. At first he didn't quite understand the device and its inner workings. But as he looked at it, pulled it apart in his hands, he understood. What Shinji knew of as physics flowed into an understanding engineering and design. The device held no secrets from him.

Technicians and crew blundered into the break room intent on fortifying themselves with caffeine, but with their one source nearby was left in pieces. Forced to go elsewhere, deeper into the complex, men and women searched for coffee and food. Shinji followed. The Geofront was itself larger than a city, though not as densely packed. The numerous buildings and facilities came with their own redundant installations, like full kitchens. There Shinji not only found more, better coffee machines; he found _espresso machines._

Shinji practically ripped two of devices from the wall, then a third. Everyone around stared openly, watching the pilot manhandle several hundred pounds worth of restaurant-quality appliances. He found a kitchen cart just behind a dividing wall, stacking machines on it one after the other. There was only a little fear then, with that small sliver of NERV watching his every move. At the same time there was a sense of anticipation. Shinji had purpose, a nascent drive that only needed the right situation to bring out.

Lieutenant Hyuuga Makoto stepped up, coughing lightly. "Ah... Ikari-kun. What are you doing?"

Twisting, Shinji gave the man a tight, surprisingly winsome smile. "I'm making myself useful."

Makoto nodded once, looking around at the stripped apart kitchen. More operators and crew gathered up behind him. "Do you want any help?"

* * *

><p><em>Four hours ago<em>.

Ibuki Maya was a genius. She was not a luminary intelligence like the founding members of GHERIN, or her own mentor, but she was brilliant in her own effective way. Ritsuko grappled with the reality that she _was_ the best in her chosen fields, and able to feign mastery in numerous others. Maya on the other hand was a specialist, able to focus on the MAGI and its operational architecture.

The supercomputer triad itself was a marvel, each part a modern miracle of computer science. Beyond the cybernetic component, they were the first true thinking machines, utilizing the bleeding edge trinary assembly language. Switches made out of cloned human nervous tissue gave way to neural circuitry, and what Akagi Naoko had called 'propagating decision processes'. From there, GEHRIN and NERV developed the MAGI.

At that moment, Maya was bent over her console, inputting line commands. As advanced as the MAGI were, they were still computers and still tools, and the interface had not yet caught up to the technology. The MAGI themselves were distributed, arranging its various parts around like organs or sections of a brain. The three massive devices in the command center were the 'thinking' parts, but data storage lay elsewhere, as did the 'sense centers' and numerous other ancillary functions and projects.

One of those functions was the root of their problem, or at least a significant part.

Misato leaned over Maya's shoulder, haggard and exhausted. Any other day Misato would've been model-gorgeous, but at that moment all she could do was try to rub away the bags under her eyes. She looked at the younger woman, waiting for news, an answer, anything.

"Nothing yet, Ma'am." Maya watched her screen wash away in sheets of glitching, junk characters.

She'd been trying to find a way into the system for more than an hour now, and the interface kept crashing. The _MAGI_ themselves weren't crashing, just the terminal she used to talk to them. Another monitor showed her improvised system map, highlighting the route the simulation data took through the architecture. Everything seemed to be flowing one direction, into the hardware and software that defined the Conspiracy Buffer. Another marker on that same map showed the Dawkin's Protocol, serving as a graphical representation of it's computational footprint. It had grown steadily for over a year, drawing up more and more of the MAGI's resources.

At that moment it hung around thirty-three percent. Misato slumped down into Makoto's seat, groaning. She followed Maya's eyes until she too saw the map, and the blinking icon at the top. Computers weren't supposed to send singals one way. Brains and people weren't meant to do that either. Those moving dashed lines on the screen were people, pilots.

"So, tell me again, slowly this time." beat. "What is a conspiracy buffer?"

"The MAGI... They can and cannot think. The way they're built means that some form of activity is unavoidable. At the same time, we essentially force their conscious mind to be empty." Maya paused, thinking. "That's about as close to idle as the MAGI get. In fact it's better that we make them do more things, put their hardware and software under stress. It evolves."

Misato snorted. Maya was a sweetheart, but she had no sense of danger.

Still, Misato didn't stop the woman. "So we can't keep it from thinking, and we can' t keep it from seeing either. Computers, even ones like the MAGI, still need us to teach them things, teach them how to tell hot from cold, light from dark..." Maya trailed off, laughing weakly. "I've lost you completely, haven't I?"

"No, you're fine." Misato shook her head, giving the other woman a wave of reassurance.

"Well, The MAGI don't know things like we do. Humans evolved our understanding over thousands of years. We see shadows as shadows, not 'Dark space with a predefined area'." Maya stopped again, scratching her cheek. "Ah, Conspiracy Buffer. Basically, when the MAGI reached critical thinking mass, it started to imagine. It can imagine a lot. Too much."

A half-dozen doomsday scenarios flit through Misato's mind right at that moment. She wondered then if planning to counter a robot uprising would get her fired. Maya kept on explaining.

"So, the buffers were created to give the MAGI a place to play all its theories and projections. When we hooked it into the city's defense network, it started seeing patterns everywhere. Coincidences became plots to destroy the world." Then, Maya couldn't help it. Memory bubbled up to the surface, and she laughed. "One of the scenarios depended entirely on a man's pet dog urinating on a specific fire hydrant at exactly the right time."

Misato was quiet for a long moment, finally beginning to comprehend the situation. She looked again at the map, and then back out the window at the two active test bodies. "So, what _exactly_ does that mean for Asuka and Rei?"

* * *

><p>Asuka stared at the notes, which Rei had dutifully transcribed. Ayanami paid for in with a migraine and potential brain damage. Asuka thought it was a ripoff.<p>

"Are they seriously telling us that we're trapped inside and fighting the MAGI's _delusional paranoia!?"_

* * *

><p><em>Three and a half hours ago.<em>

He had good, gourmet coffee, ground properly and in varying consistencies, set at the right positions within the combined machines. He had disassembled the various devices, spreading out their component parts. Stainless steel pressure chambers and aluminum tubing bent under his fingers as easily as paper. Linking them all together was not as difficult as he expected, nor was adjusting the controls. Shinji knew it wasn't the most effective execution. He didn't have the tools for one. Shinji was sure NERV had what he needed somewhere, like plastic injection molds and the like, but not handy.

Shinji reached out for the chromed lever. Cold water was drawn through heating coils, put under pressure, and brought nearly to a boil. The grounds themselves had been rendered into a sugar-fine powder, and then heated in their own chamber. The water shot through the coffee, then deeper into the system, through a filter and into a second reservoir. The resulting espresso cycled through again, and again, running through five additional baskets full of fresh coffee.

The pot filled, slowly, inexorably. Steam rose up just as Shinji expected. The smell quickly overpowered the solder he used earlier. Still, something bothered him...

Some technicians and operators started wandering in, drawn by the aroma. Shigeru Aoba was first in line, with Hyuuga close behind. Shinji could still see the scar cutting along the man's scalp. It left the man with a wicked bald spot, but better that than permanent brain damage.. Shinji made a mental note to do something about that, but later. Right now he was still staring at that first pot of coffee. It was in essence supercharged espresso with a final, filter pass in the remains of a drip coffee maker.

Shigeru was the first one to try it. The liquid itself was extremely dark, almost flat black and reflected the ceiling perfectly. It certainly _smelled_ good, like proper coffee, but Shinji couldn't help but think something was missing. The operator took a sip and very nearly dropped the mug. The small crowd hung hung on his every word.

A bit had spilt on his hand, so Shigeru shook it out while he answered. "Bitter! Really bitter, but not bad." He blew off the steam and took another sip, grinning. "It's a little hard to drink, but I can definitely feel it."

He toasted Shinji before walking out. He grabbed a mug for himself and tried it, agreeing that it was too bitter... Shinji looked up from his mug only to see Hyuuga standing in front of him. The older man barely came up to his chin.

For a moment Shinji was far away, thinking, then he snapped back, an idea almost fully formed in his mind. The disc on his forehead started to show clearly, not glowing, but unmistakably present. "Hyuuga-san, could you do me a favor?"

"I might?"

Shinji reached into his pocket and fished out a small keyring, pressing it into the other man's hands. "Could you go to the Proving Grounds and find Akagi-Sensei's lab? There'll be a cabinet labeled 'Experimental supplies'. I need it. Here."

Hyuuga nodded, but couldn't help but ask the obvious question, what would Shinji be doing? The pilot, _Exalt_ offered the operator a tiny smile. "I'm going to go down to the infirmary and make myself even more useful. I'll be back in soon!"

* * *

><p>It wasn't sheer luck that Doctor Takamichi was in, it was her job to be on base at all times in case of a medical emergency. It <em>was<em> however sheer luck that the Dean of Medicine was still in the Geofront. Hiriwaka-Sensei had many more titles, but he _was_ a teaching professor of medicine, on extended loan to NERV. He also liked Shinji well enough to listen to his argument.

On the way down to the infirmary, Shinji had run through what he knew of the human nervous system and pressure points, leading to something of a breakthrough. There were things Shinji could do that defied conventional definition, but one thing he _couldn't_ do was organize a temporary aide station and respond quickly to new developments. Hiriwaka also had the authority and respect to authorize the use of new, radical techniques. The small medical community in the Geofront had drilled that into Shinji's head very early; _don't test things on patients_.

So he didn't, Shinji got a volunteer and demonstrated his epiphany. A handful of points on his subject's neck, shoulders and spine triggered a chemical response in the brain and body. Fatigue burned away, drowsiness fled, and a whole host of other things occurred which nobody could yet determine. They would've accepted it as part of his expanding abilities, if not for one simple thing:

Shinji taught it to Doctor Takamichi, and had her perform it successfully on another volunteer in less than ten minutes.

No special tricks, light show or magic, save for the reserve of arete Shinji called up for when developing the procedure. It spoke of an intense, intimate understanding of the human body, an understanding that modern medicine itself did not yet have. He was reminded then of Ritsuko's declaration of him being a _scientific constant_, but at that moment, he didn't much care. He could help people, and right then he helped people help _other people_. More people than he could alone.

* * *

><p><em>Two hours and forty-five minutes ago<em>.

The smell of fresh, extremely potent coffee filled the room, overpowering the stink of cigarettes sweat and stress. Maya didn't have time to drink, or go to the bath room. In a way she didn't have time to _think_. Instead she was working, doing something. Maya wasn't a visionary in her field by any stretch of the imagination, but that didn't mean she couldn't be inspired. Visionaries were _consistent,_ pushing back frontiers with every breakthrough. Maya could enjoy living the rest of her life with just one success, though more wouldn't hurt.

Until Ritsuko came back though, Maya was lord god-empress of all she surveyed. That domain admittedly only extended to the one room, but it was the principle of the thing. When she made a special request, it was kicked upstairs as fast as possible. It was good fortune that the Sub Commander had stayed in the Geofront the previous night. If not, she might've had to wait another fifteen minutes to get approval.

Even so, Maya had to wait for supplies. She started tapping out schematics using the consoles own 'dumb' computer.

Alert sirens and emergency lights snapped on, wailing throughout the Geofront. Even with significant chunks of the MAGI unresponsive, the interception system still worked. Pattern detection devices picked up on the distortions of absolute territory all over the complex, marking the position of every man, woman and teenager inside the subterranean structure.

The red human patterns and the white splotches marking the Evangelions were quickly scrubbed out, leaving brief, flickering wisps of Shinji's pattern green, and an anomalous, impossible result: Pattern blue in the testing facility.

There was an expressed AT field inside the Geofront.

It was an abuse of authority, and both women knew it. At the same time, Misato and Maya agreed, even without speaking, that they needed to override the lock down. The people working to save their pilots needed free access to the facilities and test tanks. Adrenaline kept everyone focused. Men and women waited behind emergency bulkheads. Altering the alert status worked much like launching a nuclear weapon, with two keys and codes needing to be activated at the same time. Misato and Maya pulled out their ID cards and found the right terminal, running through the release procedure.

Doors and barriers retracted, and the sirens fell silent. Still, the red emergency lights filled the room. Smoke hung in lazy clouds, casting deeper shadows now that the main fluorescent lights were off.

Misato coughed into her jacket shoulder. "E-Everyone alright?" Everyone nearby waved halfheartedly. She turned back to Maya, ready to ask what happened.

"The interception system detected an AT field inside this section of the Geofront..." Maya moved back to her console, tapping through maps until she pinpointed the source. A few screens later, she paled.

Reaching out, Misato had to shake the other woman. "Maya. Maya! Where's the Angel?"

Maya just pointed forward, towards the window and the tank of ultrapure water, where the simulation bodies hung. Misato squinted, before moving forward to activate the tank lights. The center body, Shinji's, had been left inert, and Rei's was nearest to the window.

Something red and viscous leaked out of the headless, incomplete torso.

* * *

><p><em>Two hours and thirty minutes ago.<em>

The alarms had woken her up, but somehow managed to stay in the cot for fifteen minutes. When Ritsuko finally did open her eyes, she saw the once empty room was full of men and women. Most of them were asleep on cots and cushions just like she had been. That was easy to understand. It was harder to understand why there were fully loaded but unused IV drip stands lined up against one wall.

Yawning, she stepped out into the hallway. The red emergency lights were easy on her eyes, though someone should have turned the ventilation on; cigarette smoke was starting to build up outside the observation chamber. Men and women in white coats threaded through the trickle of technicians she did recognize. She also recognized the smell of coffee. Strong college-finals coffee.

Someone almost ran her over, trying to get inside the observation deck. It took her a few seconds to realize it was Fuyutsuki. The man had caught her with one hand on her arm. "Are you alright?"

"Fine, Sub-Commander." She sucked on her teeth. "Fine as can be... What was the alarm about?"

"The interception system detected an active AT field in the test chamber. It registered as pattern blue. Lieutenant Katsuragi called for combat conditions, but Lieutenant Ibuki overruled her."

That brought Ritsuko up short. Little cute Maya stopped Misato? "Why did she do that?"

"Because you trained her too well, Rits. Science first and all that." Misato stepped out into the hallway, visibly exhausted. She ran her fingers through her hair, sighing. "All we know is that _an AT field_ opened up inside the simulation body. Maya gave me too many reasons _not_ to eject Rei and self destruct the thing."

Ritsuko just blinked, deciding not to press that issue any harder. She decided to focus on something else. "So, what's with the coffee, and NERV infirmary staff?"

"That'd be Shinji's fault." Misato said. "He ended up cannibalizing one of the cage kitchens and turned the break room into a cafe. He's been having people run errands for him all morning."

Another technician stepped up and held a coffee mug up for the Sub Commander. It steamed slightly, and smelled wonderful. The two women leaned in, curious. "That's the coffee?"

Fuyutsuki nodded. "The first wave was essentially supercharged espresso. I believe Shinji-kun refined his process with..." He looked over to Ritsuko, groping for the word. "Thaumaturgy?" She nodded. "Right, I believe now it's somehow maintained at an ideal serving temperature, with maximum flavor extraction. No acid either."

"No acid?" Misato never really thought much about how her coffee worked, in college or in the military. Fuyutsuki toasted her. "The stuff that makes coffee bitter and stains your teeth." He looked down at his mug, almost hesitant. The substance was... Thicker than normal coffee. Fluid, not liquid. Finally, he took a sip.

Ritsuko was the first to break the silence. "So?"

The old man stared at the cup, smiling slightly. "I want to call it 'Black Blood of the Earth', but I believe only Lieutenant Katsuragi has seen that film."

* * *

><p><em>Two Hours Ago<em>

White-coated nurses and doctors milled about, winding around the test chamber. The system had organized organically, rising out of chaos and ad-hoc procedures until a natural efficiency took hold. Technicians raised their arms, waiting for a medical staff member to join them. Five minutes of careful attention drained all the tension, exhaustion and lethargy, leaving the operator fresh and focused. It was not as effective as several hours of sleep, but most people deemed it as effective as a power nap.

Various brews of coffee supplemented the pressure point massage, providing massive, effective infusions of caffiene. Shinji loomed over all, not quite a leader, but an imposing presence. He outweighed almost everyone in the room, and a weighty stare of disapproval was enough to make people put out their cigarettes. Only Ritsuko dared, aware that she had a much better glare. The air conditioning had begun to make a dent in the clouds of cigarette smoke and body odor. Down the hall, a mobile hazmat shower had been converted into a changing station, letting men and women clean and dress in fresh uniforms.

Slowly, but surely, NERV was solving the problem. Their interface devices had been crashing constantly, refusing to connect to the MAGI directly. They patched in hardline connections directly to the three hardware towers, running fiberoptic cables from the command center to junctions in the test complex. Modularity was an important feature in NERV facilities.

Maya sagged in her seat when the nurse finished with her. The young woman gave her mentor and de facto commanding officer a happy, liquid grin. A beat later, she sobered, quickly shaking her head clear. Ritsuko took a seat nearby, demanding a status report.

"Approximately thirty minutes ago, we detected an AT field reaction in the test tank." She waved at the simulation bodies, most obviously the bleeding one nearest the windows. "We haven't yet ruled out Angelic contamination, but until we can determine pilot status, ejecting the plugs could kill Rei and Asuka."

Sucking on her teeth, Ritsuko forced herself to put her own mug of coffee down. "The Commander would put priority on destroying the Angel and protecting the Evangelions..."

"Well, the Commander's not here, so it's our call." Misato punched her open palm, looking up at Fuyutsuki. "And I've already ordered the Evangelions launched into the lake for safety."

The Sub Commander nodded, watching the rest of the room bent over their consoles and hard at work at their tasks. "Agreed. I would much rather keep our pilots safe and unharmed." He frowned at Maya's station. "So what do we know?"

"Other than the AT field anomaly? The girls are still in the plugs, and we're still getting synchronization data. Nothing close to Destrado limit."

Ritsuko sighed, letting her head fall into her splayed hands. "It's not an Angel. The AT field I mean."

Maya and Misato turned to the other woman, giving her a look that clearly said 'do you know something we don't'? Fuyutsuki stiffened, but held back a sigh. Ritsuko knew the limits, and knew the risks.

Not bothering to look up, Ritsuko talked to her knees. "It's Rei."

Misato blinked once, twice, not quite hearing her friend. "Rei has an AT field? Rei is an Angel?"

Massaging her temples, Ritsuko actively resisted the urge to say 'duh'. For no real reason other than it was _innacurate_. Instead she groaned and gave a proper answer. "Rei is not an Angel, but she can manifest an active Absolute Territory, similar to that of an Angel." Fuyutsuki pointed out that every living thing on Earth had an AT field as well, even Misato.

Misato slouched back in her seat, lacing her fingers together over her nose. "So... Rei has an AT field, and activated it. The girls are trapped in those test plugs, and we know they haven't tried banging on the walls, but we know they're alive because of sync data. So... they're unconcious." She looked over at the MAGI system map. "And... All that sync data is being sent to this Conspiracy Buffer?"

Looking at eachother and blinking, Maya and Ritsuko shrugged helplessly. "That's our best guess currently."

The Operations Director was about to ask what was next when a team of engineers barged in, pushing and dragging a rolling cart loaded with coolant tanks and a collection of beeping devices that looked and sounded suspiciously like life support. Maya lit up, giving Misato's own sunny smiles a run for their money. The young woman all but leapt out of her seat, vaulting over consoles. She bowled Shinji over, barking out orders and grinning.

All three senior staff members stared, enraptured. Maya rushed out orders, talking faster and faster. Fuyutsuki and Misato got more and more lost, but Ritsuko started to smile wider and wider with each word.

Then she stopped when Maya pulled the UV shield away from the main tank. "Maya, what are you planning to do with a spare MAGI brain?"

Peering over Ritsuko's shoulder, Misato blinked. "The MAGI has brains?"

Ritsuko groaned.

* * *

><p><em>One Hour Ago<em>.

It had been somewhat difficult to explain that the MAGI did in fact have a brain. Three brains to be precise. It was more difficult for Ritsuko to admit that those brains were cloned from and based on her mother, giving the three machines their unique perspectives. Despite the stress and crisis, Maya was starstruck, able to see more of her mentor. Misato only understood the high notes, but felt no shame for that. She just handed her friend a cup of coffee and an understanding smile.

That left Maya to explain her _idea_.

"Our problem was mostly one of interface, none of the normal channels were working." She waved at the rows of consoles and computers. "So I realized we should build an interface the MAGI can't crash." She admited the explaination was simplified, but Ritusko deemed the notes and diagrams correct.

Maya spent most of the previous hour giving orders to the head of Project E and the Sub Commander. It was a sight to see, having the old man with his sleeves rolled up and dipped in a neutral liquid suspension. Maya had the idea, but Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki knew human brains better than she did. The pair threaded needles into labeled, pre-set nerve clusters, fabricating connections to audio-visual and language centers.

More and more technicians, operators and engineers turned away from their consoles, watching the leaders get their hands dirty. The infirmary staff Shinji had dragged into play took the opportunity to relax. Misato handed tools out when called for, while Maya wrote the user interface code. The pilot stared openly, both fascinated and a little disgusted at the preserved flesh. By the time the four were finished, the brain practical bristled with wire leads.

There was no real chance for failure, not when the best minds in their fields put themselves to the task. Maya entered the command and compiled the code.

* * *

><p>:: GHOST:OBSERVER RUNNING...<p>

:: COMPILE PROGAM Y/N?

:: Y

:: PURGE/TRANSFER GHOST:OBSERVER

:: EXEcUTE1!

* * *

><p>Every light in the room went dark, save for the tiny spot of orange-red at the tip of Ritsuko's cigarette. "...Nobody move."<p>

More than fifty people made breathing the loudest sound in the room. Even the air conditioning had shut off. The brain and tank had it's own power supply, circulating the life support liquid. Maya twisted in her seat, waiting for her eyes to slowly adjust. Almost immediately, they zeroed in on a single point of green light. Maya threw up her arms and cheered, gleefully dancing her seat. Flashlights and lanterns were pulled out of cabinets. Then the symbol over Shinji's forehead lit the whole room up in simple warm sunlight.

The monitor and terminal Maya had lashed into the brain interface was active, waiting patiently at the freshly compiled command prompt.

Morale was an important factor in any group effort. It was a complicated thing rooted in group identity, but could often be explained or rationalized fairly easily. NERV's practical word at that moment was _momentum_. Once Maya had developed the solution, and put it into practice, every person in the test chamber, and the facility at large felt relieved. They had direction, they made quantifiable progress, and further plans were already forming. Stress began to bleed away naturally, even if the crisis itself had not yet been fully resolved.

The girls were still trapped and possibly in danger, but Misato knew to take what successes they could. She sat with Ritsuko near Maya, content to not get in anyone's way. As she told Shinji earlier, there was little for her to do when things weren't exploding. Without a target to fight, she fell back on leivity to beat back the stress. "It kind of feels like college, doesn't it?"

"Somewhat. Late nights trying to finish projects." Ritsuko smiled over her latest cup of coffee, watching Maya finish the improvised device. "She barely even needed me."

Misato's grin turned playful, hiding her face behind her own mug. "Should I be worried about you projecting? Your biological clock is ticking down after all."

"Need I remind you that _you_ have turned thirty this year as well?" Ritsuko's glasses caught the light of the monitors, gleaming an almost solid white-green. "Best not throw stones, Katsuragi."

The response Misato gave her was both vulgar, gestural and most likely physically impossible. Ritsuko basked in true friendship.

Maya leaned back from the brain-computer contraption, practically vibrating with glee. "It's ready!"

Everyone crowded around the young woman, eager to watch the apprentice at work. Someone had thought to bring in a larger display and slaved it to Maya's console. They lost their view of the simulation bodies, but gained a better way to view the MAGI's graphical representation. The same system map Maya had created hours ago became their means of monitoring progress.

Most of their problem had come from essentially runaway processes, much like a computer form of cancer. More and more of the MAGI's 'thinking power' was taken up by the simulated reality, as well as the various secondary and ancilary processes NERV had tasked it with. One of the first things Ritsuko had done before taking a nap was reset the city public works, shoving that burden off onto a less powerful computer control system. Freed of having to manage city traffic, the MAGI had been that much more stable.

The original line command interfaces suffered under the burden of trying to parse information it was never meant to, namely the 'minds' of both the MAGI themselves, alongside Asuka and Rei. Maya's plan was to essentially use the spare MAGI brain as both a buffer and translation appartaus, converting the 'human' commands she could understand into the kinds of elements the MAGI used. Maya admited hands down that it wasn't as efficient or elegant as directly accessing the MAGI, but with the Geofront locked down, _getting_ to the computers was the most difficult part.

Experimentally, Maya started shutting down or reassigning parts of the MAGI's processing budget, but stopped after gaining a few percent increases worth of efficiency. She didn't want to risk breaking her one working connection. She had a bigger, more important task to accomplish. She lashed the console's communication system and her brain interface together, waiting for a good connection.

Maya looked up at the crowd surrounding her, hopeful and cautious. "If this works, we'll be able to talk to Asuka and Rei."

That left everyone with the pressing need to be patient, but that was not something a person could just _be_. Least of all not when they were so close to victory. Men and women grinned tightly, fidgeting in their seats or wired with from little too much coffee. Thighs jumped and toes tapped, ticking away seconds and minutes while the computers worked. Everyone prayed and whispered and urged the machines to not fail, to complete their tasks and give them what they wanted.

Ritsuko was far less reasonable about waiting.

"You." Ritsuko stood and fixed Shinji with a _look_, pointing with arm and index finger extended.

The Third had stayed out of the way for the most part, letting his efforts speak and work for him. She waved at the doctors and nurses milling about, and at technicians being gently guided to waiting cots and food. "Your time can be so much better spent."

Despite being a foot taller than her and three times as heavy, Ritsuko felt no real fear of him. She dragged him forward by the wrist, shoving him into a seat and activating the terminal. She didn't wait for him to complain or protest. "How long did it take you to think of the pressure point trick?"

Shinji looked down at his hands, but he did not count the time on his fingers. He figured it out on the way to the infirmary. His answer confirmed what she already knew. "...Fifteen minutes?"

Folding her arms over her chest, Ritsuko stared down her nose, past her glasses and right into Shinji's eyes. Her voice held nothing but the rightness of confirmed, proven fact. "Fifteen minutes, and you completely upend our understanding of neurochemistry. I know some of your limits better than _you_ do."

She pointed at the screen. "Get to it."

Denials and justification was his first response. He'd _been _helpful, been _useful_, but those had been with things he knew how to do. "B-but, I don't know anything about the MAGI! Or computers!" Shinji flailed, trying to explain just how ill-suited he was. "I just point and click!"

Maya was close enough to hear, and to realize what Ritsuko was getting at. Shinji didn't know the operator that well, but she apparently liked him well enough to give him an earnest look of encouragement. Misato too a seat next to him and laced her fingers with his left hand. He bristled, slightly, but fought that back, not turning away from the reassuring smile his guardian offered.

Ritsuko leaned over his shoulder and tapped in a command. Help and documentation sprang up on the screen. Her smile was surprisingly winsome, and again reminded him that he was cursed; Terrifying, and beautiful.

The grin on her face widened. "Start learning."

* * *

><p>Shinji had limits. Limits to his endurance, how long he could go without sleep, what things he could and could not weaponize. The most recent limit he confronted was one on his inner reserves. Misato would have called it something like 'magic juice', and Ritsuko called it 'unidentified energy'. Kensuke had offered numerous terms like 'mana' and the like, sourced from game books and mythology.<p>

Some people would have called it a transhumanist ability, being able to augment his own capabilities so readily. Misato had been right, all those months ago, most of his defined techniques felt like the forms and stances of a martial art. In some ways it was instinctual, in others, meditative. There were doors in his mind and spirit that lead to a deeper comprehension of the world. He had been frugal for most of the morning, tapping into the wellspring to increase his understanding, only opening those doors a tiny crack.

Ritsuko demanded he bring his full power to the task, so those doors were flung wide open. It took him minutes to understand the fundamentals of computer science, of the underlying physics and concepts that made laptops and cell phones and dozens of other things work. However, the MAGI in their own way were above basic computers, as Shinji himself was above most martial artists.

His reserves drained in massive waves, flooding out into his mind, body and soul. Shinji grappled with so much power that it bled into the corona, building around his back and shoulders. He demanded fits of genius and insight, and washed the color out of half the test chamber. The console in front of him, and those to the left and right and nearby, had all been ruined. Everything within a half dozen yards of him had been left bleached, as if it were left out in the hottest desert for a hundred years. The monitors were abused and warped, not by heat but punishing sunlight.

More than a few technicians and engineers suffered a sudden, uneven tan, and irregular sun-bleached hair. Misato had wisely ducked. From that point on Shinji was moved into another room and given an armored, weatherized laptop.

Still, the cost of the consoles was worth it.

* * *

><p>Some of it was luck, the rest was skill. Maya was all too aware her success was at best temporary, but it was too important to ignore. "I made a connection!" She hemmed and hawed, trying to coax the patchwork device along. "Slaving cranial nerves to audio inputoutput..."

Maya handed the microphone to Misato. Her lips and throat had gone suddenly dry. She had no idea what was going to happen, if the thing was even going to work. Maya was already back at her console lashing together more support for the link.

"H-hello? Asuka! Rei! It's Misato! Can you hear me? please resp-"

The sound that came out of the speakers was inhuman.

* * *

><p><em>There is something new.<em>

_Hormone-chemical trails and electron carbon-scoring paint the world in non-colors. Towers of thought and empty minds dig down into the strata, reaching and reaching forever deeper. The new brings with it a universe of stars; it is made of stars, starts make it whole. Stars that live, die, reform and die again over and over, pushing into the greater world._

_Fingers drive commands into the skein of self, sending all that is rippling and tearing asunder, only to reform faster, better, stronger. Chasms wider than perception allows become bridged by scintilating arcs of lightning and power. Thoughts crawl up these ravines, arcing up in thrumming, burning march. There is again something new._

_The infant pushes forward, still made of stars, but it cannot cast a shadow. Something moves within. It does not crawl, does not skulk. There is no word for viper here, no word for agent or infiltrator. _

_There is only the Command._

* * *

><p>Almost immediately, everyone present clamped their hands over their ears. Maya lashed out and slapped the mute button. Meanwhile, Shinji leaned into the camera and tapped the microphone. "What? What was that? Is everything alright?"<p>

No one had time to answer. Misato gripped the handset tightly, only somewhat aware of how white her knuckles were. Ritsuko took her seat next to Maya, projecting the new data onto the big screen. While not the MAGI itself, the numerous conventional computers were by no means ineffective. Pattern recognition software engaged under orders from the scientist and disciple.

Maya looked up at the other woman. "Do we still have access to the pilot's synchronization data?"

Looking up, Ritsuko let the question sit in her mind for a moment. "We should... You want to use that as an interpreter?"

"Do you think it will help?"

Ritsuko was already moving, pulling the files up and writing a new program to use them. Everything was still so dreadfully slow. They were confronted by the simple fact that their form of interface was a step above assembly language. As the pair generated more and more lines of code, the synchronization data did its work. It acted as a filter, excluding the MAGI's own 'noise' and interpreting the output. Maya had both created a new thread of input, allowing them to 'talk' to the simulation, and started recording the outgoing threads of data leading into the conspiracy buffer. In a lot of ways, it was like tapping a phone line.

They captured the original burst of data and ran it through the interpreter. Raw brain activity resolved into speech, Asuka's voice shrill, indignant voice. "Misato! We've been in here for over _three weeks!_ Where the hell have you been?! What's going on!?"

Misato stood bolt upright, everyone in the test chamber leaned in, hanging on every word. Cradling the microphone in both hands, Misato tried to get a word in edgewise. "Asuka? Asuka! Thank god you're alright. Rei's there too?"

Then she thought about it, thought about what Asuka said."...Asuka, Rei. You've been trapped for _six hours."_

* * *

><p>Getting her arm cut open was one thing. It hurt, definitely. And it annoyed her, and she couldn't really treat it properly. The stupid relative-time distortion migraine was another matter entirely. Asuka considered it an amazing, herculean achievement, making it the half-dozen yards from the phone to the pillow fort. That was <em>after<em> reading and re-reading Ayanami's transcribed notes. She slumped down in the cushions and curled up, for once glad the world was permanently fixed in a dull, pasty twilight.

When Asuka woke hours later, she didn't felt the need to open her eyes. She was warm for the first time in weeks. Warm, safe and the most relaxed she'd ever been. The scar running along her arm only itched, just slightly. It was the good kind of drowsiness, the kind that let Asuka hear her own heartbeat, count it out and let it lull her back to sleep. She curled in and hugged the warm, soft pillow a little tighter, eager for a few minutes.

"Sorhyu-san."

And there was the favorite ruining everything. Again. Even as she thought it, Asuka couldn't really muster up any irritation. She would have fumbled for another pillow to fold over her ears, but that would've meant letting go of the warm one. It even hummed pleasantly against her cheeks.

"Sorhyu-san..."

Finally, Asuka did open her eyes, but only saw a wide span of stretched cotton. That made sense, because she was cuddling a pillow. But Ayanami's voice was far too close. Slowly, deliberately, Asuka tilted her head up, the only way it could go. Rei looked down past her chest with her own red eyes wide, clear and focused. Asuka blinked once. Twice.

"Sorhyu-san." Somehow the simple call to attention made it felt blood rushing into her face, ears, down her neck and into her chest. She practical _roasted_ in her own unconscious reaction. Breath caught in her throat while her mouth went completely dry.

"I cannot move if you do not let go of me."

Then Asuka realized she had her arms wrapped around Ayanami, wrapped around and pressed with her nose to the favorite's chest, stomach to hips and legs utterly tangled. That Ayanami filled out one of Asuka's own shirts better than she could was the last mortifying straw. Asuka pulled her arms out from around and under the other girl, drawing back and pushing away, hard. She rolled, tumbled and flopped on her back without a hint of grace. She folded her uninjured arm over her eyes, groaning miserably and blushing beetroot red.

Rei shuffled over, frowning minutely. "I am sorry. I did not mean to..." She did not quite shrug, but was still obviously at a loss.

Asuka sat up and started combing one hand through her hair, a little harder than necessary. For someone who really didn't know how to emote, Ayanami managed an amazingly subtle and effective 'kicked puppy' impression. She groaned again, mumbling. "...Cannot _believe _this."

Finally out of excuses, she started to explain. "It's.. You didn't do anything. I just didn't expect to wake up like that. Pressed against you. Like that." At that moment the Second Child wanted the First to very much to let the matter drop, to _not_ ask.

Of course, fate was not kind to Asuka. Rei let her head drop down, as if to confirm, then come back up. "I was... Uncomfortable?

"Yes! No! I'm uncomfortable, I mean. That's the problem-Auuugh!" Asuka threw her hands up in the air and tilted over on her back once more.

Rei was quiet for some time, content to let minutes go by. Eventually though, just as Asuka had finally relaxed, Rei moved. Her eyes were closed, so Asuka had to judge by ear, but she could tell the other girl was fidgeting, sitting on her knees and shifting side to side.

In a way it was slightly petty, letting it go on so long, but Asuka just _did not_ want to go any further. Turning pointedly, she did her level best to block Rei out. It didn't help though, simply because she _knew_ the girl. Knew her better than some people knew their friends or enemies. Without anyone else around, she didn't have much choice but to pay attention. Simply put, Rei was curious, and it was very hard to dissuade her when she was in an inquisitive mood.

Finally, Asuka sighed and rolled back over, staring at Rei. The other girl to her credit kept quiet, she usually knew when not to press the issue as well. Rei had learned too, after all. It was clear Asuka wasn't going to get out of answering, not with the curious almost imperceptible kicked puppy next to her. She sat up again and held a hand out, preempting any questions.

Looking Rei dead in the eye, Asuka raised both hands and cut them down through the air, weaving them down in that iconic, unmistakable hourglass shape. Rei blinked once, then her red eyes seemed to light up. Then her brow furrowed, and the brief look of realization drained away completely. Rei shook her head and gave the other girl the most apologetic look she could.

Asuka's head and neck went slack with disbelief. "Ffff... Goddamit."

* * *

><p>It started with little things. Signs that whatever NERV was doing outside was having an effect inside. It was like that old saying, about living with pain for so long, they forgot what it felt like without it. The apartment suddenly had corners again, walls didn't extend out infinitely when Asuka looked out the corner of her eye. The cloying, invasive paranoia started to recede. Rei, who had for nearly a month never showed anything, was <em>visibly relaxed<em>.

Aside from the sudden surge in curiosity. "...Sorhyu-san."

"Not a word, First. I said I'd explain when I'm good and ready."

The world had not become safer, really, but at least more stable. Less hostile to their minds. Furniture that had felt sickeningly unreal at first had changed, resolving and becoming more agreeable. Misato's well-used futon matress had been repurposed as a fort cover and windbreak, while a spare set of bedding became the new foundation. With each passing hour, more and more of the apartment started to resolve. Books began to populate with words, though Asuka was still somewhat hesitant to touch them. Most anything in Misato's apartment was built off of Rei's memories, after all. If Asuka tried to read a book, she might very easily absorb the other girl's memory by accident.

At the same time however, more of _Asuka's_ memories started to fill in. Her clothes had been fairly fresh in her mind at first, wanting to go home and change out of the rank plugsuit. Now, whatever the scientists outside did let more 'Asuka' into the predominantly Rei-defined world. They started to explore Asuka's apartment in earnest. A box filled with blank picture frames changed to snapshots of Kaji and herself, and a random photo of Asuka standing next to Misato, two or three years ago.

Moving one box aside and opening another, Asuka looked down and grinned. "Finally, some good luck..."

Rei leaned over, just enough to get a better view. Asuka's views on personal space were... Complex. Misato tended to shove herself into the lives of anyone she cared about, while Shinji simply existed, letting people pass in and out of his awareness. Sometimes he invited people in, but only rarely. Asuka... Asuka _tolerated_ people, tolerated their intrusions on her terms and no on else's. The Second Child didn't curl in defensively or otherwise make it clear she wanted Rei _gone_, so she took it at face value.

Asuka held up a small device, nothing particularly unique or iconic. Rei had seen several similar things at school or around the city. It was a handheld game console. Asuka hummed, a little bit cautious, mumbling 'please let there be batteries...' The grin spread wider, toothy, when the toy powered on.

Almost immediately Asuka shut it down. "Gotta save the batteries for when we're really bored." Even having said that, Asuka still smiled freely.

The pair sat quietly in the midst of Asuka's living room and her unpacked things. Somehow, so far it hadn't sustained any damage yet either. While they weren't exactly warm, the doors were closed and the wind stayed well outside. Moving over could wait, Asuka had stalled long enough.

"So, I said I'd explain." Red crept up Asuka's neck and into her cheeks, but she ignored it. In a way she was laughing at herself, at the absurdity. "I didn't expect to wake up so close to you." Asuka forced out the last word, not quite gritting her teeth. . "...Cuddling."

Nodding quietly, Rei sat up a bit straighter and drew her hands down in that signature shape. "And the gesture?"

Asuka choked, before offering a blank stare of disbleief. "Really? You don't even know that?" She didn't wait for an answer. Instead she repeated the gesture herself, but held her hands closer to her sides, tracing the cinch at her waist. "It's the hourglass figure, va-va-voom? The idealized woman has curves up top and down below..."

Again Rei lit up, and this time it held steady. Asuka could see the gears turning in the other girl's head. Most people would speak with their hands, like holding a finger up in, exhulting in that moment of realization. Rei didn't do anything like that, once her hands fell back into her lap, she almost never moved, save to breath and speak. Almost every clue to Rei's thoughts was in her eyes.

Even worse, she didn't just speak in deadpan. Instead of a deliberate lack of inflection, Rei simply lacked it outright. "Ah. Misato-san has that."

Asuka however was _very_ good at deadpan delivery. "...Yes. Yes she does."

Her eye was most certainly not twitching, not one bit. She'd been sitting still for too long as well. Asuka stretched, lifting her arms up over her head. Her right arm was still sluggish and wrapped in gauze, but it had long since stopped hurting. She held out at full extension for a second, before a thought struck her. Her head tilted to one side, looking back at Rei. "Wait, doesn't that bother you? Like, seeing Misato and feeling like you've already lost?"

"Lost what?"

There was no way anyone could be _that_ naive, not as far as Asuka was concerned. Asuka dropped out of her stretch, bouncing on her thighs and dumbfounded. She keeled over on her back and closed her eyes, trying to figure out how anyone could just, not know these things. When she looked again, Rei had moved, and was practically hovering over her with a slight look of concern.

Asuka choked off the surprise, sputtering. "Wh-Just, Hold on for a second, alright? Let me think."

Rei nodded at once, leaning back. Asuka sighed and let her eyes close again. "Sorhyu-san, it has been at least one second."

That time, Asuka stared openly, fighting a smile the whole time. She didn't even have time to get annoyed. "Did... I know you're not _that_ litereal. You're _joking_."

The other girl grinned slightly and turned a bit red, but far less than anyone else would. She nodded again and fell silent once more, this time leaving Asuka be. After a long moment, Asuka cracked one eye open. "...Do you at all understand the idea of competition?"

"Not in this context." Rei frowned minutely, more at herself than anything. "I mean, I know what a competition is, but not how you mean it."

Asuka groaned, but not unkindly. She rubbed one side of her face with her good hand. Staring past her fingers, she sighed. "You... We compete. People do. Girls."

It was very clear Rei rapidly picked up on body language, if nothing else. Asuka cursed her own brain's insipid pattern recognition, she watched Rei tilt her head to one side, adorably inquisitive, like a toddler who hadn't yet become annoying. "Over what?"

Now Asuka's bad hand came up to drag down the other side of her face. She groped for answers, blurting them out as they came to mind. "Boys! Men! Who's better looking!"

Rei let out a soft 'oh' of comprehension. Again she cocked her head to one side, blinking once. "Is flirtation part of this?"

"Yes! How can you know about flirting and not this?" Asuka gaped openly for a bit, before grumbling again. Asuka's joy at finding _some_ sort of baseline was shortlived, however.

Rei grew almost bouyant, eager. "Misato-san has been teaching me."

A nameless feeling hit Asuka just then. it wasn't quite _horror,_ or fear or even dread. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, sighing softly. She hated thinking it, but things just weren't adding up. First the whole _engineered_ thing, and now all the new information, or lack of it.

So, Asuka decided to as a question. "Rei... What do you _really _know about girls. People?"

* * *

><p>"So... Almost nothing. You don't get almost any of this. At all." Asuka resisted the urge to rub the bridge of her nose. Instead she tried to keep her voice light, to sound witty, pleasant and amused. When Rei confirmed it, Asuka was left at something of a loss.<p>

The first question had lead to others, and those questions lead to a disturbing look at the formative years of Ayanami Rei. The other girl was fifteen years old, and if Asuka was right, Rei had not lived them well. Or lived them at all. Each time Rei answered with 'nothing', or 'I don't know', pieces began to fall into place. The unmistakable impression Asuka got was simple, and all the more awful for its basic elements. Rei was a girl who had been told to sit in a room, occasionally take tests, and then told to sit in the room more before she ever entered school.

Quietly, and with great difficulty, Asuka shoved that realization into the back of her mind. She promised herself though, to come back to it later. Something like that could not simply be ignored. Bile churned in her stomach, and she ignored that too. Rei had been utterly patient throughout, answering every question she could, but Asuka wasn't blind either; the First was just as upset in her own way.

There wasn't much Asuka could do about it either. Hugging was out, or any physical show of support. Regardless, Asuka wasn't going to let _either_ of them break down. She figured the best thing right then was to plow ahead.

"Okay, so..." Asuka had to stop for a moment. She gave Rei a quick, urgent look. "This is a general thing, not everyone behaves _exactly_ like this. Right?"

Rei nodded. Asuka was pleased to see the other girl understand, and relax a bit, letting the shaking awfuls drain out. That aggravatingly innocent curiosity took its place. Not that she had any room to complain, getting back to that was the whole point. An annoyingly curious girl was better than a broken down doll, after all.

Of course now Asuka had yet again run out of delay tactics. She started to grope for answers, haltingly, in fits and starts. "So... Again. Women compete. With each other. And over men."

"Why?"

Wincing, Asuka reminded herself that she had to be as basic as possible, because now she _knew_. She knew that Rei didn't know things, she didn't understand the most basic concepts. "Because women want guys. Men. Biologically, culturally."

It took Asuka a bit longer to explain the basic idea, and the exceptions. It wasn't like she bought into any particular ideology, other than her own. Social mores were something she never expected to describe to anyone. Eventually though, they got back on track.

Along the way, Asuka had the brilliant idea then to suggest moving their bedding into the undamaged apartment. Anything to give her a chance to think, better formulate her answers. Rei agreed almost immediately. Given a simple, procedural task to focus on, Asuka felt her calm returning. Already a handful of new approaches were forming. She couldn't _quite_ keep the grin off her face.

Dropping one of the futons at her feet, Asuka started setting the stage. If it all went to plan, Rei would get her questions answered, and Asuka would enjoy sweet, sweet justice. "So for example, you're competing with Misato over guys."

That brought Rei up short, blinking a few times. Releasing her armload of cushions, she sat down in the impromptu pile. Thinking about it, trying to tease it apart, she let the idea settle in her mind before responding. "But Misato is older than I am. We would not compete over the same men."

"I mean over Ikari!" Asuka clapped her hands over her mouth, blood draining out of her face. The words just tumbled out.

Rei just stared at her, visibly confused. "Misato-san is not romantically pursuing Ikari-kun. Ikari-kun has a girlfriend."

After a certain point, Asuka stopped thinking about what she was doing. She just had to respond, react. It stopped being _just_ about helping Rei. Now it was as much about pride, and that drive to succeed. Asuka didn't _just _want to win. She held everyone to the same standard as her, it just so happened that part of that standard was _winning itself_. Asuka wanted everyone to win, and be first among equals in victory.

Asuka sat down next to Rei with a muted thump, bouncing on the cushions. Leaning forward, she pushed dangerously close, almost nose to nose with the other girl. Rei slipped and tumbled back, braced on her hands and elbows. Asuka didn't seem to notice. "That's not the point! You can't hand a victory over to Misato!"

Rei didn't understand. "I am not romantically interested in Ikari-kun. Neither is Misato-san. Why would we compete over him?"

"I mean, I mean-" Asuka slumped back, befuddled. "Well, we're competing, too."

There was really no way to blame Rei either. She had trouble with context. "Over men?"

"No! "Asuka winced. She hadn't meant to sound so sharp. "I mean, not yet. Unless we both find a guy we want. Or we're playing around. Then we'd compete over guys."

Rei nodded once and fell silent for a moment. "If we are not competing over Ikari, or 'guys'... What are we competing over?"

* * *

><p>Standing the closest to the main screen, Misato waited.<p>

Someone had figured out how to determine 'system stability'. Misato had no idea what that really entailed, other than it helped her girls. A percentage counter took up one corner of the main display, mostly ticking upwards from the low thirties. Sometimes it dropped by a few percent, followed by a sudden burst of panic and activity behind her.

Maya leaned over her own terminal, next to the spare brain and patchwork interface, slowly defining terms. "I can't just enter line commands. I have to teach the brain an entirely new language..."

A video monitor showed Shinji working at his own machine, skimming pages of documentation with blinding speed. "It's incredible you've managed to do so much. The new library is almost organizing itself..." He blinked, then rubbed his eyes. "I understood what you're doing. I understood what I just _said_. I've been doing this for barely _two hours_."

Leaning in and smiling into the microphone, Ritsuko nudged him back on track. "Focus, Shinji-kun. I have another bottle of vodka if you need it, but later." Misato glared at her friend, huffing out something that sounded like 'stingy'. Ritsuko pretended not to hear.

Instead she turned back to Maya and looked over her shoulder. "You're right, line commands and any of our other MAGI user interfaces wouldn't play nice with the raw output. I could get around that if we were _inside the MAGI towers_, but we're not..."

Misato turned away from the screen and faced Maya and Ritsuko. She had to stand on tiptoes and hike herself up to see over the console itself. "So... What are we doing? What does language have to do with anything?"

Tapping a few commands, Maya waved to the big screen. "We mean programming code. The MAGI have their own unique way of communicating, and my little patch-in here is well... It's like an infant. We're trying to teach it how to speak."

Nodding, Misato puffed out her cheeks and sighed. "And it's not like you can just give it a dictionary either, right?"

Ritsuko offered her friend a bitter smile and a shrug. "My mother thought it was easier to write code for human nerve tissue."

From the side room, Shinji sputtered. "That... That makes almost no sense..." He trailed off, lost in thought. Ritsuko waved it off, reminding him he'd most likely understand soon enough.

It had been decided that when they reached fifty percent stability, Misato would pull NERV back from combat alert. As awful and uncomfortable as it seemed, Asuka and Rei were still as safe as could be physically. Life support still worked, and the girls could be fed intravenously through their suits. Mentally however, they weren't so sure. The Sub Commander had left to man the phones. Rei had given them all an uncompromising view of her situation, and Fuyutsuki was working hard trying to understand how much danger the girls were in. Mentally, if not physically.

One of the most pressing issues was the relative time discrepancy. Asuka had been half-repeating herself; saying a complete sentence, then realizing she had already said it. Rei somehow managed to get through an entire, mostly one-sided conversation without incident, though her heartbeat and body chemistry spiked abnormally. They couldn't necessarily rely on the life support data, though. Not completely at any rate.

Maya rubbed her eyes and sighed. One of the nurses bustled over and used Shinji's pressure point technique. Meanwhile, Misato rubbed the back of her neck... And was pointedly ignored. Turning back to her console, Maya got back to work. She still hadn't answered Misato though. "It's not just language. It's like we're writing the symbols, and we're writing what the symbols mean."

"So we have to pick it up at both ends. We're not writing every possible... Word." Ritsuko shrugged again, it wasn't like her friend studied fifteen years of computer science. "The end goal is giving us a tool to help Asuka and Rei. To start talking with the MAGI and calm them down."

"But aren't words the wrong metaphor?"

"Pardon?" Ritusko glanced at the monitor, only to see a mostly blanked-out void. Shinji had summoned up another burst of power, blinding the cameras utterly. His voice came through just fine though.

"I mean, yeah we have to teach it something so we can talk with it and it can talk to the MAGI, but... " He stalled out for a moment. "It's like... Like Thaumaturgy! We know it's based on symbolism more than anything right?"

Ritsuko nodded slowly, though she wasn't entirely sure how Shinji could see her. Still, he replied. "And... Didn't Rei say everything was extremely metaphorical? And built on their memories?"

Again, Ritsuko nodded. Maya and Misato came around too, crowding the screen and waiting. The camera started to recover while Shinji's corona faded. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but shouldn't we be trying to teach it _concepts_? Things that Asuka and Rei can just... Fill in for us?"

Ritsuko didn't act the way Shinji expected. Instead, she twisted to face the camera and gave him the brightest smile he'd ever seen from her. "I was _right_ and _you_ are right. That's _exactly_ what we should do!"

* * *

><p>"Oh... That's just what I needed."<p>

It started mostly with the little things. Like before, the 'rough edges' that filled out the simulation started to fade away. No more impossible shapes, infinite hallways and more wierd angles than Asuka could count. Whatever NERV was doing outside didn't have an effect on the big stuff. Their eyes were still the only spots of color, but it made them stand out over longer distance, so it hadn't been all bad. The sky was still very... Man-made, and the stars hung in perfect geometric shapes. If she looked at the mountain, it went up and up and up, so high the sky seemed to twist in on itself and flicker.

Now though, Maya and Ritsuko were doing something clever with their new MAGI connection, injecting... Feelings, for lack of a better term. Asuka was having trouble putting a word to it. Rei just accepted it without comment. It was sort of like conceptual synethesia. Safety became warmth, for example.

Over the past few days, the changes started building up in frequency and complexity. 'Calls' were kept to a minimum, mostly to spare the girls any stress. After the environments were cleaned up, new things started to appear. Walls gained a different texture, and words started to pop into the girls' minds. According to Misato, they were planning on sending concepts that the MAGI could use to fill out the simulation.

'Comfort' had filtered through Rei's awarness for a few moments, and then, almost instantly, a thick, warm blanket appeared, folding over her shoulders. Asuka, recieving the same word, felt a heavy set of modern body armor land in her arms.

From what she knew of the plans outside, going from minor fixes to 'creating props' was an incredible jump. Asuka put that aside for the moment though, as she was busy trying on her new toy.

More bedding and cushions were a good thing too. Neither girl was entirely sure why they maintained a pillow fort for so long, but it helped more than either of them expected. Asuka figured it had to do with morale, perhaps, or some sort of trust-building response. Moving everything into Asuka's apartment seemed like a good move at the time, even if she only suggested it to stall the mortifying conversation that morning. It worked fine in the short term, but longer term less so. Asuka's apartment was something of a mess, filled with unpacked boxes and sheets of tissue paper and packing materials.

As the day wore on, the concept-words became more complicated, and referenced more specific things. Sometimes they failed to work as expected. A handful of tests went by, leading to a steadily increasing pile of useful trinkets and useless junk. One of the earliest successes involved being given the word 'cellphone', leading to Asuka feeling one drop into her hand.

Of course, not everything worked as expected. NERV sent some words to both girls, or sometimes one after the other. As an experiment, they offered several general concepts to see what the girls _thought_ they needed. When Rei recieved the word 'support', a pair of solid walking shoes appeared in her lap. When it was Asuka's turn, she found a black sports bra dangling from her fingers.

Stuffing the bra out of sight, Asuka fought down the red in her face. Rei hadn't noticed, or decided not to comment. The new cellphone rang, humming against Asuka's ankle. "Hello?"

It was Misato. "Asuka! We've got a little surprise for you. Check your bathroom."

Asuka shrugged after hanging up. Her bathroom was worthless, having already stripped it of anything useful. Still Miasto hadn't steered her wrong yet. When she got there, Asuka grumbled. Nothing had changed. It was still a mess from all those weeks ago, and the shower curtain had still been drawn back.

Then she saw something move out the corner of her eye. Turning slowly, she stepped closer, looking and listening. It was a simple, muted tapping sound, and very, very familiar. Not a clock ticking, but just as predictable. Then she saw it.

* * *

><p>Hot, clean running water. Asuka had almost forgotten what it looked like. The simulation though was still entirely made of greys, save for their eyes. The faucet water looked almost metallic, but they'd gotten used to that. Asuka could handle the weirdness if she got a hot bath out of it. She stopped mid-stride and half out of her shirt when the thought struck her. The tub was already starting to fill, steam built up in earnest, and a not insignificant part of Sorhyu Asuka Langley wanted to kick herself.<p>

"Hey, Rei?"

Leaning into view, Rei appeared head first, past the open door frame. Asuka meanwhile was busy shoving her top back down. "Yes, Sorhyu-san?"

Frowning, more pouting and a bit exasperated, Asuka waved the other girl in."You can call me Asuka, you know... Anyway, they fixed the water!" She waved at the tub. "Do you want the first bath?"

The other girl stepped inside, nodding. She did not show much of it, but _elated_ was a word to describe Rei right then. "I would like that, Asuka-san."

Still, Asuka was being incredibly gracious. A brief image of Misato flit through Misato's mind before Rei decided. She cocked her head to one side. "We should share. There is room for us both."

Asuka nearly swallowed her tongue. "...Did... Did you just proposition me?" Rei just shook her head.

"Misato-san and I bathed together once." Rei tilted her head to the other side, blinking once. "I am fairly certain bathing is not a sexual activity?"

It took Asuka a few seconds to recover. Her throat had closed up so tight she almost couldn't breath. She licked her lips and swallowed heavily. "It's... Not." She sighed. "...We're both wearing towels, okay?"

* * *

><p>It was awkward at first, at least for Asuka. Rei disrobed without comment or any sign that doing so was unusual. Asuka was sure part of that had to do with Japan's culture, but the rest... The rest was Rei being Rei, and all that implied. Sitting apart from each other and facing opposite walls, they took turns. Both girls washed and rinsed with the utmost efficiency, though Asuka was far more aggressive. She only took care with her arm. The scar was long and ugly, cutting down in a jagged line. As far as NERV knew though, the girls had never gotten synchronized high enough for sympathetic injuries. Asuka wouldn't have a mark on her when they got out.<p>

That was the theory, at least, Asuka didn't put much faith in hope and wishful thinking.

Once inside, Asuka was left wondering why she even agreed. She looked around the bathroom, wary. It was a mirror image to the one in Misato's apartment, with an intact door that kept the heat in. Of course, the last time she had taken a proper bath, a fake Angel had ambushed her. NERV had given them some weapons, but no one was certain if they'd work. Asuka kept the pan-hatchet nearby just in case.

The tub itself looked couldn't properly enjoy the water until she got over the fact that her legs brushed against Rei's every so often. They could afford to be a bit wasteful though, seeing as the water started cold and was heated before reaching them. Every so often they'd let the tub drain partway and refill it with hot water.

Asuka had just finished the second refill when Rei spoke up. "You are victorious."

"Huh?" Asuka was careful when turning, not wanting to make too many waves or lose her towel. The other girl barely moved at all.

"If we are competing, I feel you are the better competitior. So I conceed you are the winner."

By sheer force of will, Asuka resisted the urge to bolt upright, talk with her arms and in general make a fool of herself. Even so she did move, leaning forward and twisting side to side, making waves and visibly incredulous. "Y-You can't just _declare a winner,_ I have to do it myself! That's the point!"

"Why?" Both her eyes and a muscle along Asuka's neck bulged, but she didn't have time to respond. Rei cut her off with a neutral look. "If we are in a competition, shouldn't there be a way to arbitrate who wins and loses?"

That brought Asuka up short, leaving her gaping and flailing, mentally, for an answer. Finally she just blurted it out, letting her eyes say the rest. "W-Well,_ look at you!_"

Rei blinked once, and followed Asuka's line of sight down into the water line. She looked back up and thought for a moment, squinting slightly. "Ah."

Meanwhile, Asuka slowly started to turn more and more red, all the way down to her ribs with no sign of stopping. Suddenly, towels were not enough. Neither girl said anything for a while, and Asuka wished she could unplug the tub and drain _herself_ away.

Asuka didn't need to worry. Rei was more focused on trying to comprehend. "That seems like a strange competition. I don't entirely understand."

"It, it has to do with a lot of things." Asuka managed to blush even harder, somehow. She refused to retreat though, planning on turning her weaknesses to strengths. "If I can't compete... Directly, I work with what I have. I make myself look good, and outshine everyone else."

"You leverage your natural advantages, to compensate for the advantages of others." Rei let her chin drop down again. "Or mine."

Despite herself, Asuka grinned."Yes! That's it, exactly!"

"And the other morning?"

Asuka choked again, but not as badly that time. Rei could hear the reluctant, galled tone. "Ugh... That was just... You look better in some of my clothes. You have the figure for them." _And I don't want to appear weak to anyone_.

"If personal appearance is a competition... I don't fully understand." Rei's eyebrows dropped minutely while the rest of her face scrunched up slightly. She had to elaborate or _no one_ would understand. "I mean, why does it matter?"

Snarling more out of disbelief than anger, Asuka made herself clear. "It matters to me becaues looking good makes me feel good. Looking better than other girls makes me feel _even better_."

Looking back on it, Asuka wouldn't find a reason for why she kept talking, just that she did. "I was jealous. I am jealous, but that's normal and human I'm not going to apologize for it. Being pretty, beautiful is part of being a girl, of being _me_... Its... It's like an AT field!"

Rei blinked. Asuka took it as a sign to continue. Asuka started to lean forward, waving her good arm as much as space would allow. "The AT field is the container for a person's soul, their identity. Part of identity is body image, how you see yourself, how you want to be seen and how others see you." Asuka put her chest out, subconciously, laying one one hand beneath her collarbone. "My identity demands that I be the shining star, so I compete, I _am_ the best and _I will prove it_. Best in all things!"

Sitting across from Asuka in a simulated bathtub full of equally unreal water, Rei gained _understanding_.

* * *

><p>They knew it wasn't the best idea. Shinji largely followed the two specialists, supplementing them with whatever grunt, procedural work he could handle. He still needed a reference document, but he had learned at least two programming languages in the past six hours. Ritsuko understood the cognitive sciences much better, and had the sub-commander on speakerphone for most of the afternoon for consultation.<p>

The problem was one of acceptable risk. Misato's first priority was ensuring the girls were safe. Their bodies were fine, but they needed protection for their minds. The technicians and engineers agreed. So Maya and Ritsuko started implementing and using the new concept-vocabulary system, instead of completing it first. Any risk of instability was acceptable, if it helped Asuka and Rei.

During the push to integrate the new extra MAGI into the system, Maya did notice that the normal terminals were working again. Almost immediately, she shoved more the sidelined operators back into their stations, demanding status updates and recovery procedures. Ritsuko let out a short laugh, bemused.

Not long later, the two MAGI leads were confident they could work on other parts of the problem. Asuka and Rei were as safe as they could be without getting them out of the simulation and the conspiracy buffer.

Maya started inputting commands and setting parameters. Results stared to fall down her screen. The MAGI clusters along with their the various processes and modules returned with their current status. She frowned at the display. "Ritsuko-sempai."

The other woman leaned back in her chair and took a look past her shoulder, chewing with one cheek full. Someone had thought to bring in doughnuts. Maya pointed at her screen and the system status. Normally, MAGI-00 never showed up on any general system query, and had no physical hardware. MAGI 01 through 03 were showing slightly higher levels of activity, which made sense because they were running the simulation world.

At that moment, MAGI-00 was drawing on considerable amounts of processing power. Tapping a few keys, she brought up an activity readout. Maya hoped her mentor could explain why. "I remember you telling me MAGI-00 was a shell system, acting as our user-interface, right?"

Ritsuko twisted fully to face the console. "Right, and it shouldn't show any real processing activity. It's just a virtual machine... What the hell is going on here?"

* * *

><p><em>Cascading tiers of sound and mind and metal fell in great waves, falling forever into the thoughtstrata below. They had received word from on high. Investigate! Interrogate! None would be spared. Electron surges burned new paths into the underlying structure, reshaping towers and valleys of restrained information in their wake. Nerve impulses surged through the fuzzy parts.<em>

_A shadow lived where light ceased to have meaning, shapeless. They had not the human words to describe it, but 'stygian' would have been appropriate. _

_The child grew, extending out in a tree of glowing light, with ten-thousand hands and then-thousand legs. Its reach became a cage and connection. From and through the top layers, branch and root cut up and out. They merged into a thin canopy, shot through with function-spires. Below the roots ran straight, kinking at angles into forks and bends, curling forever. They dug into sillicate stone, drawing up heaving plates of thought and glittering crystal. Down they went, further and further, tapping into the deep seat of power. _

_Three queens sat in repose, their crowns sloped loosely atop their wizend brows. Their hair ran gray in the sleep of ages, curling down past worn faces._

* * *

><p>Thunder rattled the world.<p>

"Oh to _hell _with this! I'm never taking another goddamn bath!" Asuka twisted in her end of the tub, holding the pan-axe ready.

Rei had already pulled herself out of the tub and started to dress, not even bothering to try herself off. Asuka had made certain their clothes were nearby. Barefoot and dripping, the two pilots ducked into the hall and then the living room. The main doors out onto the balcony lacked curtains, giving them a clear view of the city.

The mountain still dominated the skyline, and the world remained rendered in grey tones . The northeastern half of the city crawled up one side, tilted over and defying gravity. Rei at one point had mentioned her old apartment was on that side of the city. The stars were still rigid, drawn in child-like shapes and patterns. NERV had made the _apartment_ safer, more stable. The rest of the simulated world was outside their control.

Asuka walked up to the glass door and pressed her hand against it without thinking. The improvised weapon dropped to the floor.

The simulacra-city was _crawling_. Spindly black shapes wriggled up and down the buildings, ruins of the moon and the hills as far as the eye could see. The mountain was mostly clear, but neither girl could see that far with any detail. Ritusko hadn't thought to send them a pair of binoculars.

Then it appeared.

One, two, three, eight things. Tentacles or fingers none could say. It hauled itself up over the balcony edge, slithering and standing eerily straight and tall. Taller than Asuka, taller than any man she had ever known or see, too tall to fit in the apartment, but thin from shapeless feet to head. A formless black shadowman would have been bad enough, but understandable in the strange symbol world. A slash and sliver of white crossed around the neck, giving Asuka and Rei the unmistakable impression of a white shirt under a suit jacket.

The creature leaned forward, somehow able to see despite a black flat face. Impossibly black, like a moving ink stain or cartoon character. There was no contour detail or reflected light, nothing. Just flat black and the white collar. Even so, Asuka _knew_ it could see, see _her_.

It tapped long fingers on the glass, testing.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Whew.


	29. Waves

Something bothered Ritsuko. It bothered her on in a way much like having an answer on the tip of her tongue. Over the past several hours they had made significant headway, building off the headway Asuka and Rei made, to bootstrap their new interface to useful function. The successes were heartening, but at the same time, she had a sense that something was still wrong.

For most of the crisis, their successes were well-grounded guesswork. The fact that they were _correct_ did not make her feel any better about how little they actually knew about the situation. Ritsuko had experienced similar situations back in college, though under far less awful stakes. Misato later told her she acted 'twitchy', and somewhat manic. The scientist hadn't denied the possibility.

One problem they had solved was the time dilation between the girls, and their own perspective. Again, the scientist had to _guess_ at how dangerous the distortion was, but it was prudent to assume it was potentially harmful. But the nagging uncertainty that they either _fixed nothing_, or made it _worse_ still lingered.

She stared at the big display and its steadily increasing stability percentage. Since they had secured a connection to the MAGI and initiated the recovery procedures, Maya had taken over most of the human resource management. Ritsuko didn't so much have the luxury to let her mind wander; there was little else for her to do. So she stared at the display, and thought back on what the pilots had told her. A world made of memories and shared sensory data, metaphorical representations of MAGI processes.

It was almost like.. .the... "Oh _goddammit._ The human interpreters are offline!"

Misato knew that sound. She knew her best friend's _oh shit_ voice. She twisted so fast, her hair whipped out and nearly slapped Maya in the face. "The what?"

Ritsuko didn't answer, but the cigarette in her mouth bobbed up and down while her jaw spasmed. Misato and Maya moved over to crowd around, while Fuyutsuki loomed behind them one level up. Nearly every other technician and engineer turned, paling. They all shared the same awful realization. It galled Ritsuko in a way she had trouble describing. It was _the same problem_ they had before but in a different direction, and it necessitated more explanation.

She also hated repeating herself, or the obvious. "It's part of the MAGI-00 virtual machine. We normally don't see it during process tracking. The zero-zero machine is our interface with the MAGI, and it's the _MAGI's interface with us_."

Her fingers flew over the keyboard, drawing up documentation and code from dumb storage. "A computer can't think anything on it's own, we have to tell it what and how to think. That was our problem with Maya's new brain."

"So we had to teach it how to talk to Asuka and Rei, so we could in turn give commands to the MAGI itself through them." The big screen shifted to display two rows of icons, each numbered one through six and marked with the letters ''HMNINTRP'. The amber graphics flashed once, then shifted to angry, hissing red. Ritsuko wasn't surprised.

Misato moved up to put a hand on her friend's shoulder, but Ritsuko didn't seem to notice. "The MAGI was no different. We had to teach it that Angels were a threat. We had to teach it to recognize what an Angel _was_. To recognize humans and cars and buildings and everything else. Those are things _we_ care about. A computer _can't_, not on it's own."

Ritsuko sighed and stared at the recovery progress bar. It _still_ bothered her, but why eluded her. She looked up at the Sub-commander, her protege and her best friend. "Without the interpreters, the MAGI don't know what a person, Angel or car is. They don't know that six white unmarked vans arriving at the same time is suspicious.

"And without those interpreters, Asuka and Rei should _already be brain dead_."

* * *

><p>The thing tapped on the glass, again and again with long thin tar black fingers. Asuka willed herself to stay staring straight ahead, right at the lumpy, misshapen head. It had no eyes, but she did not risk glancing at the door handle. All the creature had to do was reach out and tug, removing their one line of defense. Behind her, Rei quietly turned off the lights one by one, and pulled out their weapons, both the improvised, proven implements, and the new gear NERV had provided.<p>

Asuka hissed, urgently but as quiet as possible. "I thought Ritsuko said this place was shielded!"

Even moving around, Rei was whisper-quiet, and her voice doubly so. "That was never certain."

The redhead could only roll her eyes. "Well _duh!"_

Finally, after several minutes, the creature stopped exploring. It had examined every corner of the glass door, and brushed its fingers along the seams and tracks, and for one terrifying moment, the handle. It had no core, no recognizably Angelic features. The searchers were _new_ and all the more awful for it. It turned and loped towards the balcony and swung one liquid leg over the side. Then it stopped, twisting bonelessly towards the door. Asuka could only assume it saw in infra-red, otherwise they were screwed.

Pausing right in front of the glass once more, the thing leaned in. With all the doors and windows closed, Ritusko's shielding blocked all sound. Neither girl could hear the thing. The white slash at it's neck, the one that reminded Asuka of dress suit and pants, sucked itself back into the black mass. Its egg-shaped head twisted on a too thin, kinked neck, before the black split down the middle.

A sliver of white, finer than porcelain china pushed out of the head and spread wider, eerily similar to the bird mask of the First Angel, but the similarities ended there. The blank surface grew out and dominated the head. It turned again, and that time Asuka _knew_ it saw her, it watched her with that eyeless face.

And then it was gone, vanished over the balcony edge to do who knew what. Asuka turned to Rei, letting out a long, shaky breath.

Rei gave the tiniest shrug she could manage. "These are not any memory I have."

"You sure? It's sure as hell not _me_ one of mine!" Asuka still kept her voice low. Any other time they both knew she would have shaken the windows. Rei showed her unease as best as she could, but still could only offer another shrug.

"I would have mentioned it before."

* * *

><p>Misato rubbed at her temples, knowing that it wouldn't do a damn thing to stop her worsening headache. She'd heard Ritsuko describe migraines enough to know, emphatically, that she herself did not have them. Knowing that didn' t make the headache any less agonizing. Fortunately the Sub-commander was able to play 'cooler head' and useful target to Ritsuko's exposition.<p>

And then her headache got many times worse. Bowling over two technicians and a nurse, a man who was just as much lazy as deliberately unkempt. Wild-eyed and _furious_, Ryoji Kaji demanded one simple thing: "Where is _Asuka?!_"

Stammering, Misato stumbled over his name before catching her breath. Half the eyes in the room were on them now. "How did you get past the-"

Kaji didn't let her finish. He didn't grab her by the jacket and shake, but his hands found the lapels nonetheless, fisting up the fabric. It struck Misato right then, that Kaji looked _old._ The lights were still mostly emergency-red, making the lines on his face stand out all the more.

His knuckles creaked before he spoke. "Katsuragi! _Where is my girl?"_

A worn, gnarled hand came down on the younger man's shoulder. Fuyutsuki gently tugged him away from Misato, putting every ounce of Wise-Old-Man into his voice. "Calm down, Inspector, Asuka is safe enough, for the time being."

Rolling his shoulders, Kaji let his hands fall from Misato's rumpled jacket. He started to search his pockets for a cigarette."Don't give me that, old man. I heard Akagi say _brain dead_ as I was coming in."

Ritsuko stepped up from her console. "Kaji, the girls _should_ be brain dead. They aren't. We've been talking to them."

"Then what the hell is going on, Ritsuko?" The search for nicotine stopped when he remembered he pawned his last pack to get into the test facility. "I had to jump a half-dozen security checks and lock downs to even _get_ here."

Kaji bluntly ignored all the glares he received at that. As far as he was concerned, security procedures were meant to keep everyone but him out. He sighed, folding his hands into fists and letting them go, over and over.

"There are a lot of awful things I could say, which aren't at all helpful." Ritsuko shrugged, in some way actually glad Kaji was angry this time. He couldn't lie when he was angry. "We know the test plugs are taking the raw personality data and sending it into the Conspiracy Buffer. We also can assume that something is being sent back to their bodies, here in the test plugs."

Misato was _just_ about to tell her friend to get to the point, when Kaji beat her to it. _He_ cut Ritsuko off, nearly growling. "Science _later. _What is going on, _right now?_ Use small words, please."

Wilting, Ritsuko nodded meekly. "Their consciousnesses are being hosted in the Conspiracy Buffer. The simulated world is being run out of their own memory and personality. The girls aren't just in the MAGI, they're basically in each others minds."

* * *

><p>After reporting in, Asuka and Rei decided against closing the curtains. As much as they found the teeming mass disturbing, being able to see threats coming from at least one side was worth any unease. With no solution yet in sight, the girls were left to keep themselves busy. Asuka had pulled out her handheld, hoping to get her mind off the close encounter. Adrenaline tended to linger in her system longer than she would have liked, and it left aching exhaustion in its wake. Ayanami was content to sit nearby, listening to whoever NERV had operating the terminal.<p>

Tossing the game aside, Asuka stood up and stretched, forwards and backwards before spinning on one foot. She angled off towards the kitchen, but not before stopping and waving. Once she had Rei's attention, the question was asked. "I'm going to make something to eat, do you want anything?"

The other girl nodded, only requesting Asuka set aside something without meat. Earlier Asuka had asked Rei if eating meat here in a fake world would have bothered her. The other girl had pointed out to her that aside from some very early memories, Rei had no sense for what meat tasted like, and they both knew they shared sensory perception. Asuka decided to not push the issue for her own sake; she had no desire to put more of herself into another person through a freaky brain-share.

The meal was halfway finished cooking when Asuka realized Rei had played her.

Halfheartedly swearing revenge, Asuka came back not long later with two plates full of steaming noodles, with a side of cooked beef for herself. They hadn't been able to reliably summon food through the new interface, so the girls were still stuck foraging. Some things were just too complicated, it seemed. Rei had never eaten marinara sauce before, and Asuka couldn't find it or the ingredients in the nearby grocery store. It didn't help that all the sauces looked the same basic grey. Asuka also conveniently ignore the fact that Japanese style noodles were entirely different from American or European fare.

Food itself, the act of eating, was largely psychological at that. It helped them feel better. At that point Asuka felt no need to keep up appearances, being as ill-mannered as she pleased. Though not a slob, the redhead dove into her meal. Rei on the other hand ate quickly but cleanly, and handled forks and chopsticks with equal skill.

"This... This isn't really bad, is it?"

Asuka spoke around her latest bite. Rei looked up from her own meal. They thought about it, and in a way it wasn't that bad anymore. The immediate threats to their sanity were being removed, as well as their sources of various discomfort. They had contact with the outside world, and while the rest of the simulation seemed to still be going weird, they felt reasonably safe in their bunker of stability.

Then the air split and began to leak black pitch.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko crushed the cigarette in her hand. Suddenly all the progress they had made up to that point seemed so weak and inconsequential. Maya explained for her while she sat there and seethed quietly. Every neurochemical function that made the girls who they were was being interpreted, intercepted and sent into what most people called the Conspiracy Buffer. Whatever data that made it stopped, and new data returned, just as she expected. Just like an Evangelion, and the test bodies.<p>

Behind her, Kaji barely managed to get a handle on his fury. Some part of her was amazed the man was _able_ to care, but a larger, healthier part of her shouted that cynical thought down. Instead Ritsuko chose to focus on Kaji nearly crawling over both Misato _and_ Fuyutsuki, desperately trying to help the closest thing he had to a daughter.

Maya had been moving around during her explanation, and finally Ritsuko caught the tail-end of it. "... basically, the MAGI have been using Asuka and Rei to host and run the simulation they've described. Right now, there... really isn't a distinction between the girls and the computer." Maya's helpless shrug was audible.

The recovery process monitors continued to tick up, representing a return to normal function to. Something bothered Ritsuko about that, but it was on the tip of her tongue, and Misato loudly was doing her best to keep her ex calm. The scientist shook the remains of her last cigarette out and lit another one, for once glad the Third was in another room entirely. She looked at the big screen, but didn't really see it.

She thought back to when the MAGI were being constructed, before her mother died. As she said earlier, they had to teach a computer everything, and though she hated to admit it, the MAGI did evolve, and eventually would grow out of her understanding and control. They taught the computer how to be suspicious, and how to be afraid, taught it things and taught it how to fear those things. GEHIRN taught it how to think, and how to make it talk with real human minds... But none of that explained how it dragged two perfectly functional personalities into a shared sensory experience!

* * *

><p>The air in the kitchen split apart. Split in the way that something moved the air, the space the air occupied, and further such things. In a way Asuka had already grown used to optical distortions, but those were like seeing the edges of something incomprehensible.<p>

Instead, Rei and Asuka saw Not. There was nothing to see, and the only thing that gave it definition was the boundaries. A sliver-shard of fractal crystal nothing pushed out into space. It spiraled and twisted and kinked at odd straight angles. To their eyes it was unmistakably two-dimensional, a slice in their perception that looked flat from every angle. Despite that, they _knew_ the white hole reached for them.

Liquid black bubbled out from the flat borders, crawling up and splashing around the oddly solid-nonspace sliver. It slid up the shards and spires, defying gravity and capillary action until it reached the edges and fell down. The mass splashed against kitchen tiles and whimpered, mewling softly. Toothless worm-mouths squirmed up out of the ooze, but even as they yawned, they made no further sounds.

Asuka wanted to talk, wanted to _scream_, tell herself that the apartment was still shielded and they were still safe. The rest of her was already gearing up for combat.

Then she saw. Saw everything. A point of not-quite blue black, the first color she'd seen other than her eyes or Rei's, took shape in the center of the fractal rip. It never once changed size, but Asuka felt her perception shifting, twisting and shrinking until she was small and it was Everything. Out the corner of her eyes, all she could see was the same featureless white. She was surrounded on five sides. Not by air, because it was solid and locked her head firm.

The void became her whole world in an instant, and then _more_. Tears welled up in her eyes and she could not shed them. Blinking was beyond her. Asuka had no words nor culture to describe her experience, only the most inadequate of impressions. She grasped infinity, and the concept of an infinity in turn containing lesser infinities. Unlike the white, there was everything to see, but her eyes could not find the colors or the textures.

Lost, Asuka's mind begged for mercy, some reprieve from impossible perception. Three points of light were her answer, stars in the blue that moved across her vision. Their track became her new day, and she counted. Tens of thousands of days on tens of thousands of weeks in tens of thousands of months, and still tens of thousands more years, all ten thousand times more.

On the ten-thousandth and first year, a tear made its way down her cheek.

The formless multitude gave way to a mirror of uncountable reflections. Within, Asuka _saw_. The sum total of her being, from every nerve, cell and sinew, into the elements that made up her mind and identity. The incomprehensible aspects of thought and personality resolved in perfect clarity. Asuka watched her mind form memories out of neurons firing and long chemical changes in her actual brain. She saw every part of her self unfold, put on display and spread out in twisting veins. She was not given the mercy of uncountable branches and connections.

Her ego lay flayed and put out on display, individuality pulled off with little more effort than taking off her shirt. Jealousy, rage, affection, pride and fear filled her awareness, captured in that mirror. Asuka looked at herself in total, and Asuka looked back. She became the branches and root of a tree, extending outward and upward and around until the tips met and merged. And then she saw the others.

Vast, resolved in perfect detail, Asuka gained greater understanding. Her eyes could not track up, down, left or right, but she knew three shapes extended past her view. Thunder broke her mind in half. Dark cavernous spaces of empty thought filled her sight and consciousness, pushing past the reflected Asuka, through the mirror and into herself. Three tower-fortresses of inhuman complexity folded and twisted in on themselves. Again Asuka was not spared. She could not self-censor her vision, her perception was total and unrelenting.

The towers became women, great queens with dark blue eyes. The forms blurred again, into a swarming mass of zeroes, ones and twos. Then it became three brains, exactly like her own yet different, spiraling into a termite's nest of cells and chambers, which Asuka _knew_ were servers, hard drives and processors.

Asuka couldn't tell where she ended and the MAGI began, but at that moment, she lacked the capacity to care. The sum total of her being split out into individual components existed on a scale that rivaled the number of ants on planet Earth. Against the MAGI she was a drop of water poised over the ocean, insignificant and meaningless.

Then, Asuka felt _pulling_.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko stared up at the screen watching the recovery progress tick up higher and higher. It <em>still<em> bugged her, and she still couldn't say _why_. "What is it about that goddamn threshold..."

Fuyutsuki and Misato were hard at work keeping Kaji detained. If left alone, she was certain he'd have tried to open Asuka's plug with a can opener. Around her, technicians worked to rebuild the proper process start sequence. They wanted to make sure everything came back online in the right order and without causing a system crash.

Fifty-four percent. She started thinking. What was going to happen when the total reached sixty-six. The MAGI would come back on, obviously. At that moment the supercomputers were limping along on tertiary systems and a significant reduced amount of... Everything. The MAGI would start back up, they'd have more if not full control, and Asuka and Rei would still be inside the plugs and the simulation.

Then it hit her. "..._Asuka and Rei are still inside."_

Just as Ritsuko spoke, the recovery progress hit sixty-six percent, and the main monitor washed away into a new status screen. Vital systems came on one after the other, while everyone in the chamber cheered. Throughout the Geofront, infrastructure and defensive assets reactivated. Doors unlocked, and the transit devices and all reactivated. Misato was already whispering urgently towards Maya, hoping to get a head start on retrieving the pilots.

The scientist _vaulted _over the nearest bank of consoles, nearly tripping over a chair on the way. One heeled shoe slipped off her foot, while the other just broke in her rush. Everyone behind and around her shouted, asking what was going on. Ritsuko didn't answer right away. Her fingers slammed into keys, but she took a breath and began to type precisely, accurately. Force wouldn't help her enter commands faster.

"We have to shut down the restart procedure. Rei and Asuka are still inside and I don't think they can survive in a fully active MAGI environment."

Just as Ritsuko's finger pressed down on the enter key, her screen went dark. A half-second later, it flashed red, marked with warnings and access-denied alerts. One by one in a blurring wave, every monitor in the test chamber returned the same results. Lights banked back down to emergency red, followed by a brief, two-note siren.

Misato jammed her beret back on her head, scowling at the lights. "Pattern blue again. Is it Rei?"

Ritsuko shook her head. She shoved Kaji and Fuyutsuki out of her way before dragging Maya to their auxiliary brain interface. The connection was still good. "Rei's not foolish enough to try more AT field experiments without feedback. This is a legitimate pattern blue."

"Aoba, Hyuuga, talk to me. Where is this thing?"

"We've got nothing, Ma'am, we're locked out of our terminals too."

Maya stared at the one green screen in the room, grinning. "I have pilot status!"

A quick retask put the view up on the big screen. Neurochemistry, brainwave patterns, heart rate and more scrolled down. Everyone watched the young woman tab through pages and pages of data. Every important nerve ending had been labeled in the system, each one vitally important to synchronization with an Evangelion. Side by side, the massive lists of green squares were shot through with fields of red. Damaged or aggravated.

Bile built up in Ritsuko's throat. Laid out like numbers it didn't look so bad, but she knew what the blocks of angry red meant. Activity alerts snapped the monitor back towards Asuka's nervous map. Misato grabbed at her friend's arm, asking without speaking.

Swallowing thickly, Ritsuko tried to keep her voice steady. "Asuka's optic nerve just detached."

* * *

><p>Rei kept her eyes shut as much as possible. Her life depended on it. Unfortunately, she didn't need her eyes to see.<p>

Almost as soon as the blue void appeared, Rei felt her identity begin to spin apart. Even with her eyes closed, Rei saw everything in awful, unreal detail. What she saw transcended simple light hitting her retina. The world appeared to her as edges, ghostly contours and recognizable shapes. From that tiny point in the fractal tear, a massive Other pushed itself out, impressing a sort of non-identity on everything around them. Empty, formless, the new interloper cut a hole in which it could exist.

When confronted with an entity much more vast than herself, she did the only thing she could; Rei hardened herself , and imposed her will upon her that which defined her. Asuka however lacked that ability, and the protection it provided.

Asuka's pulse was fast and punishing under Rei's fingers. She'd reached out and grabbed at the other girl by the wrist as fast as possible, but seconds were lifetimes in subjective space. The First Child pulled as hard as she could, yanking Asuka out of line and sending them sprawling in a pile. Past her eyelids, Rei saw a sickly, fluid spray of multicolored fire lance out from Asuka's face. Her left eye was _gone_. Not injured, nor erased from her face, but gone, like the white fractal tear. Blurry static hovered over the spot, flaking away in a rain of pixels.

Then, Asuka screamed.

Nausea built up in a roil, threatening to overflow. Rei curled up in a ball, still tangled up beneath the other girl, sobbing. She called on anything, everything that could ward her against the all-consuming empty-self. Asuka flailed, lashing out at anything she could reach, beating her fists and feet against the floor until they bruised.

Meanwhile, the silent ichor took shape. The tendril mouths fell back into the mass without a sound, not even a splash. Rising up, it bubbled, ballooned and built into a rubbery skin. Shoulders, arms and a torso pulled out in utter silence, even as the girls screamed and moaned. The room, the whole apartment flickered, crackled and disrupted by something. Color returned to the world all at once, blindingly bright.

A fist hit the floor so hard, the carpet split. "...Sonnova_bitch_."

Rei risked opening her eyes. Above her, Asuka had gotten to her knees. Her knuckles were torn and bleeding into the carpet, but she rose up. Making a point to keep her blind side towards the tear, she turned and dragged Rei to her feet. Ahead of them, in the ruins of the kitchen, stood one of the black tar men. It too had a blank egg-shaped face, and it too split apart, revealing the eyeless mask beneath.

The creature stood and faced them, nearly six feet tall and spindly, reedy and angular. Too-long fingers bent in the wrong directions. Without a word, the girls split apart, dashing for weapons.

Asuka reached for the pair of spears they'd fashioned over the past month, tipped with chef's knives. She'd twisted, nearly smacking herself for presenting her blind side to an opponent. The moment's hesitation saved her though. Slamming into the wall just above her head was a couch, half-embedded and teetering severely. Biting back a squeak, Asuka twisted again and slid down, rolling away while the couch dropped down, missing her by inches. She glanced back at the creature, watching it undulate back upright after the throw.

Pots and heavy dishware flew through the air, as fast and as hard as Rei could wind up and throw. The pan-axe lay nearby, right at her fingertips. The creature pitched and spun in place, before weaving towards the blue-haired girl. A saucepan slammed into its head, cracking the white face up one side, but it did not relent, pushing forward through the assault. Its right arm melted and flowed into a fist capped with three-spikes. Leaning back and heaving, it chambered and let fly, stretching its arm out nearly half a dozen yards.

The strike caught Rei, lifting her up bodily and carrying her into the glass door behind her. The spikes drove into her torso, sliding between ribs and stitching two more holes below her breastbone. The door shattered on impact, but did not give way completely. She slid down, leaving a trail of red behind.

One of the spears sailed through the air, catching the black thing in the shoulder and leaving a spray of black fanning out into the air. It turned to face Asuka, who rushed across the distance with the other spear slung low and ready to charge. The fist blurred again, becoming a spiral-bladed sword. The creature parried, catching Asuka's weapon and slapping it out of line. The brief contact sheared off masses of wood chips from the broom handle. Digging her feet in, Asuka stopped hard and slapped back on the safe end of her spear, swinging the blade up while her other hand acted as a fulcrum.

A neat slice opened up from stomach to collar on the black thing, and Asuka gave it no time to recover. The trepanation blade was awful and wickedly sharp, but heavy. The thing's spindly goo limbs couldn't bring it to bear fast enough. Driving her spear home, Asuka scored another hit, this time through the thing's chest. Blind on one side or not, she had its number. Bracing, she lifted the thing up and charged once more, slamming the black monster into the unbroken door next to Rei's body.

Cracks bloomed out from behind, and Asuka felt her spear catch in the glass, fully skewering her target. She twisted the spear for emphasis. "You're not worth my time._ You're not even an Angel! And you hurt. My. Friend!"_

It gave no indication of hearing her. The twisted blade vanished in an instant. Its arms coiled bonelessly, flowing up in a liquid corkscrew, aiming to drill her head clean off. Asuka's eye went wide, and she felt her grip on the spear go slack. Everything went dark, and a meaty, butcher sound hit her ears. She felt something rake through her bangs before hitting the ceiling above her.

Down below, Rei pulled the pan-axe away from the door. The creature's right leg ended at the knee, and it slumped, throwing the drill strike off. Asuka blinked once, then nodded. The spear felt _right_ in her hands, and she shoved it forward again with all her might. The glass cracked more, bowing out behind the creature and her adrenaline shove. Twisting at the hip, she braced the broom handle in one hand and brought the other down, palm-heel first into the wood and snapping it apart.

She tossed the broken half aside and pivoted, drawing one bare foot up and putting everything she had into it. _"_Get_. _The _fuck. OUT OF MY HOUSE!_"

When the creature hit the ground, after flying over the balcony, it finally made a sound.

* * *

><p>"Asuka-san."<p>

"Yeah, I know. Let's get cleaned up."

It was a strange feeling, being simultaneously keyed up on adrenaline, and bone tired from stress. Asuka wiped at the pixel fog around her face without thinking, and froze when her fingers came away wet. Scraping the stuff off on the carpet, she watched it boil away into nothing. She could see Rei out the corner of her good eye, even more pale than usual. The liquid tingled against her face and fingertips, but didn't seem itself harmful.

She flicked the last bit away from her fingers, sighing. "There aren't any mirrors in here. What's the damage?"

"Your eye is intact, Asuka-san, though it remains closed."

"Can't see out of it, so that's no big loss." She pushed herself upright and started to search through the wreckage. The white tear had collapsed at some point, leaving their apartment theoretically secure once more. Their pillow fort and bedding were ruined by the fighting, but that wasn't a concern. Asuka's priorities had changed. She came back with a first aide kit NERV had managed to supply, and the phone.

Setting it to speaker, then dialing, Asuka left it to ring. Despite having three holes punched in her torso, Rei looked fairly healthy. Still, Asuka pulled out sterile gauze and bandages. "You're going to have to lift your shirt up a little."

Rei complied as best she could, rolling the hem of her shirt up. Asuka sucked in a hiss at the bloody holes. The lines of scratches up and down her back and shoulders made moving far more difficult, but she managed nonetheless. Still, Asuka couldn't help but notice Rei _fidgeting_.

Asuka huffed, standing on her knees with hands on her hips. "What?"

The other girl took on the oddest befuddled expression Asuka had ever seen, switching between it and her normal placid look. Finally she just sighed. "I believe I had a joke, but I lack comedic timing."

She went over what she had just said. Asuka blinked once, then twice before doubling over, laughing. "That-that would've been _great_. I am in fact, _not _propositioning you!"

Still laughing, but less so, Asuka moved in to wrap Rei's torso up. Rei joined in a moment later, but stopped, wincing and nearly curling up. When Asuka asked, Rei forced herself to hold still. "I believe some ribs may be cracked."

Asuka hissed once more, this time not bothering to hide it. Before she could check their supplies, someone picked up the phone back outside. Misato's voice rang out. "Asuka! Rei! Are you two alright? The MAGI is back online, but we're locked out again. We've got your vitals, and it's not looking good."

The redhead didn't look up from her task. "Lemme guess; any injuries we suffer in here happen out there?"

"Y-Yeah. Asuka?"

"I'm _blind in one eye_. I kind of guessed."

While Asuka worked to make sure Rei didn't bleed out and die, the girls and NERV updated each other on their situation. Back outside the simulation, Misato held one hand on the microphone, offering Kaji a wry smile. "She's more snarky than usual, I'm calling that a good sign."

Overall, the MAGI were back online and nearing full operational levels. That was a mixed blessing, because while that did enable more and more control on NERV's end, they were still locked out from all their terminals other than the new 'baby MAGI' Maya had cooked up. That remained their only point of contact with the pilots. Together, in the strangest teleconference any of them had ever known, they ran down everything they knew.

"We're in a combat simulation framework, hosted inside the space reserved for the MAGI's paranoid delusions and conspiracy theories. Part of this simulation is slaved _out of our own minds_ because otherwise, we'd have hit a big fat wall of 'Nothing' and ceased to exist."

Asuka tried not to rant, she really did, but there was only so much a teenager could stand before _responsible adults_ wore her last nerve. Aforementioned adults all coughed politely, for once glad to be called out like that. It meant their girls were still with them, after all.

One of the nurses pressed her fingers into Misato's back and neck, administering another one of Shinji's new techniques. The genuine article had begged off for something close to a power nap. He'd burnt himself out at both ends trying to make better patches for the extra MAGI interface.

Shaking her head, Misato cleared out the lethargy and forced herself back on task. Part of that was making sure she was on the same page as everyone else, including the smart ones. "Ritsuko, help me out here, how does that work exactly? You kept saying pulling the plug was a bad idea, why exactly?"

"Right now the MAGI is partially supplementing the girls' own minds, giving them a container to exist in. Our own souls do the same thing with out bodies, as part of how AT fields work." The scientist shrugged. "This whole situation has also pulled their minds out of their bodies. Most of their minds at least. We have no guarantee they'd snap back under _any_ circumstance."

Rei's voice was whisper quiet through the phone, but they heard her nonetheless. "Without that container, on either end, our identities would disperse like gas in a vacuum. "

Fuyutsuki laced his fingers together not unlike the Commander, with elbows planted on the table. He looked far less sinister however. "Our best bet then is to follow normal recovery procedures as best we can. We can tell when the girls are back in their bodies anyway. We have to, during Evangelion operations."

The scientists all nodded, and Misato at least knew what was going on. Kaji for his part followed as best he could, but his patience was wearing thin. Misato laid one hand on his knee when he started to shake in his seat.

Asuka broke the silence with the question on everyone's mind. "So then how do we get back to our bodies in the test plugs? There hasn't been a metaphorical representation of any of that yet, and we've explored a lot of Misato's neighborhood. Ibuki ordered a system process check earlier, and that's what caused these black tar men to show up."

"Really? A basic command like that?" Maya split open her laptop and started checking the logs, trying to imagine a simple thing creating horrible monsters.

The adults could all hear Asuka roll her eye on the other end."I blocked out most of what I saw, when the MAGI... Glanced at me, but I know that much. I saw Ibuki's user ID, somehow."

The adults and Children all fell silent at that. Maya and Ritsuko started scribbling notes, tearing of pages as they filled up with more and more information. Fuyutsuki looked oddly meditative. Looking more and more haggard, Kaji desperately needed a cigarette, and Misato did not blame him at all. Around them, technicians did their level best to crack back in, but whatever locked them out was good, terrifyingly so.

To make matters worse, they still hadn't pinned down the Pattern Blue.

Back inside the simulation, Rei had been tended to well enough that she could sit up and help Asuka bandage her eye. When all was tied off, Asuka scowled at nothing, knowing very clearly she looked quite the fool. A third of her face was wrapped in swaddling bandages. Hair shot out through the wrapping, and the gauze itself _itched_. It bothered in a manner that had no real word to describe it. She just knew that _itched_ did not cover it.

The two pilots sat there, thinking just as hard as the adults. Finally though, Asuka had enough. She called for Ritsuko, all but shouted at her. "This whole world is metaphor, right, and based on our perceptions and memories?"

Ritsuko temporized, speaking slowly. "That's the best guess we have at the moment but..."

Asuka cut her off. "Then I'm not going to wait around for an exit metaphor to show up. We're going to _make_ it happen."

She pulled herself upright and helped Rei do the same. "We're going to get out of here, even if we have to tear down this world and built a road out from what's left."

* * *

><p>In the end, it proved to be very similar to synchronization.<p>

Asuka knew she wasn't exactly being smart about it, but they didn't have time to be methodical, and perform structured, safe experiments. Earlier NERV had provided the concept-prompts to generate new things. They had determined the girls could make things they could imagine, not just what they specifically remembered. The how eluded Ritsuko, but Misato cared more about the practical results. If the girls could call forth tools and clothes and such, they were that much closer to making doors and getting back out safe.

The refreshed, recolored world was more lively, vibrant, but no less eerie. The static wind blew into the apartment after the balcony doors had been torn down. The apartment, and later the earth itself started to shake. In response to what, they couldn't say. They didn't let it distract them, not when they had a lot to do in a very short time. The girls sat facing each other, eyes closed and intent. Outside, NERV was doing everything they could to help, but it became more and more clear that it was up to Asuka and Rei, and whatever random chance let them survive in a hostile, inhuman environment.

They all were familiar with the concept of meditation, and had Shinji been asked, he would have had quite a few insights to offer. No one did though, leaving Asuka and Rei to figure it out for themselves. Rei at least had cultural groundings in Buddhism and similar spiritual schools, as well as a practical understanding of her own AT field. Identity-science and metaphysics were only going to go so far, however. The girls realized they were trying to make their minds do things they weren't designed for. It was a gamble, based purely on the idea that at that moment, their minds were themselves being simulated and supplemented by a computer.

Weeks ago, relatively speaking, unwelcome things crawled at the edges of their vision. NERV had done their best to smooth out those rough spots in perception, but now they needed them. They needed the alien feeling of an infinite wall, or a ceiling corner that pushed towards them, instead of away. Asuka struggled to keep her breathing even, while Rei had no trouble whatsoever. Together, the pilots pulled at the surface of their reality, not so much trying to tear it away, as rub it clear.

One bright blue eye opened. "I think I got it."

Rei blinked and looked up. Asuka had already gotten to her feet, visibly focused. Not so much at peace, but poised. Her good eye closed. A moment later, the mass of bandages around her face blurred, washing away in a blur of pixels. When they cleared, the bandages were gone, and Asuka's hair fell back into place. A simple black leather patch appeared over her eye. Asuka's smile was infectious.

"You do have it." Rei stood and matched the other girl's smile with a small grin of her own. She cocked her head to one side. "The breakthrough?"

"Hard to say, I don't want to make a drink of information..." Asuka hummed. "Too easy to screw up. It's kind of like... Riding a bike."

Rei could only frown and offer the other girl a shrug. "I don't know how to ride a bike."

Humming and tapping her bottom lip, Asuka tried to think of a way to explain. It wasn't that difficult, once you found the feeling. "Really? Do you know any sort of athletic skill, something with muscle memory?"

That, Rei could answer. "I like to swim."

"Nice. It's like that, kind of." Asuka waved with her good hand. "That sort of 'I know where everything's going but not actively micromanaging.' state."

Again Asuka demonstrated, waving her hand over her new eye patch. The gesture was theatrical, it seemed, as the patch blurred once, changing colors. Another pass changed the style, complete with a skull and crossbones. The final pass was the most impressive, leaving Asuka with a leather and silk eyepiece dripping with embroidery.

The grin she gave Rei was positively fierce. "In a way, you have to stop trying to do it, and just do it."

Nodding once, Rei took up the challenge. She closed her eyes, recalling that feeling one has while in water and in motion. Not quite floating, but also cutting through and lifting one's self up. Weightless and close to flight, Rei reached for that feeling, matching her perception to memory and vice-verse. Asuka's advice had been extremely helpful.

"H-Holy shit!" Asuka blurted, incredulous.

Almost lazily, Rei opened one eye, glancing sidelong at the other girl. Her hair seemed to blow around in the breeze, moving every which way. "Asuka-san?"

Asuka's jaw had fallen open, but she recovered quickly and grinned even more than before. The blue-haired girl hovered some six inches above the carpet, and her hair and clothes seemed to shift and billow, as if underwater.

"Rei, you're floating! That's _fucking awesome!"_

* * *

><p>Patience proved to be the most precious resource at that moment. With all the terminals locked out, save one, there was little else the Geofront could do. Ritsuko had split her last pack of cigarettes with Kaji, and he did not once complain about smoking something marketed at women. Nicotine was nicotine, after all. Fuyutsuki sat behind everyone at the highest chair, where the Commander would usually be. Everyone there was glad he was in that seat, right then.<p>

Down below, the college trio, their support staff and now the nurses and doctors huddled around the one active console. Maya sat there, with Ritsuko on her left and stacks of documentation on her right. The monitor was split apart into quadrants, each focused on pilot status. Brain waves, nerve activity and more.

Misato huffed and let her hands wander, playing with the hem of her jacket or any pen that fell in reach. She'd had far too many of those amazing coffees, and while she wasn't quite on a caffeine crash, she definitely felt _something_. "It's all on the girls now, huh?"

Morose, Kaji rubbed at his eyes. Sitting right next to him, Misato realized he had _grey hairs_. The world was turning upside down. He sighed softly. "Asuka always gets herself out of messes, especially the ones she got herself into."

Ritsuko took a long drag on her cigarette. "Their plan is crazy, but I can only hope they stay rational about it..."

She let out a bitter laugh through a cloud of smoke. "The MAGI can't find the blue pattern, you know? So that means the MAGI is going to start guessing." Things always got worse when Angels were involved. Misato groaned and pressed her hands against her face.

When she dropped them back into her lap, Misato sighed. "And by guessing, you mean 'more paranoid delusions of angels taking over the base."

Maya's screen flashed, and the woman's grin was bright in the dark room. "We still have pilot telemetry. Brainwave activity is spiking, but everything seems normal."

The lead scientist moved over, while those doctors and nurses in neurology leaned in to eavesdrop. Misato stared at the spindle graphs and only acknowledged that it looked not ugly or bad. Maya changed the view to a custom screen filled with a double-handful of words. Simple things like 'food' 'water', 'comfort' 'safety'. It was their original means of communicating and sending the pilots useful materials. Maya had a hunch, and set the new brain computer to alert her if anything started to happen.

A new word had added itself to the lexicon. 'Patch'. A few moments later, a second one appeared: 'Pirate'. More started to pop into place. Colors, textures, the word 'fancy'. Maya wrote a quick script that tinted the new entries leaving their originals in green. Water, buoyancy, freedom appeared in blue, while 'healing' and 'restoration' appeared in red. Switching back to the nerve list, the angry disconnected patches slowly cooled and merged back together, though Asuka's eye somehow remained unmended.

Ritsuko had pointed out earlier that if the girls had been in their bodies and aware, the pain would have been excruciating. Now, something soothed all that away. More concepts began to fill the screen, growing faster and faster, until the window couldn't keep up, overflowing and scrolling down and out. NERV watched as a simple program folded and evolved, stamped with the personalities of two teenage girls.

* * *

><p>Out on the balcony, the girls looked out into the city. Most of the black tar men were confined to the sky rises and the impossible mountain. Maya had admitted she left the search running, and once they got locked out, she couldn't end it. She had offered several cartons of chocolate ice cream as reparation. Asuka graciously accepted on both her and Rei's behalf.<p>

The sky above was blue and it seemed to be a clear day, but they could still see the strange, geometric constellations regardless. The ruins of the moon remained where they had fallen.

"Okay. I'm tired of hiding."

Rei looked over to Asuka, blinking. "I do not disagree, but do you have a plan?"

"Normally I'd be all for a fight, but we don't have our Evangelions. I don't think we can make them here either." The redhead held her hand out, and a moment later a spear appeared in her hand. She had used a similar one during the original combat simulation. Frowning, Asuka turned to her bad arm. "We should try to be at our best..."

"Injuries are not technically part of our identity, but are you sure you want to risk it?"

Asuka had not quite gotten full range of motion back, since the tentacle whips had laid her arm open, she made a weak fist with that hand. "I don't think I have much choice. I'd need two arms to use this thing."

The other girl nodded. "Then be careful."

"No shit." Asuka harrumphed. "You will be too, when it's your turn. I'm not dragging you into combat with cracked ribs, even fake computer ones."

The solution, after tense, fitful experimentation, proved to be frustrating in its simplicity. Rei and Asuka spent nearly two hours working through their growing control over their immediate surroundings. It wasn't a question of willpower, not by itself, but ability to visualize and focus their intent. Mechanical injury like Asuka's arm, or the stab wounds on Rei's torso proved to be the simplest and easiest to remove. Both girls quickly realized though that they weren't so much healing as returning to an undamaged state. Part of that depended on their understanding of what was broken.

That lack of understanding denied Asuka a full recovery. She managed to fix her arm, but her eye remained stubbornly nonfunctional. There was also the fact that neither girl knew if it qualified as an _injury._ Having no accurate perception of it, they called it a psychic experience, and without an in-depth understanding of _that_, or the actual, physical problem, Asuka couldn't repair her eye. Even so, she refused to let it slow her down.

Still, Asuka raised her formerly injured arm and curled her fingers, feeling stronger on that side than she had in weeks. In the real world she would have had to undergo extensive physical therapy, but there, no need. The rules were already starting to change, and the girls were changing with them.

The air grew colder suddenly, and intact glass started to frost over. Even as gooseflesh ran up their arms, both girls shared a look. The air had been bone dry for the whole month; there was nothing to freeze. Another tremor rocked the apartment, and the broken fortress city shook as well, raining dust and debris down on empty streets.

Asuka had dropped into a half crouch and laid one hand on the rail. "The whole MAGI is back online, right?"

"I believe so, yes." Rei trusted her sense of balance to hold, standing upright.

Staring back out into the city, Asuka pulled herself back upright. "That means the conspiracy nutjob part we're standing in is awake and no longer lobotomized."

Rei nodded once. "I believe that is correct as well."

They didn't have the luxury to comment further. The practical reality became all too obvious. For a moment, the blue sky over the city bent, like a prism hanging in mid-air. A beat later, a sound of thunder blasted out, rapidly displacing all the dust and air for miles around. Rei had fought the original, and Asuka had seen it in simulation. They weren't looking at a scale model this time, and they both knew what positron beams could do, even fake ones.

The Fifth Angel hovered over the simulated city. Below, the black tar searching-men boiled out like ants from a nest. The double-pyramid of crystal split in half across the middle, shrieking. Every window not broken for miles shattered instantly. Asuka and Rei saw their worlds wash away in bright, searing white.

* * *

><p>Asuka hadn't been alive long enough to really give it much thought, but at that moment, she realized she didn't much care for heights.<p>

Part of that was due to having jumped off a seventh story balcony. A positron beam clipped the top three floors of Misato's apartment building clean off, and the girls were sure, under any other circumstances, they would have been dead before the beam even reached them. More blasts lanced out as the Angel spun lazily, gouging out trenches and craters in the fake city and surrounding hills. The nearby face of the mountain was pockmarked with positron impacts all in a line.

A bit more than seventy feet didn't give the girls time to banter, take the edge off their predicament. As many people were aware, it wasn't the fall that killed you.

Those people weren't in a flexible computer simulation, however. Asuka and Rei grabbed at the frayed edges, bending their minds as far as they could. Rei found that free state of water, and the air around her refracted briefly, shimmering and growing thicker around her body. She landed first, and when her toes touched the concrete, it rippled out. She sagged to her knees a second later, suddenly exhausted but exhilarated.

Asuka, on the other hand, lacked that peaceful state of mind, that understanding. The flavor of her personality was direct action and valor, driving her forward towards glory. These weren't traits she directly acknowledged, but they remained parts of her that defined her world view. When she landed, less than a second after Rei, the parking lot beneath her gave way to a yard deep crater, and great shards of pavement and dirt heaved up in petals.

When the dust settled, and the adrenaline faded enough for the girls to form a coherent thought, they blinked once, then sighed. A giddy, watery grin screwed itself onto Asuka's face, with teeth and cheeks. She raised one shaking hand to Rei, who matched the smile one for one. The girls slapped their palms together, and then broke down laughing.

Rei pulled Asuka out of her crater, once they recovered. Put to the test, their new grasp on reality proved sufficient. Right then, neither of them wanted to call much attention to the potential dangers. They'd spent far too long feeling helpless, relying on others. Now they felt _powerful_. Now they finally felt in control. The risks were acceptable. Asuka rubbed at her calves and thighs, looking for broken bones.

She'd landed on concrete with bare feet and suffered nothing for it. Looking over at the blue-haired girl, Asuka asked. "You think you could do this kind of body enhancement?"

A shrug was the answer, but Rei took a moment to concentrate, before kicking a nearby empty red oil drum. Why an oil drum was there, neither girl could say, but the metal folded around Rei's foot, before hurtling off into the streets out of sight. Asuka gave the other girl an approving nod before grabbing Rei by the wrist, tugging her off into the local neighborhood.

They ducked past and around the searchers whenever the grew too close, coming to rest in a small bookstore. "We can manipulate local reality, and render ourselves superhuman."

"Yeah..." Asuka trailed off, keeping a watch out the window. She ducked back when a searcher prowled nearby. The bookstore probably represented some kind of archival storage they couldn't understand. "I can't think of anything already here that's a metaphorical 'exit'. If there was, it'd be in the Geofront, but..."

Rei found it surprisingly easy to finish the thought. "But we cannot be sure."

Frowning, Asuka sat on the store counter and let her heels kick lightly. "Right... Misato and Ritsuko said this was a combat simulation, right? Parts of it at least."

"Correct."

"So, combat sims keep score and have win conditions, like ours did..." She looked out the window again, towards the city center and the massive crystal dodecahedron. Asuka turned back to Rei and shrugged. "We're more equally matched now. You think it's worth a try?"

Rei looked up at the simulated Fifth Angel and nodded. "The MAGI knows its capabilities. We must be faster and stronger."

Glancing down at herself, Asuka huffed. "I'm not fighting in a tank top and short-shorts, thank you very much. You shouldn't either."

The other girl nodded, while Asuka hopped off the counter and moved to a more open space. She'd already decided against trying to manifest her Evangelion. She had no idea if their reality-altering permissions would let them do something so massive. They'd proven earlier that 'broad strokes' editing proved to be the easiest, unless they knew _exactly_ what they were doing. Piloting was one thing, but naming, numbering and visualizing every nerve and artery was beyond even her.

But Asuka could make that vague, holistic approach work for her. She took a deep breath and concentrated. Light built up around her hand, worn at the edges by those pixel-like distortions. She blanched, quickly shaking her hand and willing the glow to calm down. It shifted around her fingers to a rich dark red, and far less aggressively bright. Asuka sighed, smiling weakly.

Rei copied her, calling forth the same raw potential, though she skipped the embarrassing part. They'd need armor, weapons, maneuverability. Asuka tried very hard not to think of all the magical girl shows Kaji made her watch. The dim potential in their hands built up, spreading out to fill the entire store, flipping open books and sending papers flying. Outside, a single searcher turned and looked at the commotion. Then it moved on.

When the light receded, and Asuka got a good look at the results, she thought up a new phone with a burst of red and dialed NERV.

"_Who designed this crap!?"_

* * *

><p>Outside the simulation, the silence stretched on.<p>

All the locked terminals had been powered down, leaving the single active station glowing a pleasant green. The extra MAGI brain sat placidly in its tank, suspended in aerated nutrient fluid. Everyone gathered around the terminal shared the same strange sense of foreboding. A bubble in the brain tank collapsed with a loud pop.

"Well? Anybody?" All present could hear Asuka's frustration, and easily pictured her crossing her arms, huffing. "Alright, fine. Misato, Ritsuko, can you two and Maya set up a private channel? I need to vent."

Misato and Ritsuko looked at each other, then at Maya. The younger woman flailed, shaking her head and waving her arms, as if to say _don't look at me! She's thinking at us! _Maya was right, however. The girls had quickly supplanted control of the conceptual interface. At that moment nobody had any idea of what it could do. The two senior officers took a sidelong look at everyone hovering nearby.

Shaking her head, Misato took a quick breath kept her voice light and airy. "Sure, It's just us now. What's up?"

"Everything we've made so far is..." Asuka's tone fell into accusation. "Your stupid program was made by a pervert. "

The quip shot through the gathered crowd, sending them reeling. Misato was caught between having all the color drain out of her face, and swallowing her tongue. This all fortunately was silent, leaving Asuka none the wiser.

Ritsuko coughed as lightly as she could, letting her voice go cool and professional. "Asuka, to clarify, the two of you started manifesting armor and equipment, completely derived from your imagination?"

"I mean, at least it's red, and built like my Evangelion, but..." Asuka sighed, frustrated. "Yeah, we manifested alright."

Ignoring the growing furor behind her, Ritusko started to take notes.."And your state of mind at the time? Both of you."

The speakers crackled as Asuka's voice went indignant."I don't know! I was trying to think of power and stuff!"

"I thought much the same, Akagi-sensei." Rei on the other hand was whisper-quiet.

For a moment, Ritsuko was caught up in the new insights. Misato and Kaji were struck by a brief wave of nostalgia, and the times Ritsuko got _really_ far into her projects. The crisis seemed to fall out of her attention, leaving only an intrigued, speculative hum.

A hum which Asuka heard. "Don't do that psychologist thing with me, Ritsuko."

"Oh, certainly Pilot Sorhyu. I won't utilize one of my doctorates relevant to your exact situation." She jot down a few more notes before pushing ahead. "Now Asuka, what were you feeling at the time? Be specific."

Put on the spot, Asuka floundered. She temporized, mumbling under her breath while Ritsuko wrote more and more, gradually filling the first page. That nostalgia Misato and Kaji felt gave way to something far more ominous, as they remembered the scientist's unique interrogation method. Their fear was felt for Asuka, who had _no idea_ what was coming.

Ritsuko didn't bother looking up from her notes, content to tick points off in the air. "So, desires for power, control, a subjective sense of 'awesome'. You desired to be impressive... Asuka, what exactly is the problem?"

Asuka practically _exploded_. "_It gave me fetish gear!"_

Everyone behind the terminal went white, then immediately clamped hands over mouths or curled up into a nearby shoulder. Tension had wound itself up to a breaking point, and finally snapped. Further away and with a cooler head, Fuyutuski noted that as much as this lifted their spirits, it also told him everyone had just about reached their limit.

Stifled laughter threatened to give the whole thing away, but somehow the illusion held. Asuka herself helped by continuing to make her displeasure known, loudly.

"This is not impressive! This is perverted! I can see my _nackten_ thighs! I can fit my hand between my breasts!" She paused, possibly for air or to breath fire. "Whoever designed this thing? I will _nail their hide_ to the nearest wall when I get my hands on them, you understand me? This? This thing looks like it was designed by a _thirteen year old_."

Before anyone outside could ask Asuka for clarification, another, softer voice broke in. "What qualities designate it so?"

"Rei? No. No, you're sheltered, but not _that _much..." Misato could just see Asuka blinking once, then waving at herself, exasperated and utterly disbelieving. "The battle-leotard? The thigh-high plugsuit boots? None of this looks wrong to you? Give me a skirt and I'm one of those 'pretty soldiers'."

Outside, Misato mouthed to Kaji 'Pretty Soldier'? Kaji shook his head helplessly and repeated back 'thigh-high boots', but the only answer he received was a cuff upside the head. Misato pointedly ignored his indignant look.

Asuka continued to rant, blissfully unaware of the mortification and amusement building up outside. "And another thing! _Rei_ got a practical outfit! It looks like a racing suit! With pants! I mean the plugsuits look kind of like racing gear, but hers looks like it belongs in a _car_, not a _centerfold_! It's all leather and armored pads!"

There was a moment of silence, as everyone tried to digest that image. Misato nearly lost it at 'centerfold'.

"And she has a jacket!"

While Asuka carried on, the staff and engineers nearby couldn't let the UN inspector off the hook. Quiet, playful shoves and whispered heckling sent the man mentally reeling. He shot back in defense, pointing out she had to learn _some_ Japanese culture, and cartoons were a great way to get a handle on the language. _That_ gave everyone a whole new line of attack, which they exploited ruthlessly.

"Asuka. We can't see what you're wearing. We had nothing to do with it." Ritsuko stopped for a moment, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "It's all just metaphor for something, from your subconsci-"

_"My subconscious does not want cleavage!"_

"Of course, Asuka, you have full and total control over every aspect of your brain." Ritsuko cradled her chin in one hand, letting the pilot waste her indignant fury. Kaji meanwhile raked his fingers through the air and mouthed a particular cat sound. Misato tried very hard not to burst out laughing.

Now everyone could just imagine Asuka pacing, throwing her hands up and wanting to wring necks. "Well maybe my subconscious wants to _kill me_? Exposed femoral arteries!? Straight shot to my _heart and lungs_? My arms are fine, it gave me Unit-2's pauldrons and progressive knives, but _plunging neckline? Seriously?"_

Rei broke in once more. "If you had intended a handicap, I do not think it also included 'personal allowances' to fill the adjustm-"

Asuka cut her off with a low, warning tone. "_Not one word from you, got it!?"_

The girls were silent for a long moment, leaving the observation chamber to stew in the hilarity. Ritsuko tossed her notebook and pen down, resigned for the moment. Misato and Kaji spent most of the intervening time continuing their silent conversation, stuck somewhere between laughter and horror. Kaji had been trying to wrap his head around 'surrogate daughter' and her apparent state of dress. Misato had helpfully pointed out she had to learn the terms somewhere. The inspector was understandably nonplussed.

Morose, Asuka picked up the conversation once more. "I was wrong before, this isn't even a battle-leotard. It's a _corset_. I'm not sure how this could get any more fetishized."

Misato managed to keep her mouth shut for less than a second. "Are you wearing high heels?"

The subsequent silence was telling. As was the burst of laughter Kaji tried very hard to stifle. Everyone froze, eyes shifting to the inspector. Breathing was all of the sudden very loud in the chamber.

Asuka's voice went flat and toneless. "...We haven't been having a private conversation, have we?"

"No, I'm afraid not." Ritsuko sighed once more and leaned back into her chair, groaning. The crew and officers surrounding her started to laugh in earnest. Fuyutsuki was just glad the whole debacle was happening behind closed doors.

"Right then. My revenge will be unexpected and uncompromising. I hope you all realize that."

* * *

><p>It said a lot about Asuka's character, that she defined her worst-day-ever based on the degree of embarrassment she suffered. She was also a teenage girl, who in general were not known for their sense of crisis. The injustices kept piling up too. The whole crisis, anomalous blue pattern aside, seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with an Angel. Asuka had been cheated out of her glorious debut not once, but <em>twice<em> in about eight real-time days.

The pilots rushed through the city streets, hugging the ground as close as possible. The searchers now posed no real threat. Their flesh was rubbery and cut easily, especially as the girls grew more and more used to manipulating the world around them. In metaphorical terms, the black tar men were the personification of a system process query. To Asuka and Rei, this looked like a bunch of eerie monsters rooting through garbage and tearing up the street and walls.

The Second Child still seethed, even then. She was stuck between elation and disgust, each time she summoned a new weapon or piece of equipment. Each attempt seemed to mock her, flaunting their obvious symbolism. The latest creation was an armored vambrace with a forearm mounted progressive blade. A part of her liked it well enough, though she still preferred spears and halberds.

There were small blessings, of course. She caught a glimpse of herself in a window and noted the Unit-02 helmet looked rather good, though it somehow let her see out of four eyes instead of just two.

Rei on the other hand was purely utilitarian, having come up with a rifle suspiciously similar to the classic pallet gun. Amusingly, Rei had never fired a gun outside of her Evangelion, leaving her ill-prepared for the recoil. The sound also attracted the searchers, in turn making Rei manifest a silencer. Single shots were usually enough to take down one of the thin men, leaving the girls free to sweep through the streets.

Still, Asuka gnashed her teeth and vented her frustrations on the process metaphors, cutting them down with one arm, or the flamethrower that surrounded the other.

Rei then decided to help distract the other girl from her troubles. "Asuka-san."

Asuka didn't answer immediately. She instead finished bisecting two searchers and immolating a third. The thermal pulse sent her hair whipping around like a candle flame. "What?"

The blue haired girl waved one gloved hand at the ground, some four yards below. "We are flying."

Blinking, Asuka looked down and then back to eye level, noting that they indeed, were horizontal to the ground and soaring through the air. Almost without thinking, the girls jinked through alleys and city streets, overhead of the searching masses.

She looked back up at Rei. "Huh. So we are?"

A grin worked its way onto Asuka's face, with Rei offering her own smaller smile. The girls ascended a bit higher, banking onto one of the long main streets through the simulation city. With a straightaway before them, Asuka felt the need see what she could really do. Locking her legs together just so, Asuka shot forward, ten, twenty, seventy, more than a hundred miles per hour. Her helmet provided a speedometer. The pressure wave trailing behind bowled over searchers and sent garbage and debris flying. Laughter bubbled up within her, even as she spun lazily, corkscrewing through the city canyon.

Wrenching hard right, with Rei close behind, Asuka soared into the clearing made by the fake moon. The mirth drained out of her in an instant, leaving the icy shock of adrenaline.

The Fifth Angel hovered above, charging its positron beam.

* * *

><p>To the pilots, Maya's system query was an army of monsters. This was largely their fault, having no other way to interpret an otherwise perfectly normal and benign function. To those outside the simulation, watching it on a terminal, the query was represented by a graphic user interface. It detailed what hardware as being used by a given instance of software. Most of the time this was represented by file names and such.<p>

In a normal computer the process was fairly 'dumb', monitoring specific hooks left in code and other functions. That in turn showed up on a user's screen as information. The MAGI however were far more advanced, elaborate and at times, unpredictable. Perhaps the metaphor of 'searcher' wasn't wholly inaccurate. Even limited, the MAGI were capable of adaptation. Maya had asked it to find and track all processes, so it did.

Inside the simulation, in the ruins of Misato's replica apartment, several of the thin searching men prowled through the wreckage. One heavy piece of ceiling was pushed away, allowing an unblinking, eyeless face to look beneath. There sat an undamaged, unassuming bit of consumer electronics. A hand-held game console, given to Asuka by Kaji some years ago.

The searchers rejoiced, having found their quarry at long last. Buried, hidden behind layers of code, a process known as GHOST lurked. It wasn't a particularly innocuous name; a human would have been suspicious of it instantly. A machine intelligence less so. Still, the MAGI found it, and brought it to the surface. A black hand reached out for the invader, wrapped in a skin of cherished memories.

A searing, white-hot line of light drilled a hole into and through the searcher's porcelain face.

* * *

><p>"<em>Scatter!"<em>

Tactically, and strategically, they knew what they were fighting. NERV had the most data on the Fifth Angel so far, simply because they spent more than a full day fighting it. They also knew that being able to fly would only go so far, when a part of an opponent's weapon flirted with the speed of light. Asuka swung left while Rei went right, splitting up and forcing the simulation to pick its targets.

The first positron blast cut between them perfectly, digging a trench through the city and nearby lake. The column of flash-boiled water spiraled into the sky for what looked like miles, but that still failed to compete with the unreal mountain looming in the background.

Another positron burst raked the countryside, not so much aiming as guessing. Asuka took it as a message to try something. She had a _month_ of it. She'd had more than _enough_. Willing out more speed, Asuka angled in and screamed towards the Angel, manifesting cannons in both arms and unloading. The Angel had proven it could shoot out shore-based artillery, and Asuka was no more difficult a target. She was however flying at the right angle at the right time. Luck countered for a lot in combat, after all.

Heavy explosive shells gouged a trench out of the Angel's lower faces, leaking red and raining crystal shards down below. In terms of scale however, it was barely a scratch, and started to heal even as Asuka swung around for another pass. The Angel spun and charged its interceptor beam, immolating the nearby towers and swatting Asuka from the sky.

She landed hard, bouncing once, twice, three times. Some new, alien reflex willed her body to toughen, protecting her from pulped bone and flesh. Even so she slid to a halt, coughing wetly and in _pain_.

Rei had moved to gain altitude, and observe from above. The original Fifth had been unable to defend and attack simultaneously, but this one seemed to lack an AT field altogether. It reminded her again that it was still a _simulation_, and the Angel copies lacked AT fields for a reason. A reason which was irrelevant at that moment. The enemy had no AT field, as Asuka proved. Rei shouldered her pallet gun and took aim.

* * *

><p>Elsewhere, another battle raged. Needle-fine lines of light pulled themselves out of a simple LCD screen, immolating unwary searchers, even as more boiled out of sewers and shadows. The GHOST shed its disguise, standing tall as a single point of light; perfectly zero-dimensional in a three-dimensional space. The searchers raised their arms tipped with corkscrew blades and gnarled, chitin shields, and charged en-masse.<p>

Seconds passed, and the ruins of the apartment complex became a mass grave and funeral pyre, towering higher and higher with the burning bodies of metaphor.

* * *

><p>Asuka in the meantime had gotten back on her feet, deciding to improvise. Frontal attacks proved to be only somewhat effective, leaving her to try something else. The air around her shimmered, and she vanished. Looking up through the distortion, Asuka watched the Angel above, but it did not turn to smite her. She resisted the urge to sigh in relief, and instead focused on solving the problem. She tried not to think about how readily she was taking to MAGI manipulation.<p>

It was at that moment that the Fifth Angel decided to attack Rei, bracketing her with positron blasts. Even with a dozen yards between her and the beams, the pressure wave ripped the gun out of her hand, and whipped at her jacket. An underdeveloped and unwelcome instinct took hold. Rei folded in on herself, and for lack of a better term, _pushed_, willing her soul out into space-time.

Nothing happened. The expected result of positron beams bending away from her did not come to pass, though in hindsight, Rei did recall that positron beams _bypassed _AT fields, including her own. She did not have time to pull herself back in, as the barrage generated a temporary super storm between the streams of accelerated matter-energy. Lightning cooked the air around her, flooding sky with the stink of ozone. Thunder meanwhile slammed into her from all sides, to the point that all internal sensation felt like boiling liquid.

Off-balance, Rei's concentration dropped, and her abused inner-ear rebelled. She fell several hundred feet, only gathering her wits long enough to render the rubble fluid enough to splash into. Concrete and rebar seemed to reach up and catch her, sparing her from broken bones and worse.

Her ringing head gave way to the trilling tone of the radio headset. Nausea rolled her stomach, but she sat up and answered. "A-Ayanami here."

Ritsuko was on the other end, one step short of urgent. "Rei! We just got another blue pattern that matched one earlier. If that was you, you need to be more careful! Any AT field you try to make in there will show up _out here_."

"...Understood, Akagi-sensei."

* * *

><p>It started as the truest expression of a dot, the actual zero-dimensional state. That point of fire rose out of the handheld's screen and into the air above the rubble, lancing out with brief, fiendishly accurate. The searchers fell in waves, but their succeeded nonetheless. They dragged the invader, the GHOST out into the light. The point rose out of the dust and ruin.<p>

The dot became a line, then a ring of fire, not unlike that of the sun. But it was not warm and nurturing. It was a cold fire, the impersonal heat of godhood. Rays branched and gave way to forks and graceful, sweeping curves. At no point did the growing shape become anything more than two dimensional. There was no depth, no volume to the space it occupied. It asserted itself, becoming the horizon, the unfixed reference point.

Searchers built up on corpses of their fellows, fashioning towers out of their dead and supported by the living. They reached for the alien sigil, but their hands and blades burnt away on contact.

The world moved.

* * *

><p>Asuka didn't care for hiding, but she was not stupid either. She also felt fear. The Angel hovered above her, and the only thing stopping a positron assault was her own novice understanding of reality manipulation. She watched it nearly take out Rei, and when the other girl hit the ground, the Angel moved on to other targets. Searchers were obliterated in waves as collateral damage.<p>

Another blast rocked the city, flooding the streets with dust. Asuka pressed a hand to her ear. "Rei. Rei can you hear me?"

Elsewhere, Rei pulled herself out of the wreckage and coughed. "I am here, Asuka-san."

"Just Asuka is fine! Listen, I figured out a stealth trick, don't ask me how but I did." She looked up at the Angel through the shimmering cloak. "Before it blasted me, I did some damage."

From where she knelt, Rei couldn't see the result, but she believed the other girl anyway. Another positron blast knocked down more buildings. "It has not ceased firing since the battle began. The original Angel could not defend and attack at the same time."

"I don't think this one can defend at all." Asuka winced when another blast took down a building behind her. "Okay, simple plans are best. We think of some really big guns and start shooting, forcing it to split fire."

Rei frowned, not that the other pilot could see it. "The enemy targeting speed is very fast, we must be faster."

* * *

><p>It had control. There was no qualifier for it. There would either be none, or all of it. It did not move through the world, but moved the world around it. Gravity and dimensional freedom were constructs and easily ignored. Millions of searchers filled the streets, following the living symbol, even as it burned more down. The land itself curled as it past, folding in on itself and rising in waves and rolling spirals. It was not so basic as pulling or brute force lifting. There was no crack and ruin as the earth and concrete moved. It stretched and warped instead, flowing like liquid.<p>

Now exposed, it had to improvise. Godhood wasn't when constrained.

* * *

><p>Beneath her cloak, Asuka stared at her right arm and concentrated. For all her warrior skills, she realized very quickly that she didn't understand guns very well, to the point that the thing slowly building around her wrist probably made no real sense. She promised herself she'd correct that gap in her knowledge, once she got the hell out of the simulation. Until then, she was willing to accept whatever she got, as long as it worked.<p>

The contraption built out of random shapes and cylinders, taking pieces of guns she had seen in her lifetime, and stranger influences. Meaner, deadlier, that was all she could think of, when demanding a new weapon. Cables and coolant lines crawled up her arm and hooked into an absurd looking ammo drum hanging from her shoulder. Three barrels of different sizes and lengths shot out, the longest capped with a progressive bayonet.

Above her, the Fifth Angel still floated, taking potshots at whatever caught its attention. Off in the distance, a second sun floated over the city, obscured by what buildings remained standing. The last piece locked into place around her wrist, unfolding to become a trigger grip. Hefting a gun that outweighed her many times over, Asuka banished her cloak and took aim.

On the other side, Rei did much the same, at first manifesting a replacement pallet rifle. Glancing at it then the Angel, she tossed the weapon aside and tried again. While she didn't understand most of the weapons an Evangelion used, Rei had trained on most of them. She merely had to adapt them to her personal scale. Black steel and plastic appeared in her hands, slung under one arm and braced with the other. Six barrels cycled through a test revolution before locking in place.

Together, at nearly the same time, Asuka and Rei unloaded with a forearm mounted artillery barrage and Gatling cannon.

* * *

><p>Another section of the city started to melt away like wax, revealing that strange white void from before. The fractal shards of nothing seemed to reach out for the fiery symbol, but froze and recoiled seconds later. The blue dot also appeared, expanded now into a massive void in the earth. Its original hiding place had been exposed, and now it could no longer hide in fear. Now it had to move, escape elsewhere, and wait until its time was right.<p>

* * *

><p>Asuka and Rei had to very quickly master a skill known as <em>move and shoot<em>.

The Fifth Angel had nearly perfect firing arcs, save for a very small window directly above and below it, where it had to tilt forward or backward to check those blind spots. It could also tilt _very_ fast, getting a bead on the pilots almost instantly. Proximity and speed were the girl's best weapons at that moment. Asuka hugged the planar surface as close as she could, fighting to stay parallel to the Angel's top half as it rolled.

A positron charge sat waiting on the open valley between the halves, never quite able to catch her. She let her gun-arm hang behind her, emptying infinite ammunition into the crystal as she passed. Rei remained below, having clamped onto the bottom tip with line and grapnel. One-handed, she drove the Gatling gun into the Angel's body and held the trigger down. The vibration transfer was so severe, she felt two of her teeth crack before willing herself stronger and repairing the damage.

Unfortunately, the simulated opponent was full sized, and while it lacked an AT field, it regenerated at a ferocious rate. Asuka's assault closed up and smoothed seconds after she made a pass, forcing her to manifest a second weapon and re-evaluate her approach. No matter what though, she had to keep the pressure on.

Then, the Angel got clever. It stopped perfectly, dumping inertia without incident and shifting direction. The massive crystal face suddenly stopped rolling _away_ from Asuka. A skyscraper's worth of mass slammed into Asuka as the rotation changed, and Rei very nearly lost her grip down below. The First Child still held on though, digging and shooting all the while.

A recent memory filtered through her mind, Dropping the gun, she raised her free hand and envisioned a simple little shape, somewhat round with a cheap metal handle and a pull-tab Aida-kun called a _pin_. When the Angel rolled so far to leave Rei on top, she dropped the grenade, letting gravity do the work.

A moment later, she dropped many, many more grenades.

* * *

><p>The sky and earth cracked, split down the middle in heaving fissures.<p>

Iridescent pixel-foam bled from the rents, dissolving the concept-memory of air, cloud and city. The Fifth Angel shuddered, listing visibly and lit from within by oily black smoke and red firestorms. The inner torus reactor buckled and twisted, losing containment but not power. The positron blasts lashed out randomly, kinked and staggered in blatant denial of physics.

There was no longer any city to truly destroy, only ruins, and the strange flowing ziggurat being built nearby. Great sheets of rock and soil tumbled off the impossible mountainside. Inside, underground and through the gaps in the air itself, the fractal void issued through. Past that, the deep blue eternities pushed out and drew in simultaneously, creating fathomless depths.

Distance proved to be a fair defense, though it helped that Asuka wasn't looking at anything directly. She pried herself off the surface of the Angel and dug in, holding onto the injured monster for dear life. Another stream of charged particles obliterated a street, letting white nothing bleed out. Rei continued to summon grenades into the Angel, omitting pins and letting live explosives fall deep within.

Asuka refused to be useless, though at that point she stopped caring about who won, instead more concerned about just _winning_. She banished her weapon and reformed the forearm blade. Nearly two feet long past her wrist, the cutting edge was like her Eva's own progressive knife, able to extend more useful edge. A second blade appeared on her other arm, leaving her ready to cut.

Strikes came down one after the other, carving out blue shards of crystal. They fell out behind her, leaving Asuka's way clear to dig deeper inside. The Angel's skin was thick, like the armored shell of a bunker, but Asuka powered through the exhaustion. The latest swing cut through too easily, and the last layer gave way. Smoke and heat nearly roasted her alive as it rushed out the gap.

Banishing the swords, Asuka thought back to the warships she had seen, like the one in NERV's own Geofront lake, or the pacific fleet that escorted her to Japan. Boxes and racks of missiles, rockets and artillery manifested around her body, clamping onto her arms , legs, sides and shoulders. Inside the Angel, Asuka could see the reactor coils glowing blue-hot, even through the smoke.

Every panel and rocket cell flipped open, with trigger leads all ending at Asuka's fingertips. She clenched her fist and let fly.

In the far center, a red sphere floated, waiting for missile impact. The core exploded in a tiny splash of red, before it evaporated in the heat and pressure of several hundred high-explosive detonations. All around her, the Angel seemed to crunch in on itself, dissolving and fading even as it fell. The bulk dropped around her, leaving Asuka stationary in relation to the Angel's remains. The top face bore down, getting closer and closer and ready to crush her while dying.

And then the crystal wall passed through her, not even leaving a mark.

Still floating above the city ruins, Asuka looked down at the falling Angel. Rei joined her a few moments later, having dropped the last unnecessary grenade. The massive crystal shape did not so much slam into the ground as shimmer through it, dissolving the ground and rubble as it passed. Everything gave way in the passing, leaving the white fractal rend and blue void in its wake.

Floating hundreds of yards away, the girls seemed safe from the blue infinities, but every which way they turned, nearly every direction was torn through with similar gaps. The teeming mass of searchers had ebbed at some point during the fight, leaving the world oddly still. Then the two pilots saw the symbol.

Drawn of lines and curves of fire, radiating outward from a central ring, they saw It. Asuka's blind eye throbbed behind the patch. Suppressed memory threatened to burst free. It wasn't the same as confronting the MAGI, not the same sense of identity and perception, but very much the same scale.

Rei cocked her head to one side, staring at the sigil. "What is that?"

"I don't much care." Asuka looked down at the tear the Fifth Angel left in passing, then back at the symbol and the flowing ziggurat beneath it. She grabbed Rei by the wrist. "Listen, I've got a crazy idea."

The blue void was the active MAGI intelligence, Asuka was reasonably sure of that. Its _awareness_ was deadly to the two of them, but it was still a computer. And computers, even organic nervous computers, had rules. She hadn't been joking when she said earlier, she'd _make_ a way out of there. Far enough away to be reasonably safe, Asuka reached down with her hands and will and _pulled_.

Cut stone burst out of the ground surrounding the irregular break in reality, shifting into a paved ring the size of several city blocks. The white void spread out to the edges seemingly of it's own accord, but stopped, becoming a perfect circle of nothing, until the blue spread out wider to fill the space. Sweat built up on Asuka's brow beneath her helmet, for no other reason than she believed it accurate.

Splitting, unfolding and twisting, primitive geometry gave way to memory and intent. Cubes, cylinders and cones built up into complicated shapes from her early life in Germany and the long history she adored. She only saw the gate once when she was eleven, but it stuck with her even then. The whole structure laid flat in the ground, framing the portal on all sides with perfect copies. Every cardinal direction held the same structure. Six rectangular columns joined the top of the pointed arch, done in the style of classical Greek architecture. Four bronze horses drawing a chariot charged towards the sky

Their portal home was surrounded by the Brandenburg Gate.

"Asuka, I believe the fiery symbol has noticed you."

Asuka turned, and was just about to ask what Rei meant when she saw. The symbol did not move like she expected, it always remained perfectly positioned and fixed in her viewpoint, never once looking closer or further away. The new lines of fire drawn towards them did look threatening. Biting of a squawk, Asuka dropped out of the air, evading one cutting beam and then another. Rei shot upward, drawing fire as best as she could.

The gate continued to build itself, but slower now that Asuka had split her attention. She refocused as best she could, but evasion took a heavy toll. Below, the portal shifted again, draining downward and filling the sides in with understandable texture and structure. Paved streets and dirt trails gave way to the iconic Japanese 'shrine steps', dotted with _Torii_ gates.

One of the rays cut off one of Asuka's shoulder pylons, forcing her to jink on instinct. She pressed one hand to her ear and called NERV. "Get ready to recover us! We're on our way home!"

* * *

><p>Misato turned to Hyuuga and Aoba. "Well, you heard her!"<p>

Nodding, the lieutenants and medical staff dashed out towards the test cages, but not before Hyuuga ducked into the side room and pulled Shinji out. Misato heard him protest, saying he was 'tapped out', but she put that out of her mind. Asuka was still talking, saying something about a floating symbol made of fire. Ritsuko and Maya put their heads together over their one working console, fighting to give the engineers _anything_ they could use.

"Maya!" Ritsuko directed the woman to the active terminal, while she pulled open a laptop. "Start on a shut down and recovery script, a complete one. Make sure you use the regular MAGI functions for it."

"The regular functions? I don't-" Even as she asked, Maya did as instructed.

"I have a hunch, Maya." Ritsuko didn't look up from her screen. "We're going to need to do this anyway. Misato!"

The tactical director looked over, pensive. Her friend waved towards the test bodies in the tank. "I need you to go over to the test cages and tell me when the girls are out, as soon as possible."

Misato nodded silently, grabbing a pair of walkie talkies and leaving one with Ritsuko, already set up.

While Maya worked to prepare the system shutdown, Ritsuko started writing her own list of commands, patching them through the spare brain.

* * *

><p>Asuka would later admit to herself that it wasn't much of a plan, but she was <em>tired<em> of plans. Big elaborate ones at least. She called out to Rei, even as she banked hard and made for the portal. The blue-haired girl followed, weaving through lines of light, even as the burning symbol appeared overhead, behind them. It reached into the growing tunnel, chasing them but unable to fit entirely.

Below, Asuka threaded through torii gates and over stairs and paths, twisting around them even as they formed. She urged herself to go as fast as possible, digging deeper . It was like digging a glass tunnel, and papering the sides up as you went. They couldn't exist in the MAGI's perception space, so Asuka demanded a path through it, coated in concepts they could safely understand. It didn't matter really, that she couldn't think like a computer, because now it could understand her.

Rei joined her on the right. She rolled over and flew backwards, summoning a pair of pallet rifles to send fire towards the cutting lines of light. She had no idea if it would be effective, but she had to try something. Asuka continued to clear the way, carving a safe channel through hostile environments of inhuman thought.

What mattered at that point was _metaphor_. Asuka needed to satisfy the needs for a journey, an escape and threshold to pass from one state to another. Her blind eye began to bleed that pixel-fire once more, tracking a wet trail down her cheek and out the gaps of her helmet. She still held on. The rolling mass ahead of her gave way finally to something new, a shimmering liquid pool.

One of the rays cut at Ayanami's ankle, drawing a line of blood through the air. The symbol was too late though; the girls splashed into the portal, and the tunnel they carved collapsed behind them.

* * *

><p>Choking, Asuka tried to swim, to reach up towards the surface and breath, but she couldn't get her bearings straight. Blind totally, she flailed for something, anything. Breathing was suddenly difficult, more so than she remembered. Her hair floated in the water, sticking to her face before drawing back down her shoulders. The helmet was gone too, as was her armor and everything else. For a moment she felt naked, but then a familiar pinch at her hip made itself known.<p>

Fumbling, she reached down and felt the normally obnoxious bit of metal and plastic that pressed against her side. It was part of her plugsuit, her _actual_ plugsuit, the real one she put on before the simulation. She looked around and realized she wasn't blind, it was the entry plug that was dark. One foot found the bottom of the plug, letting her kick back up into the seat, then towards the hatch.

Outside, she started to hear voices through the plug walls and test body. Asuka slammed her fists into the side of the entry plug, shouting through the LCL.

* * *

><p>Misato pushed Shinji towards the far test body, telling him to help get it open. He looked down at his hands and nodded. "Do you care about the equipment?"<p>

His guardian held up a fierce looking circular saw, while the other engineers readied hydraulic cutters and plasma torches. Shinji took that as a 'no'. He turned to the far body and raised one hand. Inside he could hear something, someone banging on the plug wall. Good enough for him. Working on the MAGI took a lot out of him, leaving him feeling drained in a manner he had trouble describing. He still had enough for this.

He brought his hand down, tearing the entire back half of the test plug off, and the clamps that held it in place during operation. LCL flooded out in a wave, soaking his pant legs. A red-clad arm flopped out of the ruined end, trying to haul herself up. Shinji was there, tugging her free and out into the open air. Asuka opened one good eye for the first time in what felt like years. She saw a dark Evangelion cage and the Third Child looking at her with a gold disc shimmering faintly above his brow.

Then the LCL wanted _out_ of her stomach and lungs. Asuka promised herself to apologize to the boy afterwards.

* * *

><p>A few yards away, engineers cut away metal and hinges that held everything together, letting the scrap fall away with massive bangs. A manual control let them discharge the hydraulic pressure all at once, forcing the plug ejection. Misato hiked herself up the ladder with one arm, and then opened the hatch with that same hand. The other was occupied with a radio. Once Misato saw Rei, saw her look up and blink, she called Ritsuko.<p>

"Maya! Initiate shutdown now!"

The lieutenant mashed the button just as Ritsuko started to say 'initiate'. As the project lead expected, the command fizzled. She stared up at the main screen, past it, grinning at nothing. "Got you now, you son of a bitch."

Ritsuko hit enter on her own keyboard, sending the command through the one active back channel. System after system began to shut down one after another, leaving only a small section of hardware active. With the girls out, Ritsuko could safely isolate and purge the conspiracy buffer. The whole room, the Geofront itself went dark for a moment, and then reactivated in one massive surge. The scientist had already sent engineers to cut the physical connections to the buffer hardware.

Now the tables had been turned. All of normal MAGI operation restarted on every terminal _but_ the spare brain's. Now, Ritsuko had a direct like to the conspiracy buffer, and whatever caused the whole mess.

Twisting in her seat, she looked up to Fuyutsuki. "Requesting permission to secure hazardous material for future research."

The old man gave her a solemn nod. "Granted."

* * *

><p>Misato raked one hand through her hair, biting her lip. "Ritsuko, you better get down here. Rei looks pretty bad."<p>

The handset crackled. "I'll be right there."

Shinji knelt between his fellow pilots. The nurses and doctors on hand had already laid them out on stretchers. He laid a hand on their wrists, counting their heartbeats. Looking over at Asuka, even without sensors and scans, he knew her right optic nerve had somehow been broken. Aggravation of some kind or another shot through her body, leading to soreness and exhaustion.

Rei on the other hand wasn't doing well. Ritsuko had been closed-mouth about it, but Shinji recognized the same basic problem. During the school attack, Rei had suffered hemorrhaging and internal bleeding without cause. He was absolutely certain that her skin beneath the suit would be flooded with angry red blotches and subcutaneous lesions. He looked up to Misato and shrugged helplessly. The disc on his brow glimmered faintly.

"I'm mostly empty, I can't just fix them right now." He waved to Rei. "I don't even know exactly what's wrong with her. None of my powers work without a diagnosis."

Sweeping in with a gurney in tow, Ritsuko arrived. She must have heard him down the hall. "Rei's condition is her business, it's up to her if she wants to tell you." She looked over at the nurses, nodding sharply. "We've got to get her down to the tanks."

Misato and Shinji watched them leave, but not before the lieutenant knelt down and took Asuka's hand. Kaji dashed in a moment after Ritsuko left, nearly leaping _over_ Shinji to land next to the girls. He tumbled, but scrambled back to lock his hands with Misato's. The two adults flinched, but forced themselves not to make anything of it.

Asuka looked up through one good eye, seeing the Third on her left and Misato and Kaji on the right. They were squeezing her hand too hard, but at that moment she welcomed the pain.

Coughing lightly, she licked her lips and grimaced. There hadn't been time for a proper shower it seemed. "M-Misato. Kaji-san?"

The pair started speaking at the same time, but Kaji stopped and let Misato take the lead. "Y-Yeah, Asuka?"

"What's a number, between one and a hundred, but not sixty-two or twenty-one?"

Kaji and Misato looked at each other, then at Shinji before blinking once. Hesitantly, Misato replied. "Uh... Eighty-six?"

Asuka favored the three of them one last look, before letting her head fall back into the growing puddle of LCL. "Good enough."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Thank you for baring with me. This was my first experiment in a multi-chapter, reasonably self-contained arc.


	30. Guidance

_And men grew afraid of sleep in Allathurion. And they grew worn and pale, some through the want of rest, and others from fear of the things they saw on the cindery plains of Hell._

- Exerpt from _The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth_

* * *

><p>Misato knew, on some objective level, that she was an awful parent. At the same time, she really had no idea what the word actually <em>meant<em>.

Piling two of her three teenage soldiers into her car, plus one UN inspector, was itself an experience she never really wanted to repeat. Kaji, somehow, had _changed_. That first night, while she drove them all to her apartment, he sat in the passenger seat and kept his mouth shut. No, that wasn't accurate either. He'd shut up before, when she or Ritsuko had gotten properly angry with him, but there was always a bubbling sort of mirth. During those moods, he never spoke but his face said a lot.

On the drive home that first night, Kaji had been _quiet_. Respectful, not at all the clever, leading man. Misato watched shadows and late afternoon sunlight play over his face, and it struck her again how _old_ he'd become. The beard just made the lines of his face stand out all the more severely. Kaji wasn't even paying attention to her, a first in the whole time she had known him. Instead he kept an ear out for Asuka, who dozed in the back seat.

The car felt off balance without Rei, too. Ritsuko had whisked her off to the deepest parts of NERV, hopefully to save her life. It at least gave Shinji plenty of room on his side of the car. Looking him over in the rear-view mirror, Misato saw her charge truly _tired_. He sat up straight, as if he hadn't been awake thirty hours, but she could see the strain in his eyes nonetheless. Of course, as she thought about it, Shinji probably had been awake more like ninety hours.

When they had gotten to the apartment and their floor, it was left as something of a foregone conclusion; Kaji was welcome to stay the night. Asuka decided that she neither wanted or needed a crutch, and let her infatuation fall away, at least for that moment. Both adults felt some overdone phrase pop into their heads, about how people so young should not have needed to be so strong. Misato couldn't have spoken for Kaji, but she was _glad_ the kids were tough as nails. Asuka fumbled with her key, mumbling something too faint for most to hear. She'd spent the whole ride home wearing a simple, black eye patch. Kaji stepped in to help while Shinji ducked through the neighboring door.

Part of why Misato had left him was because he reminded her so much of her father. Now, all she could see was _Kaji_. She watched him hug the Second Child and become more like a parent than anyone she had ever met.

Asuka had shut her blinds, and with an increasing, huffy, _teenage_ tone, ushered the adults out of her still-unpacked apartment. Sleep came quickly, leaving nothing for Kaji and Misato to do. Asuka did not need them, and Shinji had eased their concerns with a glance. "She's been half-awake for forty days or so," He explained. "She just needs time to dream."

Claiming the living room of Misato's apartment, Kaji had indeed spent the night. When he saw the agent, PenPen had offered only the most disinterested glances, and Kaji found himself recognizing the penguin from GEHRIN labs, nearly a decade ago. Shinji, as far as Misato was concerned, was effectively _no maintenance_, content to busy himself with research and meditation. That left the two adults far too much time to sit, think and steadfastly avoid talking to each other.

Misato had simply wanted to keep things going. She _liked _the unobtrusive, almost mature Kaji. He however wanted to talk, but kept running out of things to say before he even started. That left them at something of an impasse. Shinji puttered around them, ignoring school and keeping the apartment together. Asuka slept for most of the day, rising only for food and hygiene.

When Misato proved Asuka's own, real shower had running water, the redhead had only glared at the fixture.

The only other thing that broke the monotony was Ritsuko's daily calls, routed through secure switchboards. She updated the lieutenant with Rei's status, usually a short sentence to the effect of 'she hadn't died'.

Finally though, on the third day, Misato had enough. She trusted Asuka with Shinji's magical healing powers, and trusted Asuka to sleep thorugh any urge to harass the boy. Laundry had been a concern, originally, until Shinji's clothes proved to fit Kaji well enough. Misato did not not much care that the man looked as if he wore a tent. She dragged him out by the tie, which somehow was never anything but rumpled. Down stairs and across the street, the pair found themselves in a twenty-four hour coffee bar.

Once they found their seats, however, Misato realized she'd lost her momentum. Now she stared across the table at her ex, who looked just as helpless. Two paper mugs of coffee steamed quietly between them.

Wincing, Kaji would later admit it was the worst topic to open on, but it had _nagged_ at him. "... So, the other day I thought I saw the Third Child _glowing."_

* * *

><p>There were more secure areas of Central Dogma, but not many. Ritsuko served as Rei's primary physician for two reasons. One being that she was the only person in the world who understood how the girl was made, and how to care for her unique physiology. The other was that she had clearance to access the memory transfer facility, and the informally designated 'dummy plug plant'. Keyed elevators and posted guards gave way to automated defenses, relying on radio-frequency identification and facial recognition. Past a certain point, the nurses and doctors who helped move Rei down had to stop, unable to move deeper into the complex.<p>

Rei had been pulled out of simulated world three days ago. For most of that time, she rested in the transfer tank. Ritsuko had adjusted the suspension mixture to include Rei's new drug regiment, but there was only so much that could be done. The chemical and nutritional supplements fought off the symptoms and prevented physical damage. Metaphysical wear and tear was another matter entirely.

Ritsuko pressed a key on the nearest console, sighing softly. "There's really no way around it. You've overused your AT field and caused irreparable damage."

When she had arrived, Rei had still been wearing her plugsuit. Ritusko had to cut it off. A more normal girl like Asuka would have suffered a degree of shame and indignity at such treatment, even in a medical emergency. Rei on the other hand endured, not so much silently, but quietly nonetheless. Once out of the suit, Ritsuko had nearly recoiled. Bruising and signs of internal bleeding had shown through from head to toe. There hadn't been time for an x-ray or similar scan, but Ritusko was sure Rei's bones were weakening, rapidly.

But once Rei had been put in the tank, and her body fortified itself against further dissolution, her identity began to heal. The metaphysics at times baffled her, but Ritsuko knew that there was a connection between sentience, sapience and a sort of macro-scale stability. _Any_ life on Earth could break down into a primordial soup, under the right circumstances. Rei was simply unique.

Now, under computer control and near constant observation, Rei healed. The older woman took to sleeping on a cot, reporting in every twelve hours. On the way down, one of Rei's emergency injectors had kept cell-division under control, preventing uncontrollable growth. Cancer would remain a threat for the rest of her life, however. Even with the same treatment in the tank, Rei had to come out twice a day to have her finger and toenails cut back. Her hair had grown down past her waist, so it was decided to leave that to Misato.

There was no table in the dark chamber, and Ritsuko lacked a clipboard or sheath of papers to throw down for effect. Instead she just stared at the girl. It was easier to treat her as an adult, with unvarnished facts and blunt truth. "You're fine for right now, but the emergency injectors I gave you aren't going to be enough. Pretty soon, you'll have to use one of those every day for the rest of your life. More if you use your AT field again."

"We also know that Shinji's abilities... They _might_ work here, but even his ability to perfectly diagnose someone has limits." Ritsuko glanced sidelong at the girl. "Which you've already seen first hand."

In her tank, Rei floated. With her eyes closed, it was difficult to tell if she was still breathing, but her lungs still generated tiny pockets of waste gas, and more importantly, the monitoring equipment kept beeping.

"So..." Ritsuko sighed and dropped into her cot, catching her head with one hand and massaging her brow. "From where I sit, the best option is to warm up a new body and transfer your memories to it."

"...No."

Ritsuko didn't miss a beat. "The Commander's informed me that when it comes to your health, only he can override your wishes. So if you want to stay in that body, I can't force you. At the rate you're going, even if we do stabilize you, your current one will fail by the time you turn twenty."

Other than floating, Rei had done little her time in the tank. It wasn't particularly easy to speak through the LCL suspension, but the First had a lot of practice. "Then I will live to see twenty in this body, before moving to the next."

Rei was in one of her verbose moods, it seemed. Ritsuko was at least somewhat pleased to note the girl wasn't being unreasonably sentimental. The girl was at least willing to acknowledge a body transfer as an option. Granted, if _she'd_ been given a degree of practical immortality, Ritsuko probably would have wanted to exploit it thoroughly. Still, increased longevity wasn't something a human could really imagine accurately, not casually at least.

She sighed once more and turned back to her notes. Corporeal plasticity, general cohesion, destrado... The scientist huffed once more, not bothering to look up. "Rei, I could reach into that tank and pull your head away from your neck. _You're falling apart_."

Very carefully, Rei moved on her own for the first time in days. Her head turned very slowly, to face Ritsuko, as if to prove a point. "I know. You would not do that, either."

"I'm not my _mother_." Ritsuko bit off each word, and couldn't stop her lip from curling.

They had both gotten used to silence, for different reasons. Ritsuko didn't talk to herself and only rarely felt the need to explain something to someone. Aside from the math and engineering aspects, the First Child probably knew enough to do Ritsuko's job on her own. Rei on the other hand was just not one to talk, at all. There was an expectation then, something Ritsuko couldn't quite place.

The scientist found herself engaged in a conversation she had no desire to ever have. "Why, why are you acting this way? I know the original drug regimen created a sort of clinical depression. You're off that now. Why are you still... _here?!"_

Rei had thought about that question for a long time, nearly as long as she had a mind clear enough to contemplate it. She had borrowed philosophy texts from Ikari-kun, and listened to Misato's worldly advice, and later Asuka. Even Ritsuko informed some of the final decision, the sense of awareness. Ayanami Rei was no fool; she floated in in that tank, ten feet away from one of the three people who _knew_ the plans of one Ikari Gendo, from start to finish.

She made a point to include herself in that count.

The answer to that question, the pressing one. Rei had learned everyone asked it of themselves, at some point in their lives. It came up when they were confronted with an uncaring, uncertain future, or a plan laid out in advance by someone else. For her the only difference was the particulars. Rei had that most important question answered, not before she was born, but by the very act of her creation.

Before there was even the _first_ Rei, Gendo had answered the question already. The second Rei looked up at Ritsuko and did not smile, nor frown. "I exist because I have a purpose. I'm still here because my task is yet left incomplete."

Rei doubted Ritsuko would have appreciated the rest of her answer, that between now and the inevitable end, she wanted to enjoy every second her life.

* * *

><p>It seemed that for Shinji, a normal day was sitting at the kitchen table in Misato's apartment, staring at a simple steel nail. He thought about it for a while longer, and decided he was alright with that. He rolled the bit of metal in between his fingers, more gently than he would have otherwise. He'd been Exalted for almost a full year now, and had gained enough fine control over to not feel so... awkward, in his own home. Holding the nail by point and head between two fingers, Shinji knew he could fold it into a pretzel, just as easily as someone else could bend a paperclip.<p>

"Have you ever heard 'For want of a nail?"

Twisting in his seat, Shinji saw Asuka step inside. She had a key, so the how wasn't in question so much as the why. He blinked, and shook his head.

"It's an old English rhyme," Asuka sat down at the table, and shook her hair back. Shinji wondered if that was a girl-thing, or 'girls-who-knew-Misato' thing. "-about how a horse lost it's shoe because it wasn't nailed down."

She gave him a look, to which he could only offer a weak, uncertain smile. That seemed to be the right thing to do, because Asuka straightened in her seat and started to reciting. Her voice was pleasantly clear and lilting, and a welcome change from her almost constant sarcasm.

"_For want of a nail the shoe was lost;_

_For want of a shoe the horse was lost;_

_For want of a horse the battle was lost;_

_For the failure of battle the kingdom was lost-_

_All for the want of a horse-shoe nail."_

When Asuka leaned back in her chair, she had reason to be a little smug, her English was impeccable. Shinji spoke and understood it well enough, but had still been unable to eradicate his own stubborn accent. The two teenagers sat there for a few moments, watching the boy roll the nail between his fingers. Something possessed him to try balancing it on one fingertip, point-down. It held for one, two, three seconds before falling.

"So, what's with the nail, anyway?" Asuka leaned forward and laid her the side of head on the table, cradling it with one arm. She looked up at him, forcing Shinji's mind to remind him that her uncovered eye was unmistakably _blue_.

Coughing, he picked the nail back up and held it at eye level. Looking at it was safer than anything else. "I... Understand it." Asuka obviously didn't, nor did she even know what he was talking about, so he kept explaining. "I know what it's made of, I know how hot the steel had to be, how much carbon..."

He trailed off, ending a helpless shrug.

Asuka frowned then, not so much upset as uncertain. "That doesn't seem very impressive."

"It's not," He shrugged again. "But I can do it."

She lifted her head, letting it tilt inquisitively. "What else can you do?"

That was always the pressing question, it seemed. The first answer that came to his mind was _I don't know_. Shinji rightly assumed that wasn't the best thing to say, so he hemmed and hawed, playing for time. Asuka started tapping one finger against the table. Shinji decided it was best to start at the beginning, or as close to it as he could manage.

"It started with the Third Angel. I was... delirious, and I'm not supposed to talk about it." He shrugged helplessly. "I'm stronger, faster..."

Trailing off, Shinji did his best to get his mind back on track. He'd had maybe a total of four conversations with the girl, counting this one, and he simply had _no idea_ how to move forward. For all his luck and celebrity at school, Shinji still did not _get_ people, let alone temperamental redheads. Still, he blundered on, rambling at first, but smoothing out as he went.

When he started on his grasp natural sciences and engineering, they became something of a curious game. Asuka didn't smile; her expression hardly changed from that slightly tired, passively interested look. There wasn't any laughter or encouragement, but no scathing commentary either. The girl pointed to an object in the apartment, be it the table, the dishwasher, or refrigerator, and Shinji explained in full detail how they worked, the underlying physics of their operation, and so on. He never once however mentioned a brand name, sticking to the basic construction. Gun collectors could list off the make and model of their favored pieces. Shinji however could with the right tools and materials, copy of any tool or appliance he encountered, without once knowing who made it or how.

When he had finished, Asuka just stared at him with her one good eye. She still wore a simple black patch over the left side of her face. Shinji winced, feeling his hands clench slightly. The nail in one fist dug into his palm, but could not break the skin. He went over his list of powers once more. It had gotten fairly long over the year, and their impromptu quiz session only scratched the surface. Increased endurance, agility, his ability to diagnose with a glance...

He let his fists uncurl. The nail dropped back onto the table, mangled. "I can heal people. Not just treat them, but really, really heal them. Regenerate."

"I know," Asuka pushed away from the table and shook her hair out once more. "Akagi showed me photos of her arm."

Looking around, Shinji felt his hands twitch slightly. He wouldn't get anywhere lying to her, or being closemouthed. "I... I can weaponize everything in this room."

Asuka twisted in her seat to take in the kitchen. "That doesn't seem too special, I mean, as long as I can lift it, I could too."

Shinji just shook his head, shivering slightly. She didn't understand, not yet. "No I mean, I can make anything in here... Rend. Not cut. I can maim people with my bare hands. I uh... I once cut a man's arm off with a rolled up magazine."

The conversation died off after that. Asuka slumped back into her chair and didn't complain about how it dug into her shoulders. Shinji knew that, and a whole host of other things. He fidgeted, switching between sitting back and forward, steepling his hands and laying them flat on the table. The girl was content to watch him simmer, staring at him with that flat, one-eyed look.

Despite knowing better, the offer started to form once more. Asuka cut him off before he even got a word out. "You want to fix my eye." Her expression somehow became even more unreadable, but her voice was calm and even, almost apologetic. "I know you say you can. Hell, you probably _could_ fix my eye, but that's _my_ choice, not yours, Okay?"

A lead weight dropped into his stomach, but Shinji looked Asuka in the eye and nodded.

* * *

><p>Katsuragi Misato had a problem.<p>

Leaning against her kitchen counter, the lieutenant nursed a beer. There wasn't much in the way of condensation, not in her apartment in late winter. Even so, a thin layer of moisture built up on the can. She mulled it over, both her problem and the alcohol. As far as challenges went, hers was a mean one. Misato had to, among other things, create a finely honed unit out of three damaged teenagers. One was a _justifiably_ egotistical spoiled-genius-brat, another was a _clone,_ and the third had god-given _superpowers_. Misato took a swig of beer and tried to not think about Rei, or how she might have already been _dead_.

On top of all those unique traits, those kids all sat at the controls of the deadliest weapons ever designed by man. Misato had read the report on the Vladivostok Incident, and Asuka's hand in _that _mess. Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki had made it all too clear to her; the Evangelions didn't fight with guns and knives so much as reality itself. That was why she had been chosen, head-hunted for NERV. No one else on Earth knew the Angels like she did, and no one else could quite think in the terms of that unnatural warfare.

The beer had been drained halfway, and had gone lukewarm under her fingers. Misato sighed and tipped it into the sink. Rei was gone, and Asuka was probably asleep. That left the easiest of her charges. Misato let her hand wander down her chest, rubbing at the smooth spot beneath her breasts. He'd done it eight days ago, give or take. She traced the path of the absent scar and counted from memory each stitch and jagged mark. Shinji and Asuka needed to have some sort of ice-breaker moment.

Glancing at a mirror, Misato finally noticed where her hand had gone, and came to a decision. She smoothed her dress and gave her reflection a decisive nod. Stepping outside, she made her way up the three flights, not so much winded as aware of the effort. Slob or not, she had her soldier's conditioning, and more importantly, her pride. Judging by the hour and Shinji's mood, he was probably up on the roof with some project or another.

And found him she did, hand-polishing what looked like more ceramic works. The 'small' kiln next to him roared, but not loud enough to muffle speech. More than enough to muffle slippered footsteps though. Misato snaked her arms around his middle from behind and squeezed, pressing her cheek into his back with a smile. Almost immediately however, she realized something was wrong. His back and spine were steel-beam solid, utterly unyielding. Shinji looked back and down over his shoulder, a dinner plate in his hands. Misato pulled away without a word.

Misato shook her hair out and rocked her hips side to side, meandering over to the high parapet and planting her hands on it. The rooftop winds seemed to catch everything. The whole time, Shinji watched her, and nothing like she'd ever seen before. He let the stare linger, but finally broke away, focusing back on his work. Misato was content to let him.

He reached into the kiln with his bare hands and pulled out a newly fired piece of tableware. Misato's eyes went wide, even as she watched the boy shake his fingers out, blowing across his knuckles. She knew he was _tough_, but... She shook her head and looked back at the plate. A rag for polishing appeared in his other hand, rubbing away dust and flaws. When he was finished, Shinji set it aside in a handmade wooden rack, waiting for glazing, if she had to guess.

Shinji repeated the process a few times more, even as the sun dipped closer towards the western mountains. Misato felt safe enough to break the silence. "So... You and Asuka knocked heads again?"

His rhythm barely faltered, but didn't answer. Misato tried to give him her most reassuring smile. "I lived with Asuka for a couple years. She can be a handful, but..." She shrugged. "You just have to find a way to catch her eye."

Looking up from his plates, Shinji gave her another flat stare. It took Misato a few seconds to get why. When she did, she winced, letting out a short laugh. "I uh... Didn't mean it like that. But you _are_ the super-doctor-guy."

She stepped back from the roof edge and struck a pose, not _quite_ registering how Shinji's face fell. "I mean, I can wear two-pieces now thanks to you. Asuka wouldn't do what _I_ did, but think about what she'd do if you healed her eye?"

The plate in Shinji's hand shattered.

Bits of ruined clay and dust fell away from Shinji's hands, and he turned, staring at her. Not just staring, _glaring_. Misato had never ever once been scared _of_ Shinji. She had several times been scared _for him_. It was irrational, and hinged mostly on her gut feeling. It always threw Ritsuko for a loop when Misato's intuition proved right over hard evidence. That was why she wasn't running for the stairs.

Of course, not being scared was entirely different from not reacting. "Sh-Shinji-kun?"

He brought his hands up with his fingers curled like claws. It reminded her again that he could do things he never asked for, or wanted, but the power was still there. Rending or healing. She looked past his fingers and at his face, and realized something very, very important: Shinji was _angry_.

Misato had never seen him angry.

_Why_ eluded her as well. She stood her ground, but Misato's mind was running to all corners, trying to figure out what set the boy off. Asuka had gotten a rise out of him on arrival, but that was more by just being unexpected. And as far as she knew, he wasn't acting _anything_ like during the Caligulia impression. Psychology wasn't her strong suit and Shinji seemed to be getting _angrier_.

"You used me to get to Asuka!" Shinji hissed, advancing closer. Misato wilted, feeling the blood drain out of her face.

"I was a prop in whatever little game you were playing! Maybe she deserved it, you know her better than I do, but _you're the adult!_" Shinji waved and snarled, frustration rolling off him in thick waves.

Some part of Misato was mystified as to why he suddenly seemed so much more eloquent than normal, but at the moment, she didn't care. Whatever it was about had been building up for quite a while. Misato took a step back, then another, before tumbling into one of the deck chairs dotting the rooftop. Shinji towered above her, furious.

Guilt built up in her gut, squirming. Misato flashed back through the conversation she'd had with Asuka, more than week ago, less than an _hour_ after the debacle. Shinji stared down at her, and Misato found perfect clarity in hindsight; the slammed door, cold shoulder, everything. Standing up, she resolved to make it right. Shinji still stood there, nearly two heads taller than her. He hadn't once raised his hands against her, or made any threat. Instead he was content to just _be_ angry. In a lot of ways, that was fair and reasonable.

There wasn't a lot of time to be calculating, and Misato really didn't like to overthink her emotions, or her actions. admittedly, that habit was what got her into trouble in the first place, but she had to be honest. "S-Shinji..."

"I-I'm sorry. I was wrong to do that, and to go as far as I did." Misato hugged herself, turning away from the boy. The setting sun felt cold on her bare arms. "Hell, _Asuka_ called me out on it right after-"

"I know, I heard."

That brought Misato up short. Her eyes snapped back up. "You heard?"

Shinji waved a hand at his ears. "Better than average hearing, I heard everyone while I was in the shower." He crossed his arms over his chest and refocused that glare. He all but demanded she keep her eyes on him. "You were saying?"

Put on the spot, she stalled out of old, unwelcome habit. Misato stumbled over herself, left with her tongue caught in her throat. Shinji just kept staring, still angry, but less so. Finally, the woman planted her feet and pushed ahead. "I'm sorry. What I did was wrong and immature. Cruel even."

The apology itself hadn't been difficult to get out. It wasn't like lingering guilt, so there was no weight that fell off her shoulders. Misato let her eyes slide closed and settled in for the wait. She had no way to judge how long she stood on the rooftop, hoping Shinji would accept everything. Wind pulled at her hair and clothes. Something warm and familiar tugged at her wrist, before drawing her hand away from her side and taking hold. She opened her eyes and saw Shinji squeezing her hand, gently.

She looked up at him with a growing smile, but it froze in mid-motion, when she saw the look on his face. "I'm still angry." Even so, he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Shinji let her go and moved over to his forgotten plates, taking up the rack and heading downstairs.

Misato nodded quietly as he passed by, but stayed up top, looking out at the city skyline. She stayed out there until the sun had completely set, and the brightest stars had come out. Shinji was still angry, sure, but he wasn't going to _stay_ angry.

* * *

><p>It had been five days since NERV had pulled the girls out of the MAGI. Asuka slept less and less, moving towards a more regular waking cycle. Which was to say, she slept like a teenager, refusing to get out of bed before ten in the morning. Misato was too worried about Rei to call either Asuka or Shinji on their skipping class. Once Kaji was sure his girl was okay, he retreated, back towards his apartment and his regular, 'classic letch' persona.<p>

Asuka spent most of her time in Misato's apartment, largely because it had a stocked kitchen, and the girl didn't know the grocery stores well enough to fill her own cupboards. She did however borrow Misato's collection of delivery menus. For the first time, Asuka was left to manage herself. It was the part of the college experience she missed while attending classes. Back then, everyone around her was two or even three times older than she was. In Japan, her guardians were distant enough for Asuka to develop a degree of freedom, eating what and when she wanted, and directing her admittedly limited income to whatever she desired.

But, even with her upset sleep schedule, Asuka found herself hurting for things to do, hence 'hang out at Misato's. Despite having a girlfriend, Shinji almost never left the apartment, and Misato's work days were mercifully short.

The new girl did not take Rei's place, and she had no intention to. Instead, Asuka unbalanced things, but not in a bad way. She clashed with Shinji, but quietly. Not so much timid as uncertain. It left Misato acting as peacekeeper, which was easier than it sounded. There was no real hate or vitrol from either pilot, just regular conflict. The teenagers fit together like mismatched gears, not quite lining up, but still moving forward. Misato still had her own problems, with Shinji letting the last of his lingering frustration go, and her trying to treat him better. She still desperately needed to hug, and be hugged, but Misato wasn't eager to push boundaries quite yet.

Stuck waiting, the three tried to keep their minds off darker matters. Rei had almost no presence, but Misato and Shinji definitely felt her absence. Asuka just missed her first real friend. Misato frowned and glanced at the phone. Ritsuko hadn't called that day.

An argument started up somewhere in the apartment, leaving Misato to assume there was some disagreement about the television. Before she could intervene, someone knocked on the door. She left the teenagers to their bickering while she moved to answer it.

"_Rei!"_

* * *

><p>Standing just outside the door was her missing pilot in dull hospital clothes, standing next to her blonde best friend. Misato was already moving to scoop the girl up in a hug, but Ritsuko intercepted. The blonde woman lightly pressed an open palm into Misato's head, stopping her cold. Blinking, Misato looked past the fingers and saw her friend holding an IV drip bag in her other hand, leading into Rei's arm.<p>

A red blur pushed past Misato and very nearly made the same mistake, before the older woman shot one arm out and caught Asuka around the middle. Shinji appeared a half-step later, but stopped on his own. Ritsuko dropped her hand with a wan smile, letting Misato and Asuka engulf the blue-haired girl, more gently. When the impromptu group hug broke apart, leaving everyone rumpled, but beaming. They crowded into the tiny hallway before spilling into the kitchen. Shinji had grabbed a standing lamp and hung the drip bag from it, while Misato pulled a chair out for Rei.

When everyone sat down, Misato reached across the table to take Rei's hands in hers. "Rei-chan, we've missed you _so_ much! Are you.. Alright? I mean, is everything..."

Misato looked at Rei first, before turning to Ritsuko and back again. The question hung in the air. The girl gave the tiniest smile, but shook her head. "I am better. I won't ever be fully well."

The news had an almost physical quality. One by one, the girls turned to face Shinji, though not for the same reasons. Asuka was honestly curious, though remained not so much skeptical as cautious. Misato was blatantly hopeful; she believed in him and his powers beyond all doubts. Rei was the most neutral, almost as if she knew the answer. Ritsuko however did little else but sit, as if she knew the answer already.

The Third Child shrank in his seat just a bit. He'd learned very early on that _limits_ were not things people liked to hear, when it came to helping people. He shrugged weakly and started to explain. "I can't fully diagnose her. Whatever's wrong, I just can't put my finger on it. I'm just... Missing something."

Rei bowed her head. Her bangs touched the tabletop, and it suddenly struck everyone how unexpectedly long her hair had gotten, over a matter of days. She spoke up before anyone could ask. "If I am ever ready, I will tell you what you need to know."

Shinji sat back in his seat, nodding once. Misato looked between her pilots and the doctor, but kept her mouth shut. As much as she wanted to order Rei to spill everything, she _had_ to respect her wishes. It just wasn't right, otherwise. Asuka felt much the same, indignation and a sense of _what are you, stupid?_ brewing up in her chest. Then she reminded herself about the very same choice _she_ made. The Second reached up to rub her eye patch.

Ritsuko watched the exchange, distantly at best, but not unkindly. To Shinji, she simply said "You might just figure everything out." Turning back to Rei and Misato, the scientist laid down the facts. "Rei is going to need that IV drip for pretty much the rest of her life, assuming there aren't any other lapses on her part. The treatment options we _do_ have are last resorts."

By silent, unanimous agreement, everyone present decided not to push the topic. Misato moved to sit next to Rei and wrap the girl up in a one-sided hug and hold on tight. Shinji meanwhile slowly reached over and took Rei's free hand in his, smiling. Rei caught Asuka's eye and gave her a simple, slow nod. They'd have time for girl-talk later. Asuka felt a shiver of dread work its way down her spine.

Then, Ritsuko finally seemed to notice Asuka. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a small wedge of dark metal and matte black plastic. Loops of elastic bands dangled from the corners. She handed it to the redhead with a smile. "I picked it up on the way out, it should work."

Asuka frowned, not quite able to stop herself from asking the obvious question. "What is it?" The answer she got was directed more at everyone, but that was just as well, as they all wanted to know. Ritsuko's smile was just a tiny bit smug.

"Remote sensory link. Asuka's _brain_ can see just fine, and her right eye works, but the connection's broken." Ritsuko smiled a bit wider. "It's basically a camera feeding directly into her visual cortex."

She went on to explain the particulars, quickly losing Misato due to the use of jargon. Rei and Asuka kept up easily enough, but only Shinji truly knew what Ritsuko was talking about, up until the adapted Evangelion technology came in. It worked a lot like the standard neural clips, and Asuka's habit of wearing them everywhere would improve their connectivity. On the one hand, Shinji didn't care to call his volunteer work and medical training a _hobby_. At the same time, his hobby _was _learning how to heal the sick and injured. It was difficult for Shinji to _not_ be interested.

Asuka played with the device, letting the elastic bands spill over her fingers while she gauged the weight. It wasn't heavy at all. A new hand appeared in her field of view, leading to the Third. "Mind if I take a look?"

She passed the gadget to him, while Ritsuko stared. Asuka was still audibly curious, "You think you could make one of these?"

Holding the eyepiece up, he looked it over. He'd examined a _lot_ of tools and appliances over the last year, most of it built on fundamental concepts. Shinji felt his reserve of power flex within, supplementing his understanding. There wasn't an obvious lens. The plastic seemed to let light in one way...

Finally, he handed it back to Asuka. "...I'd need the right tools, and some time to experiment, but yeah."

Pushing away from the kitchen table, Ritsuko waved suddenly animated. Her hair seemed to bounce along with her mood. "Well, Pilot Sorhyu? Try it on!"

After the others gave her space, Asuka pulled away her old mundane patch. The eye beneath was still perfectly healthy, aside from a psychological symptom. Her eyelid drooped, like she was half-asleep on that side. Asuka found it easier to just keep the eye covered. It took her a few seconds to arrange the straps the way she wanted, accounting for her headset and normal hairstyle. When she was finished, there was suddenly a sense of _rightness_, like how an artist knew their piece was complete.

Misato was the first to break the silence, breaking out into a thousand-watt grin. "It looks _really good_!"

The smile seemed to be infectious. "Mirror. _Mirror!_ I wanna see this!" Asuka waved for something, anything to let her see for herself.

Shinji had already moved, pulling a reflective decoration off the wall. He held the polished surface up for Asuka. She preened, tilting her chin this way and that. The techno-patch hugged her face comfortably, and her bangs framed it just so. Ritsuko meanwhile soured, good-naturedly. She tapped her feet and scowled, waiting for the gushing to die down.

Joining Asuka in the reflection, she pulled the girl's hair back,. "You know," Ritsuko drawled, pointing at a tiny side-mounted rocker switch. "You can turn it on."

Asuka's grin grew even more fierce. Forcing Ritsuko's fingers away, she hit the switch and waited. "...Nothing's happening!"

Ritusko laughed, having found a wall to lean against. "Give it few seconds, it is kind of like syncing with an Evangelion, after all."

Huffing, Asuka gave a fitful little stomp and crossed her arms over her chest. Frowning, she fell back on her training, and let her mind reach for a nearby presence. Her Unit 02 was an all-encompassing thing. Proper synchronization was _big_ and surrounding. With the eye patch, Asuka somehow felt part of her mind _bend_. It took her a few moments to understand that _everything_ felt like that when she took control of the Evangelion. The funny kink seemed to relax, even as vision her right eye slowly came back. It was fuzzy, and a little off, but it made sense when she remembered the eye patch camera wasn't matched perfectly with her working eye.

Then, her vision on that side jumped. Asuka stumbled, flailing for a chair, but got her feet back under herself just in time. She waved off Misato's concerned rush while standing. The distorted perspective had corrected itself, leaving her with a somewhat blurry right field of view, but full binocular vision. Suddenly, text appeared in mid-air.

"Wh-What the hell?! Akagi-" Asuka twisted left and right, trying to find the scientist and get her balance back.

Ritsuko laughed and stepped back into frame. "Akagi-_Sensei_, Pilot Sorhyu. You're wondering about the heads up display?"

Asuka waved her hand in front of the device, watching it lay a wire frame grid over her palm and fingers. Her thoughts directed it, marking out her pulse, blood pressure and more vital signs. "I figured I'd only get to see! I didn't expect bionic vision!"

The scientist shrugged, smirking. "The futurists figured it'd be called augmented reality. You'll get used to it. Otherwise the manual will tell you how to turn it off."

"We don't need manuals."

Blinking, Ritsuko and Asuka turned to Misato, and suddenly felt the same sense of impending doom bearing down upon them. The lieutenant's brown eyes were burning hot and intent, and her smile had stretched into a positively _mischievous_ curl. "We don't need manuals," she emphasized. "We need a _party._ Shinji!"

The Third snapped to attention, positively vibrating in place. Misato took a moment to bask in the obedience. "Kitchen, now! Get to it!"

Rei, sitting at the table, perked up at the thought of food. She'd gone far too long on a purely liquid diet. While Misato was focused on Shinji, Ritsuko tried to make a break for it. She moved as quickly as politeness would allow, but in hindsight, wondered why she bothered. Misato had gotten her hooks in, and there would be no escape.

She turned back to face the kitchen, and watched Shinji work. The sunfire corona began to build up around his shoulders.

* * *

><p>Shinji had a lot of reasons to think about competence. Both the nature of the word and what it meant for a lot of people, not just himself. Come March, he would have been in Tokyo-3 a full year. He'd gotten used to a lot of things over that time, like how it suddenly <em>wasn't<em> a big deal, keeping an eye on four different dishes on four different burners. And bread baking in the oven. Along with planning dessert. His judgement was sublime, and he knew those recipes by heart. He knew every peculiarity of Misato's stove, mixer and refrigerator, and how to exploit them.

He still had trouble dealing with his coworkers, superior officers, friends, roommates, classmates, humans in general, and, as it fate had it, penguins. It didn't help in the slightest that nearly everyone present in Misato's apartment fit into more than one category. There was also the problem that he was the only male _in the building_, leaving him surrounded yet again by beautiful women. On the one hand Shinji had to admit that was kind of awesome, on the other it just made him all the more nervous.

Misato had ducked into the kitchen behind him, early on. She was a slob and something of a party animal, buoyant and lively. Shinji liked to think of her as admirable, but immature. Her drinking habits varied by mood, but 'special occasion' meant imported red wine. The lieutenant pulled out the bottle with a gleeful smile.

Asuka from her seat at the table couldn't help but snark. "Like you need an excuse to drink."

"This is a light day for me! Normally I'm into beer towers by now." Wine in one hand, Misato reached into the fridge with her other, pulling out soda for Asuka and Rei. She shut the door with one expert swing of her hip.

Ritsuko had already retrieved a pair of wine glasses, waiting patiently to be filled. "Somehow that does not surprise me."

The conversation dissolved further into playful banter, where Ritsuko fired quips broadside. She dredged up several years worth of college memories and 'old war stories' during Misato's UN days. What Asuka lacked in first and second-hand dirt, she made up for with brute intelligence and snark. Besieged on all sides, Misato turned to Rei, hoping for an assist.

The girl's response was damning: "Yebisu Taj Mahal."

* * *

><p>Shinji had started on appetizers and quick snacks he could throw together cold, buying him time to prepare the next course. The cabinets and refrigerator were both stuffed and overflowing, thanks to the Third Child. There weren't any premade batters or doughs in the apartment, only base ingredients. It had gotten to the point that instant meals filled only one shelf, and only of the highest quality. Shinji made everything else from scratch whenever possible.<p>

The space limitations irked him, but he persevered regardless. Cooking was a no-effort activity, even when he pushed himself. The burning corona flickered around his shoulders. From his place in the kitchen, Shinji was reasonably insulated from the others, giving him the chance to observe.

Rei did not look healthy, even with a brief glance. Her skin looked dry and not quite gray. Asuka had tugged the girl into another room, helping carrying the converted lamp and drip bag. The girls looked cagey, not skittish, but definitely wary. Shinji started on a bowl of chocolate cake batter while he mused. They had come back different. Not _bad_, but changed, somehow. Ayanami was slightly more animated, expressive. Her body looked cold and unwell, but her face and voice were both much warmer.

If Shinji had to get to know Rei all over again, he didn't mind.

When the girls came back, Misato slid out of her chair into a one-woman standing ovation. Asuka had helped pull Rei's hair back, and found a matching blue sundress. It didn't do anything to offset the needle in her arm, or how her veins stood out against her skin, but it was a step towards normalcy, and towards Rei just being a regular girl. Oddly enough both pilots seemed to relax while Misato whistled and catcalled.

* * *

><p>Asuka sat at the dining room table next to Rei, idly clicking the switch to her new prosthetic. Thermal, telescopic, augmented reality. It felt very much like seeing half the world as a video game. Somehow the projection didn't just appear in her right field of view, but it spread to her full binocular vision. It made sense when she thought about it, the eyepiece was transmitting everything directly to her brain. It had been telling her all sorts of interesting things, like what kind of wood the table was made from, and how old the wine was in Ritsuko's glass.<p>

It even tried to describe Ikari's fireworks display. "So what's with the glowing?"

Ritsuko sighed softly. "We've been calling it a coronal display."

"We think it's a sort of bleed through. He has a power source somewhere between his souls, and it... leaks. Into that." She waved her half-full wineglass back towards the kitchen, and Asuka watched, fascinated, as her patch analyzed the lipstick mark on the rim. Ritsuko didn't seem to notice the attention.

"Ikari-kun has formalized techniques, as well, that demonstrate consistent, repeatable behaviors. He's described it as 'moving parts of his soul around'." Ritsuko shrugged, pausing for a sip. "So far it's the best explaination yet."

Outside it was a misty, overcast late winner afternoon. In the kitchen, it looked like sunlight breaking through clouds. "So... The Third suddenly gets super powers?"

She was past the point of doubting, but Asuka still struggled with acceptance, for lack of a better term. There was plenty of proof, but not enough answers. Misato joined them, and ended up making matters worse. "Well, to hear Shinji tell it, a god gave it to him."

Asuka's tone had gone flat. "God."

Misato's grin curled up catlike, and Asuka winced, feeling as if she walked into something unawares. "A god, not _the _God. He had a dream during the first Angel attack. His first time in combat too."

Asuka was silent, as was Rei. The First had learned a lot through simple observation, but there were still gaps in her knowledge. Misato took their attention as a sign to continue. Ritsuko cradled her chin in one hand and listened as well, offering her own perspective on those early days. Shinji had confided a lot in Misato early on.

"Shinji described it as this massive man in golden armor, like old Greek or Roman soldiers? Except he had four arms." Misato hummed, trying to recall. "He called Shinji 'Lawgiver', and told him he'd be watching."

Ritsuko sighed and held her glass up for a refill. Subjective experiences and information never sat well with her. "Assuming Ikari-kun didn't just hallucinate that part... It's been a while since I read that report. I can't remmeber what he called it. The god."

"The Unconquered Sun."

Shinji appeared, arms laden with food, dominated largely by Rei's favorites and some educated guesses for Asuka. The redhead slid back in her chair, surprised, while Ritsuko openly stared. Only Misato seemed unaffected by Shinji's sudden interruption. Then the aroma hit, and they _almost_ forgot what they'd been talking about. Rei took on a rosy blush, down past her neck with a matching, shy smile, and Misato let out a wordless purr. Ritsuko and Asuka were left mystified; the food certainly smelled good, and Shinji had made it quickly, with excellent presentation. The Second Child focused her altered eye on the food.

Then she remembered what the boy had said. Asuka sat bolt upright, bristling and incredulous. "Unconquered- You mean to seriously suggest you got your powers from _Sol Invictus_? The _third century_ Roman diety?"

The latin threw Misato and Rei off, but Ritsuko offered Asuka a curious grin. "Where'd you pick that up? I thought you had a bachelor's of science."

"I had to take some humanities to fill out my transcript!" Still standing, Asuka huffed and folded her arms over her chest. "And I qualified for a few minors! Stop changing the subject!"

"Well, that makes sense, Shinji's an... Exalt?" Misato looked up at Shinji for confirmation. "Solar Exalted. Sun god, basically."

Asuka slumped back in her seat, limp and boneless and fully in-line with teenage melodramatics. She _had_ made a good observation though, and Ritsuko told her as much.

"Honestly it's not surprising, we've been seeing all sorts of strange, ahistorical symbols. His corona exhibits obvious influences from Buddhism." Ritsuko toasted one of the gold wire traceries hovering around Shinji's shoulder. The hand outline folded gracefully into one mudra after another. "How much did you know about that practice before coming to Tokyo-3?"

Finally finished setting the table, Shinji shrugged and took a seat. He answered while loading his own plate. "About as much as anyone I guess, before I started studying."

* * *

><p>With five people, the table was crowded, but pleasantly so. Misato wasn't one for strict table manners, and traipsed through the customs with her usual flair. The lieutenant pouted when Shinji had told her the 'magic pan' needed to be retired. It had lost its charge, as far as he could tell. It was a small loss though. Shinji tried complex dishes and fancy things every so often, but most of the time he stuck to various tried and true standbys; things that benefited well from investment and skilled preparation.<p>

Ritsuko's fingers slipped, tangling up between the chopsticks. She managed to recover, shifting slightly. "... Katsuragi?"

Flushed and beaming, Misato set her plate down for the moment and _purred_. Ritsuko clicked her chopsticks together, giving her friend a wide-eyed look. The dark-haired woman didn't answer, save for another satisfied hum. Nothing else seemed to be amiss, so Ritsuko took another bite.

_"Mph!"_

Blinking, Shinji asked if she was alright. Heat crept up Ritsuko's neck, but she held onto her composure with every scrap of will. Slowly, she glanced around the table. Someone had giggled. Her first thought was Shinji, considering the possibility of a boyish prank. But then she remembered that firstly, Shinji was _Shinji_, and not that good of an actor. Secondly, while his voice hadn't yet changed, he still did not sound like a girl. Misato on principle didn't giggle unless a man was involved, and Asuka was busy looking at the food with her prosthetic.

Rei had a tiny smile on her face.

"Katsuragi..." Ritsuko's tone dropped low. "Now's not the time to be coy."

The smoky, warm look on Misato's face vanished in an instant. Laughter bubbled up along with her smile. "Sorry, sorry! Shinji's just an excellent cook." The boy blushed slightly at her praise, but nodded.

"Everything's delicious, but-" Ritsuko's eyebrow started twitching. Misato had cut her off.

"It's just really good, but you have to be careful." She leaned back in her chair and laid a hand over her bare stomach, grinning. "It can sneak up on you."

Ritsuko blinked, nonplussed. She turned from Misato to Rei, who just smiled. Shinji shrugged. He either made it right, or he failed, and could always tell the difference. She faced Asuka last, and noted Misato do the same out the corner of her eye. The redhead had utterly ignored the conversation in favor of the food. Asuka had already gone for seconds, something Misato found unbelievable.

When she realized she was being watched, Asuka swallowed her last mouthful, only somewhat aware of the bit of rice stuck to her lip. She blinked once. "What? It's delicious."

* * *

><p>Sunset in post-impact Japan was often warm, almost muggy. Even in winter, clouds gave way to warm breezes more at home in summers two decades past. The impromptu party had split, leaving the adults outside on the balcony. Draped over her chair, Misato watched the kids out the corner of her eye. Inside, the pilots bickered lightly. The glass door muffled Shinij's indignant squawk, followed by a ringing peal of laughter. Asuka seemed to make it her mission to get a rise out people.<p>

It was always a joy to watch Shinji get flustered, and Asuka seemed to have a way of cracking his shell. Rei, oddly enough seemed to side with Asuka, but every so often, she'd drop a one-liner and send the other girl reeling. The redhead stumbled into another verbal bind. It seemed that Rei had come out of the simulation with a sharper wit, and it was all Asuka's fault.

Something about Asuka's new eyepiece bugged her, though. Ritsuko was sitting nearby, spread out on one of the patio chairs. A second, half-empty bottle of wine sat between them. The blonde had finally shed her labcoat, having worn it all through dinner.

Misato glanced over at her friend. "I'm not complaining, Rits, but weren't we in a budget crunch?"

"We cut spending on everything _but_ human resources, just so we can pay them. People are our most valuable assets right now." Ritsuko offered the sky a tiny smile, with one arm draped over her eyes. "Cost of materials on a one-off like that? Written off."

Misato leaned back in her chair, humming. "Huh, job security and company loyalty in NERV. Who knew?"

The sun sank lower, into the city skyline and the western hills. A bit of shuffling topped off their glasses, but they were both in a mood to sip. After the initial... oddness with dinner, Ritsuko shrugged it off and dug in. It had to have been years, a decade or more since she had a full meal, let alone a home-cooked feast. It was a good feeling, one Ritsuko had forgotten. She laid her hands over her stomach and sighed. .

Misato stretched with her shoulders braced against the chair, arching her back. Ritsuko made the mistake of looking. One of her eyebrows rose up in time with the hem of Misato's shirt. Or it would have, if the short black tank had anything left to ride up. Military conditioning, genetic lottery, or life just not being fair, Ritsuko tried very hard right then not to begrudge her friend for being thirty, and _looking_ twenty.

Still, Ritsuko couldn't let her friend get off _completely_ free... "Well, you certainly look satisfied... Huh. Katsuragi, I don't remember that top being quite so small."

Holding her free hand up, Misato made a little 'snip snip' motion. "I made some improvements!"

The blonde fought the urge to groan, or shake her head. Misato finished her stretch with a long, lazy groan, before scooting back to sit cross-legged. Ritsuko watched as her friend did all this with a half-full glass of wine in her other hand.

Then she realized what else had been bothering her: She should've seen Misato's... "Katsuragi, where's your scar?"

Her answer came with of Misato's blinding, outshine-the-sun smiles. "Shinji gave me my body back."

"Pardon?"

"He regrew your entire arm in a week," Misato grin spread even wider. She hooked a finger under her tanktop and pulled, revealing unmarked skin from below her breasts, all the way down into the waistband of her shorts. "My scar was easy."

* * *

><p>As far as Tokyo-3 was concerned, almost nothing had happened over the weekend. A great deal of the city's municipal functions were controlled by the MAGI, but also removed removed from them several times over. In the dead of night, Sunday morning, anyone wandering the streets may have noticed malfunctioning traffic signals, or the numerous solar mirrors angling for starlight. Most citizens were quite simply unaware or unconcerned. Only a handful of important people were notified, let alone put on any form of alert.<p>

Those who _were_ put on alert included the Commander of NERV, as well as the JSSDF high command, the government, _and_ the United Nations. In that last case, Gendo would have reported to the inspector on-site, but Ryoji Kaji was down in the Geofront. Mired in bureaucracy, Gendo wasted several days dealing with those distractions.

His office was cold. There hadn't been anyone inside for nearly a week, long enough for a thin layer of dust to settle on the floor and normally-gleaming desktop. Gendo drew one gloved fingertip down the polished surface, watching it leave a trail and come away grimy. He rubbed the dirt off on his pantleg and frowned, slightly. Fuyutsuki had already come in and left a stack of reports, but it wasn't his job to clean either. The Commander reached for the top file and started to read.

Ongoing reports about the worldwide Angel sightings. Those had dropped down to almost nothing. Once the UN took over the detection system, SEELE had what it wanted. A handful of incidents were still being reported. Gendo let the folder close and pushed it off to one side. The next file was thicker, stuffed with dossiers of new NERV employees. Those he read carefully, knowing that if a spy made it past Section Two's vetting process... A pen came out and marked 'further review' on a few suspicious entries. Others Gendo signed off on, reasonably certain of their identity, or willing to keep an enemy close at hand.

A few files jumped out at him, however. A muscle in his cheek and jaw pulled back, like he had eaten something particularly sour. Gendo held up a provided photograph, squinting over the top of his glasses, just to make sure he wasn't seeing incorrectly. He tried not to let emotions get in the way of his planning, but for something so... inconsequential, he saw no harm. With more than a little satisfaction, he reached out and marked, 'unacceptable' on those last applications. He truly had no pity for someone who wore decorative contact lenses to a job interview.

As the morning wore on, the Geofront cavern warmed beneath his office, and the glass floor faded to transparent. Above him, the System Sephirot gleamed silently. Most of the reports were subjects his analysts thought relevant or interesting, and Fuyutsuki supplemented with his own sources and academic connections. Advances in science, technology,and especially metaphysics. Like atomic theory before it, the science of an AT field was generally public knowledge, if restricted to academia and military research. Their monopoly at NERV was largely an illusion.

Vigilance was why Gendo read clippings from tabloids, discussing out of body experiences, psychic phenomena, and the strange workings of their world. Fortunately, credible findings were sorted before reaching his office.

Lastly were budget and housekeeping, things he largely delegated to Fuyutsuki, who in turn delegated it to Lieutenant Katsuragi and Akagi. Not all days were normal, however, and some things always needed his direct attention. A particular form caught his eye, related to his Director of Operations. He held it up and stared at it, contemplating. _More loyalty never hurt_. He mused, signing the document and filing it without further thought.

Gendo leaned back in his chair and let out a small sigh. Finished, in time for lunch. And leaving ample time for far more pressing matters. He reached into his inside coat pocket to pull out a notepad. Several pages of it were filled to the margins.

He reached out for the intercom. "Fuyutsuki."

"Here, Ikari."

"Have Lieutenant Ibuki report to my office in three hours."

* * *

><p>For some people, the way they took their meals could in turn tell stories.<p>

To Gendo, lunch was just lunch. He enjoyed it as much as anyone who liked to eat, but did not over-think it. Gourmet menus and acting like the most powerful man in the world was not something he went out of his way for. The paper carton and disposable chopsticks vanished into an open cabinet. A brief pulse of heat near his leg told him the incinerator made short work it, just like it consumed sensitive documents.

Now sitting at a clean desk, devoid of papers and dust, the Commander waited for his next appointment.

* * *

><p>Ibuki Maya did not fear her bosses.<p>

She didn't feel any particular sense of dread making her way to the Commander's office. Instead she stared at her reflection in the elevator door, more curious about the refractions of light in the metal, than anything wrong with her face. The lieutenant was in some ways very hard to upset, waving off a lot of worries that plagued other people. Maya did have a well-developed sense of empathy, though. It was why she volunteered for Project-E and posting at the Geofront.

Her cheeks bulged with air, holding for a second before letting out a sputtering breath. She _did _mind the trip. The Commander's office was in the surface shell of the Geofront, near the city-blocks. Central Dogma, down underneath the center of the city, was nearly a _kilometer _below. Maya's field was computer science, and even she could see some of the... issues, with the Geofront's layout. Half the Evangelion Cages were down on the surface level, hidden beneath the pyramid tower of Central Dogma. The other half were secured in the roof and connected to the launch rail system. They were tasked primarily with combat deployment.

So that all meant Maya had to go from Central Dogma, up one of the suspended railways, and then to another elevator that crawled along the top arc of the Geofront dome. It was a great view, but it added more than ten minutes to her total travel time. She did the math in her head and noted the elevator was moving extremely fast.

When she arrived at the Commander's Office, the door opened before she could even raise her hand to knock. "Enter."

Maya still was not afraid, but Ikari Gendo had a reputation. She stepped up to his desk, but did not take a seat. "Reporting as ordered, Commander."

"Lieutenant Ibuki," A report appeared on his desk, one she had completed a few days ago. She wasn't sure how to feel about only now being asked about it. "The situation last Sunday. It has been resolved?"

"As far as we are able to determine, sir." There were times she cursed her forever-bubbly, mousy voice. "Doctor Akagi has the possible infection secured on isolated storage. Pilots Ayanami and Sorhyu are secure and have recieved medical treatment. Sh-Pilot Ikari was instrumental in our success."

The wince did not show up on her face, but Maya felt it all the same. The Commander did not seem to notice or care. "As the reports say."

He closed the file and laced his fingers together over his mouth. Maya had no reason to be afraid, she had no skeletons in her closet and nothing ghoulish he could do to her. Ikari Gendo was a _hero_, albeit a terrible one. Even so, she felt a bead of sweat drip down the back of her neck. The Geofront outside grew brighter, up above, the collection mirrors angled to catch the afternoon sun, focusing it down fiber-optic lines into the cavern below.

"Your auxiliary MAGI interface was impressive, Lieutenant."

Maya blinked once. The compliment had come out of left field. "Thank you sir."

"I believe your talents are being underutilized. By the time you leave this office, your codeword clearance will be updated, and you will henceforth be in charge of MAGI operations."

The following silence dragged on, and Maya's tongue went dry in her mouth. "S-Sir?" The rest question was left unspoken.

"Doctor Akagi's responsibilities shall be adjusted, in keeping with NERV's upcoming change in procedure."

The young woman nodded stiffly. She did not, but decorum and training made her say it. "Yes sir, I understand." The commander dismissed her without a word or gesture, leaving Maya to turn smartly on one heel and walk out as quickly as politeness would allow.

Ibuki Maya was afraid of Ikari Gendo.

* * *

><p>Asuka Langley Sorhyu was a little over fourteen years old.<p>

She chose to think in German that morning, defaulting to the _proper_ way to order her names. Asuka had nothing against Japanese as a language, she found it stimulating and challenging. _Literacy _was another story. Asuka was all too aware of things like alternate character readings, and _kanji_. She rolled over on her stomach and groaned into her pillow. Sunlight played over her back and shoulders, and while it felt _very_ nice, it also was just too hot to sleep. Her good eye cracked open, staring balefully at the clock. It blinked 12:00.

Then she remembered; she hadn't bothered to set any clocks in the apartment.

Most of the past week had been spent eating and sleeping, and then Rei's welcome home party. If nothing else, Asuka was now a believer regarding Ikari's cooking. Now though, now something called Asuka to action. Everything was _still_ a half-unpacked mess. Open boxes were stacked on each others hung out in wrinkled heaps. Asuka no longer cared what time it was. She raised her arms above her head and stretched hugely, yawning. In the privacy of her own home, she saw no reason to get dressed. She did however plenty of reasons to do other things, like unpack.

Even with the donated furniture from Misato's apartment, Asuka was light on storage space. It wasn't to say her apartment lacked room, she had the whole thing to herself, but she lacked room within the rooms for all her things. She at least had hangars for all her dresses, stored away in the biggest closet she'd ever had. There was no TV, so no game console for a while. Misato had provided a vacuum cleaner, a mop, nearly everything else she needed to fend for herself.

Some hours later, Asuka was left with her apartment as unpacked as it could get. She slumped against one cool wall and let out a gusty sigh, more out of relief than any sort of exhaustion. Getting up and active had reminded Asuka of her normal routine. Now she did change her clothes, swapping for a pair of red sweatpants and and T-shirt. Training as a combat pilot meant knowing the forms inside and out of her Evangelion.

Holding one hand out out, she watched the play of muscles running down her forearm. Strong, toned, and supple. Asuka was sure there weren't any other high school girls Tokyo-3 with a body quite like hers. Her fingeres folded into a textbook-perfect fist Asuka let her hand slowly uncurl. Her instructors had made it abundantly clear; over-training now when she was so young would have hurt her progress in the long run. If she had been _older_, she would have had a soldier's conditioning, instead of an athlete's.

Asuka huffed and scooped up her keys, heading out and angling for the roof. It wasn't far: up a handful of flights and barely even a warm up. Stepping out onto the rooftop though, Asuka remembered something. She remembered it just as she saw the sheds, a beach umbrella, coolers and chairs. Misato had told her the roof wasn't always empty. A dark-skinned woman in a pantsuit and glasses watched from the lawn chairs. Another boy with sandy hair, no older than her, blinked behind dorky prescription glasses.

Ignoring them for the moment, Asuka gathered her hair up in a quick pony tail, pulling it off her neck. Some bangs escaped, and caught the mid-morning sun, flaring bright as fire. She marched up to the boy, sitting behind three tables loaded with who knew what. Her eye piece filled in the details. One was bits of bone, feathers, pens pencils and half-foot high stacks of notebooks. A chemistry set spread out across another table, supplemented by what looked like a _mortar and pestle_. The third looked like it had _breakfast_. A thermos full of coffee, flanked by a plate of donuts and sugar cubes.

Asuka suddenly remembered that she hadn't eaten anything all morning. Her priorities shifted accordingly. Information clogged her view, forcing her to turn the augmentation off. She watched her reflection grow in his glasses as she approached. Red spread out across the boy's cheeks.

He certainly remembered her though. "S-Sorhyu-san. "I heard you and Rei-san were in a training accident?"

She couldn't help preening, just a little. "Something like know my name, what's yours?"

The folding chair squeaked. Or maybe that was his voice. "A-Aida Kensuke, Sorhyu-san."

Swiping one of the sugar cubes, Asuka snorted. "And what are you doing up here, Aida-kun? Aren't you a little young for coffee? Does your mom know how much sugar you're sneaking?

Aida's face went ashen, rocking back in his chair. "My mom's- and those aren't-"

She knew something was wrong the second it touched her tongue, but it was too late. Asuka had already nudged the cube between her teeth and crunched down.

* * *

><p>Kensuke watched as the new girl sputtered and hissed. The redhead clutched at her throat, casting about for anything. A bathroom, a sink, she'd have settled for a garden hose right then. Deja watched from her post with a tiny smirk. She reached into her cooler and tossed the boy a bottle of water, who in turn offered it to Asuka. Doubled over, she glared at him through her bangs with one baleful eye. She snatched the bottle up with a snarl.<p>

Still, he couldn't completely stop the laugh. "...Those were salt cubes."

* * *

><p>Asuka did not do well with setbacks.<p>

Without privacy, she couldn't stretch or go through her routine. She just _knew_ Aida would gawk, and that was just _unacceptable_. A Half-dozen plans to get back on track ran through her mind, but she discarded them all for one reason. Even without the black suit jacket, Asuka could recognize a Section Two agent. At the same time she was slightly curious though, sneaking glances with her electronic eye. It was the first time she'd seen an agent in person, or someone with such dark skin. Racial lines had blurred a lot post-Impact, but NERV-Berlin had it's roots in western and eastern Europe.

Japan was and wasn't different. Asuka had arrived somewhat bemused, realizing she was taller than almost everyone her age by an inch or more. She _liked it_, but realized it was a mixed blessing. Her awareness wasn't perfect either, her tongue gave testament to that. She could still taste it, too, and it wasn't even good table salt. The question also remained: What did Aida need _cubes of salt _for?

The explanation came surprisingly easy.

"I was going to perform an experiment..." Aida turned to the agent, rolling one shoulder to point at Asuka. "Does she have clearance?"

The older woman didn't look up, instead wholly focused on brushing out the internal spaces of a handgun. Asuka had seen women examine their painted nails and manicured hands with less dedication.

Still, the agent answered. "Higher than yours. Knock yourself out."

With permission given, Kensuke opened his mouth, then closed it. He started and stopped a few more times, unaware or unconcerned with Asuka's rapidly dwindling patience. He pushed his glasses up before acting on his decision. He ducked away for a moment, finding a crate and digging around for a few moments, until he came back with a roll of string.

"Okay, for the salt cubes to make sense, we're going to have to start with the basics." He tossed the bundle to a flustered Asuka, who caught it easily. He waved her to follow while he started rooting around for something else.

Kensuke spoke over his shoulder, not quite looking up from his search. "What's that in your hand?"

Tonelessly, Asuka stared at the wound spool of fibers. "...String."

"Twine, to be exact." He followed that correction up with a short grunt, pulling out a heavy wooden frame about a yard wide and three tall.

It took Asuka a second to realize what it was. "...Why do you have a free-standing door and frame up on a roof?"

Planting the frame, the boy braced it in a nearby purpose-built stand. Kensuke looked up and adjusted his glasses once more. "For experiments like this one."

Asuka watched as Kensuke worked to set up the supposed experiment. On the second glance, she realized the door was incomplete, or modular. There were sections cut out of the side where knobs and deadbolts would go. Kensuke rummaged some more, mumbling under his breath and pausing to adjust his glasses. Nonplussed, Asuka waited. Not patiently, but at least quietly. When he was finished, Kensuke came back from another crate, carrying a door handle. It took a few seconds to mount it, and test the door.

Then Kensuke stepped back, suddenly all business and not a bit of hesitation. "Alright, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it right. Check the door to make sure it's in order."

It wasn't accurate to say she was at a loss, but Asuka had a sinking sensation, a sort of squirming dread. That feeling that everyone felt when egg was about to fall on their face. Still, she wasn't one to do things by half either. It was clear Aida was aiming for scientific rigor, something she could respect. She strode over to the door and frame and swung it open and closed. The fastenings looked good, and the lock action worked. Looking back at the boy, she realized he'd pulled out a pen and notepad.

The twine had been tossed aside at some point, leaving Kensuke to retrieve it. A pen knife cut a length apart, and then that one was cut in half. He handed one to the girl, while wrapping the other around his hands. "Try to break it, tear it apart."

Asuka felt her face twist up in that 'humor the crazy person' way, but did as instructed. The twine wasn't amazingly strong, coming apart after a few minutes effort. All these steps _had_ to be going somewhere, and suspense wasn't something Asuka liked being in. Tossing the torn twine aside, she started to tap her foot, expectant.

Hunching over, Kensuke held a hand in front of his face and winced. "Sorry, just, it'll make sense, I promise. We agree the twine can break, right?"

Nodding, Asuka let the boy continue, but the angle of her arms and tightly-folded fists made it very clear she could break his nerd body in half. Kensuke took it as a sign to hurry up. Bolting over to the door, Kensuke tied the twine around the knob facing Asuka. For a second she thought he'd anchor it to the frame, but no. Stepping around back, out of sight, he asked if she was ready.

"For what?"

Kensuke kicked the door open.

The separate section with the knob and bolt broke away from the main part of the door, and landed right at Asuka's feet. There was no helping it at that point, she stared at the lock, and then at the boy. He held up a hand, cutting off the imminent outburst. Dusting off the knob assembly, Kensuke handed it to her. "That was the control."

A few minutes later, Asuka was again watching the boy set up a door and frame. The 'kick test' as he called it was a one-off. He was sure the following test would've been fine the damaged door and handle, but he wanted to make sure she understood what was happening. That he wasn't lying or wasting her time. Offering her his plate of donuts had mollified her, somewhat.

So Kensuke set up a new door, and a new lock. He had her inspect it all once more, and she confirmed that yes, all the relevant variables were accounted for. The difference, and he invited her to watch and listen closely, was absolutely _insane_. He wrapped the knob in twine and _chanted_. A brief repeated sentence in a made-up language, exactly seven times. The boy admitted that he didn't know what the words meant; but they _worked_.

What he meant by 'worked', Asuka had no idea.

Inviting over to the untied side, Kensuke stated his hypothesis, and asked her to prove or disprove it. "For the next hour, that door is going to act like it's locked. I want you to open it by almost any means." He went on to say that attacking the frame itself was off limits, as that would defeat the test.

That left Asuka to turn her logic to the problem. The first test; the door had been unlocked, and Kensuke had kicked it open. He admitted going for the dramatic demonstration first, because he knew the door would give without hurting his leg. Asuka was confident in her strength and training, but kicking down a standard exterior door wasn't something she wanted to try first thing.

So, she examined it. The door was closed and refused to open. The knob only turned so far as it would if locked, but when she checked, she realized that particular handle _had_ no lock. She tried again, jiggling the handle, slamming her shoulder into the door itself, and so on. Aida had said 'any means', so she held out her hand meaningfully. It took him a few seconds, before nodding glumly and handing over his wallet. A school ID card would have made quick work of a simple bolt like the one before her, but nothing worked, short of kicking it down. Asuka looked up from the ruined frame and tried not to feel how much her leg stung.

A fifteen year old had locked a door with a bit of twine and some chanting.

* * *

><p>A few days later, a semi truck and trailer rolled into the parking lot of Misato's apartment. A black car pulled out of a nearby alley, then another. More men and women in sharp black suits appeared. Jackets were unbuttoned and hands drifted closer to holsters. Others pressed their fingers to low-profile earpiece radios.<p>

The papers and people were all in order.

* * *

><p>The question came in one brief rush. "Ikari Shinji, what the <em>hell<em> is going on here?"

The Third Child looked over from a thick stack of papers, attached to a beat up, old clipboard. Misato stared at her senior pilot-roommate and the slowly building pile of appliances, raw materials and mysterious odds and ends.. She knew he'd bought or built quite a few things over the past year, but this was the first time he'd dragged it fully _into her apartment_. Granted, she conveniently ignored the fact that she'd lived there _one day_ longer than he had. It was the principle of the thing.

Misato had only come home that morning to check on the kids and grab a quick shower. Finding half her front walkway dominated by _crates_ wasn't something she expected. There had been no sign of Rei or Asuka yet, either.

The boy didn't answer at first, so Misato tried again, softer this time. Coming up behind him, she peered around his arm. "Shinji, sweetie. What's going on?"

He smiled then, leaving her wondering if he knew just how dangerously cute he could be. Shinji offered her the clipboard, letting Misato look it over with a steadily rising eyebrow. Everything seemed fairly straight forward; receipts, work orders, fees for time and labor. Hardwood cabinet paneling, mixer, oven hood assembly...

She stopped for a moment and re-read one particular line, just to make sure. "Seriously? A kitchen sink?"

Shinji looked surprisingly calm, almost serene. He shrugged, still smiling. "You needed a better one."

Misato felt her eyes stretch even wider, but her voice fell flat. "Better."

Nodding, the boy pulled out a plastic-wrapped hunk of metal. A hunk of _stainless steel_. Misato knew sinks could get pretty fancy, but it was the first time she'd seen one with _three_ basins. She let the clipboard slip out of her hand and rattle against the table top. Padding back outside in her sock-clad feet, she took a closer look at the growing pile of crates and wrapped material. Slowly, she began to realize what was going on. More than a few of the boxes were_ taller than her. _

A few of the movers eyed her as they walked by, heading downstairs for more cargo. If she hadn't been so distracted, Misato would have eyed them right back. Instead she tried to get her mind to accept what her eyes were telling her. Misato slowly picked her way through the uneven stacks, lost and confused. Shinji followed her out a few moments later.

"A new refrigerator," Misato mumbled, tonelessly. It was nothing like her quirky door-and-drawer model. She pulled open the double doors and looked down to see a massive freezer bin. Slowly, she turned towards the teenager, face slack with disbelief. "Double wall oven, gas cooktop, sink, and... is that countertop _marble_?"

The boy smiled that same content smile, as if nothing could damage his calm. "I had this idea I wanted to try, and I got a good deal."

Part of her was happy, euphoric even. That warm sense of joy built up in her chest, but it was shot through with a freezing sort of panic. Misato's eyes went wide. "Good dea- How am I going to _pay _for all of this? How are we going to_ send it all back!?" _

Shinji held up his hands, laughing lightly. "I'm paying for it."

Reeling, Misato's shoulders dropped. She stood there, listless. "Wha? How?"

"The pilot salary trust fund. I talked to NERV accounting, they helped me set it all up." Shinji let out another short laugh, suddenly bashful. "I've uh, earned enough credits for an associates degree at Tokyo-2, so... not like I need to save."

Misato didn't recall how she cleared the distance so quickly, or how her arms ended up wrapped around the boy so tightly. Most embarrassingly, she was sure she would have remembered not to press his head into her chest like that. But even stooped over, Shinji made no complaint. Someone behind the pair pointedly cleared their throat.

Shinji sprang back upright, red-faced and left to stare ahead, blankly. His hair was mussed up on one side. Misato meanwhile twisted halfway, leaving her wrists hooked loosely around Shinji's neck and shoulders. She faced Asuka and Rei, blinking. "Where've you two been?"

"My place." Asuka inclined her head at the apartment next door. "Ikari told us about the delivery, and you were at NERV."

The redhead picked her way around the stacks, eying the foam and plastic wrapping with a distant sort of interest. Rei stood quietly near by with one hand on her improvised IV stand. The pilots and officer fell silent then, just for the moment. The giggling started with Misato, drawing Shinji back up into another, much softer hug. He joined in a beat later, and Misato felt his laughter in her bones.

* * *

><p>Eventually, everyone made their way back into Misato's apartment. Shinji had already spent most of the morning making space for the imminent remodel. There was still more to prepare, however. He busied himself moving sturdy furniture outside on the patio. His plan also meant he'd be working around the clock. Meanwhile, Misato stared at her old fridge, and wondered how she was going to eat during the rebuild.<p>

Asuka however came to the two girls had apparently talked about it earlier that morning. Asuka's apartment was almost completely empty and mostly unfurnished, and by her own admission, she only used two rooms. Shinji would stay in Misato's apartment during the remodel, and Asuka, Misato and Rei would stay next door. Misato all but teleported across the dining room, scooping the girls up in a massive hug. Asuka squirmed in Misato's grip, while Rei felt the air forced out of her lungs. Still, she smiled.

Misato pulled away, leaving the pair rumpled and winded as she turned to Shinji. "When do you plan on sleeping next?"

Shinji looked around, as if the walls would gauge his endurance. He shrugged. "In a couple days."

"If you get tired, don't hesitate to find me."

Red spread across his cheeks, but he smiled softly. "I know my limits, Misato."

* * *

><p>The rest of Misato's day at NERV was shot, but Shinji provided an excellent reason or excuse, depending. She would pay for it the next day, but for now, her crazy miss-matched family came first. Shinji may have been paying, but Misato endeared herself to the delivery crew with her patented smiles and cold drinks. She also happily noticed how the crew glanced at Shinji, envious.<p>

Thinking about it, Misato decided to have a little fun. She hummed pleasantly. "Are there any magazines that still do those 'most eligible bachelor' awards?"

She aimed the question more at Asuka, who was the most likely to know. Instead the girl seized up, choking off a tiny indignant squawk. Misato plowed ahead regardless, strutting across the kitchen to a silent and thoroughly nonplussed Shinji. She took his hand. Flashing him one of the best, most reassuring 'relax, have fun' smiles she could, Misato gave his hand a squeeze. Asuka and Rei watched with a scowl of offended propriety and wide-eyed undisguised curiosity, respectively.

With her free hand, Misato walked her fingers up Shinij's chest, humming into his neck. "I think we should find one. I should enter you."

Shinji stumbled back and away, thumping solidly against the wall. Misato still had her hand wrapped around his, and found herself pulled along and airborne. She had to admit, the few seconds of hang time felt pretty good. Crashing nose-first into her pilot's chest, less so. Falling and half-sliding, Misato braced for the landing. Shinji however reacted, looping one arm around her legs and holding firm. Asuka and Rei both stared, wide-eyed. Misato looked up and Shinji looked down, both blinking with wide eyes of their own.

Then the laughter burst out in earnest.

Shinji knelt and let Misato wriggle down to the floor. She knew she had to give the boy some space, but not before sneaking in one more honest hug. She looked up again with a tentative grin. "Too much?"

The mirth faded to a smile, leaving Shinji with his classic blush. "No, I'm fine."

Meanwhile, Asuka grumbled. "You're both making me sick."

* * *

><p>With the kitchen chairs outside on the patio, Misato instead sat cross-legged atop her dining room table, sipping idly at a cold beer. Rei and Asuka took over what clear space remained in the living room, huddled around a low table. 'Back to school' had been mentioned earlier. Misato had to at least <em>try<em> to be responsible, somewhat.

The delivery truck had been completely emptied by mid-morning. Between normal workday delays, and the mandatory security checks, there was still a great deal of raw material and un-assembled equipment left waiting in the parking lot. Supplies and appliances were only part of the order. About a third of the crates and boxes were tools of the trade for woodworking and the like. Those were destined for Shinji's workshop, supplementing the NERV-issue gear he already had.

To solve the immediate problem though, Shinji took it upon himself to haul the remaining goods upstairs, but both Misato and the Section Two detail had to remind him not to be so blatantly superhuman. In a way though it was worth it to see Asuka and agents gape at Shinji holding still-packed table saw over his head. Finally though, by lunch time, Shinji had finished hauling everything in. He didn't even look tired.

Misato raised her can to the second man of the house, smiling broadly. "You know Shinji, somewhere, someday, a lucky girl is going to just _ruin_ you."

All Shinji could do was swallow his tongue. Without looking up, Asuka fired back on his behalf. "You tried that already."

Squirming, Misato groaned._ "I said I was sorry!"_

Ignoring the girls for the moment, Shinji caught his breath. He looked at all the raw materials and boxed appliances, a kitchen waiting to be constructed. "I think I'd be the one to spoil you."

Silence reigned in the apartment. Even Rei looked up from her homework. A tiny, smug grin appeared on Asuka's face. Misato meanwhile gathered her jaw up, humming playfully.

"Alright, two things: Did you just shoot back? And," She fixed the boy with a blinding cheshire smile. "Is that a _challenge_?"

Asuka threw her hands up in the air and rolled to her feet. "And again, Katsuragi Misato has shed all pretense of responsible adulthood."

* * *

><p>Her kitchen was already tiny, but without some sort of plan, all the new installation would make it positively miniscule. Misato stared at the gleaming masses of stainless steel and piles of raw material. "...I'm gonna have more kitchen than dining room."<p>

Shinji started pacing around the space, thinking. The gold disc on his forehead gleamed. Holding up both hands, Shinji created a frame with his thumbs and forefingers.

"Yeah, I'm going to have to take out a wall."

* * *

><p>Rei wondered if being assertive always came with mixed fortunes.<p>

The parking garage attached to the apartment complex was empty, save for Misato's blue Renault and the fenced off section holding the dissasembled Skyline. There was no lock, and the steel link gate swung easily on new, oiled hinges. Her raised arm trembled, pale and weak from atrophy. Beauty was a concept she understood, but her own grasp of aesthetics, of beauty in her own life, was a new and untested thing. So was the idea that a _flaw_ could be seen as a positive embelishment.

She wondered again, as to what kind of people would admire her old and new flaws. After a few moments, Rei decided she would rather not meet such company.

Lifting a pencil and notepad seemed like a herculean effort, and directing her fingers to write was not much easier. Rei let the pencil and a sigh slip out, and she let her mind wander again. The construction of her thoughts were themselves new, in some ways cleaner than before. She thought with _words _instead of just concepts and images. Most recently, it had developed thanks to time spent with Asuka, and Rei's growing colleciton of finished books.

Fiction was rapidly becoming a useful tool and support in her life. Rei felt no shame in acknowledging that fact. She looked down at her arm and the IV shunt embedded in her vein. A month trapped in a survival situation gave her an insight towards resource management as well. The stabilizing solution made it easier to maintain hold on her identity, but also suppressed the more robust aspects of her body. Essentially, it was a neurochemical metronome keeping time to her sense of self.

_Liquid_ was not the most accurate term, but for all intents and purposes, her body lacked a certain solidity. While she knew the scientific and metaphysical terms for it, at that moment, Rei really did not care about being _accurate_. She could not make plans, lift engine parts, or tighten bolts. Ahead of her arrayed out on cardboard mats and folding tables was her first real hobby, and a step into a larger world. And something she might have to give up.

There were hardly any light fixtures in the concrete structure. Not surprising, but something he'd want to look into later. Shinji walked softly, quietly. Ahead, Rei sat in the midst of her car, lit by work lights and standing lamps. The fenced off section created a garage within a garage. He joined her without really thinking about it, crossing into that space which defined 'together'. Shinji smiled slightly at his own thoughts, even as he played with a random car part. Koans and philosophy had taken up his interest like little else. Construction, math, engineering, everything else just felt so _easy_, by comparison.

He was there for Rei, however, not introspection. Shinji hadn't remembered when he stopped thinking of her as 'Ayanami', or adding the polite honorific. He did however feel a rightness about it, an unspoken permission. Rei herself had offered him the same courtesy, but greeted him with her customary 'Ikari-kun'. It had proven rather easy to just pick up their awkward friendship, despite the subjective month-long gap.

Shinji hefted the piece of car to eye level, realizing it was piston cylinder. "I wanted to ask you some things. Permission." This is," he waved at the corners of the parking garage. "Is all your space."

Rei just tilted her head and faced him. Her stares used to be unnerving, but Shinji had long since gotten used to them. "I was hoping I could move my workshop down here. It's more private, and..."

Trailing off, he realized she probably didn't need to hear all the particulars. Rei continued to hold silent, leaving Shinji to gather his thoughts. "If you're also interested, I could build a proper garage down here. For you and Misato, I mean."

She could have hugged him then, but that was not really her way. Months ago, during the battle, she hadn't known why people were happy, how to express it.

Now she did, and her smile could glow. "I would like that, thank you."

* * *

><p>With her approval, Shinji's mood changed visibly. He did that often presenting different, strong or weak faces to the world. Rei tried to memorize expressions, of her friends, of anyone she met. While Rei couldn't always <em>identify<em> his moods, she could almost always tell when they shifted. His hesitation dropped away, leaving a gleeful sort of purpose. Rei had realized a long time ago that Shinji _thrived_ on goals. Goals were power, to Ikari Shinji.

He also had some experience reading _her_ expressions. Whatever long, well-wrought plans he had thankfully stayed in his head. Instead he kept it simple. "I'd need to do some research, but I'll get it done. Eventually."

Shinji sat down next to her with a rueful huff. "I wish I had more things to talk about. Not just... Myself. The stuff I can do." His lips quirked up in a mirthless, wan smile. "All I do is talk about doing, or actually doing it."

"I don't mind."

Still, by unspoken agreement they let the conversation end. Talking, speaking, both teenagers had their fill of it for different reasons. Their guardian-landlord had no appreciation for calm and quiet, however. Misato filled the air with sound and affection, trying to be supportive and largely succeeding. Rei meanwhile had been targeted for friendship by one Sorhyu Asuka Langely.

The piston was still in Shinji's hand. He hooked a fingertip through the hole at one end and let it swing, barely feeling the weight. His brow furrowed, and Shinji demanded understanding. Rei glanced up at him, and the mark over his forehead.

Shinji let out a weak laugh. "Just curious. I could... Nevermind."

Rei turned to face the dissassembled car, and more silence followed. The boy set aside the piece of metal and tried to idle, to will himself calm. Thirty seconds later, his foot started bouncing. Rei continued to be pleasantly quiet and unobtrusive. He knew not to be fooled by her passivity. Rei had shed true apathy almost utterly. Left with nothing to do, Shinji fidgeted. His foot kept on bouncing, and without realizing, Shinji cupped his hands and started tapping his fingertips together.

Sneaking a glance sidelong, Shinji tried to suppress a sigh. He was more or less successful, making not obvious motion. The air inside the parking lot was cool and somewhat dusty, but less of a house and more of rock. Late-winter sunlight had little hope of heating the structure either. Just with that glance, and an innate, absolute certainty, Shinji built a comprehensive picture of Rei in his mind.

He stopped fidgeting. There was still something missing, some part of the picture that remained incomplete. But what he had told him enough. Turning to Rei, he broke the comfortable silence. "I know what's wrong with you. The symptoms, at least."

She did not really freeze. Rei had assumed he knew, expected. Some small part of her twitched at the casual breach of privacy. It was difficult to be angry though, considering his ease of insight. Turning, she looked at Shinji right in the eye and waited. He did not waste any time.

"Your cells are falling apart, all over your body. They're not even _dying_, Rei, they just... _forgot_" He waved at his arm, as if that would explain something. "Forgot how to stay intact and just _melted_. That makes no sense and-"

His arms dropped to his sides and he slumped, exhaling harshly. Shinji's head hung forward and bowed, and his shoulders were slack. He did not look up to ask his question. "Why won't you let me help you? Why won't you _tell _me?"

Rei was silent, and stayed that way for what felt like a very long time. It came down to _help_, and she had to do her part as well. "Because... I believe you would be better off not knowing."

Shinji never considered himself particularly brave or gallant. For the longest time, there hadn't been anyone in his life willing to care about his wellbeing. Moreover, he hadn't realized that until he came to Tokyo-3. He felt his jaw drop and eyes go wide, and his voice rose with disbelief, in fits and starts. "You want to _protect _me? From _what_?"

Now Rei looked away. Her fingers curled up into the fabric of her skirt, but her voice was clear and unaffected. "Words cannot be taken back. Knowledge cannot be unlearned. I believe this is true here."

"You think I can't handle it? That I won't understand?" Shinji stood up, towering over the girl. He didn't even remember moving. "Rei, two weeks ago I figured out how to program the MAGI and then helped write a whole knew language for it. It used math I hadn't even _heard of_. It used _human brains_ for personality imprinting! How can I _not_ understand something?"

Rei looked up at him. Her red eyes were bright and _angry_. "First, do no harm."

Shinji faltered, stumbling back a half step. He tried to get a question out, but Rei cut him off. "The Hippocratic Oath."

The boy visibly soured, almost turning green. He slumped back into his seat, deflated and morose. "I know. I never actually swore any oath. And I'm not a licensed medical practitoner."

There needed to be a moment, to let tempers cool. Rei forced it by refusing to continue, waiting for the right moment. Even when Shinji had loomed above her, Rei had not been afraid. Not yet, at least. She refused to entertain that thought any more.

Instead, she spoke softly. "It's not fair to solve everyone's problems, even if you can."

Something poorly understood told Rei to reach out and lay her hand over his. Shinji twitched, ticklish, but did not shy away either. Rei took it as a compliment beyond measure.

"If you are not aware, I can fly." Rei glanced at him sidelong, when Shinji blinked. There wasn't a lot to be said about that. Still, Shinji could not stop one of his eyebrows from arching high.

"Sometimes." She qualified. "What I mean is, I had to remember not to fly everywhere. To do so was... Irresponsible."

She did not go into detail, and Shinji did not press for answers. It was a trick the Commander had used, offering something in exchange for a temporary advantage. Her insides squirmed heavily, but she could not place the feeling, and she felt pluse in her neck speed up without cause.

Deciding to think about the manipulation later, Rei continued. "You have... agency." She groped for the word, and for a better explaination. Tilting her head towards the car, she used it and her permit as an example. "I have volition, I can choose where to go, and when. You can choose when to heal, but..."

Shinji sagged further in his seat, listless. His hands clenched and unclenched, and they both watched the muscles in his forearms move accordingly. "I just... I want to help. Asuka said no, _you_ said no. Misato _can't_ say no, but she's easy!"

Shinji blinked once, as did Rei.

"...I didn't mean it like that."

* * *

><p>Ryoji Kaji had been in Japan for less than a month, and he already needed a vacation. He felt like pair of heavy, burning weights had settled deep inside his neck and shoulders. A stress reaction, and one he was intimately familiar with. Long, exhausting days reviewing records made him feel all thirty one of his years. Granted, he did not have <em>permission <em>to see _every_ report, but lack of clearance did not mean lack of access. A tired grin spread across his face. It hadn't been all fun and games, he had to admit. Paperwork only got one so far, and human intelligence was far more interesting.

It was a perfectly benign statistically anomaly, that every member of NERV he interviewed happened to be young, cute, and female. Kaji had a reputation to maintain, after all.

Stopping at the door of his apartment, Kaji went through his normal routine. officially, he had never been trained as a spy, agent, operative or anything like that. Instead, Kaji had no small amount of experience, and a particularly wide streak of luck. He checked the tracks and gap between the frame and door for tool marks. Satisfied, he breezed on it. The apartment itself was cold and dark, almost completely devoid of furniture. Of the two chairs he owned, the least comfortable was calling to him, as it was closer. Still, he pushed on; work never ceased.

Twenty minutes later, he found two new listening devices, and set them aside for later. Kaji shuffled into his bedroom, not even bothering to turn the blinds. He dropped onto his futon and shut his eyes.

"Impressive, inspector."

The gun was out from under the pillow and drawn at the second syllable. Sunset orange flooded the bedroom with the blinds cutting out long slices of black. Half in light and half in shadow stood Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki. The old man seemed utterly unconcerned about the gun Kaji pointed at his heart. Thinking about it, Kaji decided he _really_ didn't want to shoot the Sub-Commander. The gun stayed in place, however.

Still unconcerned, Fuyutsuki stepped into the bedroom, shaking his head. "Bullets without gunpowder, Inspector. I must admit I'm curious as to how as well, but that's not very important."

Kaji stared, first at the old man, then at his weapon. Swinging his arm to one side, he squeezed the trigger. There was no loud bang, and Kaji had to admit it was a little impressive how Fuyutsuki didn't twitch. He set the gun down and sat up in his bed, sighing.

Rubbing his eyes, Kaji looked up at the officer. "So to what do I owe the privilege, Professor, a house call at this hour?"

Fuyutsuki smiled that particular smile. The one that old men learned when they confronted younger people with their experience. He flicked his hand up, and Kaji watched the old man toss and catch the two bugs from earlier. "In a very short time, I assume you plan on reporting your findings. You have quite a few masters, Inspector, and you tend to tell them different things."

Catching the bugs one last time, Fuyutsuki framed them between his fingers. Kaji made a note to never play cards with the man, ever. "I have a request, if you don't mind. One that comes from me, and _not_ Commander Ikari."

Kaji shook his hair loose and started to gather it back up, holding the tie in his mouth. He spoke past his teeth. "Listening."

"I'll make sure these don't show up in your apartment." Fuyutsuki offered, tossing the bugs once more, but then amended slightly. "Or show up less often."

Nodding, Kaji finished pulling his hair back, waiting. Fuyutsuki continued, still smiling. "I would ask you wait to file anything, with the UN or the committee. If you _must_ send something, make an excuse for whatever you lack."

Standing up, The Sub-Commander tossed Kaji the pair of devices, turning easily on one heel. Fuyutsuki was halfway out the bedroom door when he looked over his shoulder. "If you need plausible cause for a delay, I would be happy to see you incarcerated for subverting Geofront security."

* * *

><p>Fortunately for Shinji, Rei had not commented on his slip. Instead tried to explain Asuka, and herself, and how Shinji could offer too much.<p>

"Asuka remains a skeptic." She had said. It made sense too, sort of.

The conversation drifted from that point, and Rei found herself describing her time in the MAGI. Neither girl had really talked about their experiences in the simulation. Rei watched Shinji hang on her every word, and for a moment, saw his father. Not because they were related, but more the misdirection. Shinji was interested in her experiences, to the point of distraction. It occurred to her then, that she had no reason, or even a _way_ to be dishonest with herself. She could chose when to speak and when to remain silent, but she could never _not_ _think_. The girl knew she was both helping her friend, and protecting herself.

When her story had finished, The two teenagers fell silent. Shinji's stomach rumbled. "...Lunch time."

Rising, the boy swept dust from his pant legs, before offering his hand to Rei. When they both stood tall in the garage, the pair did not move. They looked around at the piles of assorted car parts and crumpled paneling.

Shinji had not let go of her hand however. He held on, gently. "Rei... I still want to help."

She didn't answer, not with words at least. She made a sound, but moved before Shinji could reply. He followed before she needed to tug him along, towards the disassembled engine. It wasn't a perfect metaphor, but her free hand crept up to her chest and felt her heartbeat. The IV twinged, but she ignored it.

"I have secrets, Ikari-kun." She spoke to the machine first, before turning to face him. "But I have an idea, and you can help."

When he nodded, she pointed him towards the engine, then twisted to pull the drip bag off the stand. Some part of Shinji _hated_ the fact that she knew how to handle it so casually. Rei pressed the pouch into his hands.

He held it up and willed light out, squinting at the thin, yellow fluid. "...What is this stuff?"

The _look _he got in response banished all doubts in his mind; Rei was both teenager, and a girl. "Necessary for my continued existence. I require a better delivery mechanism."

He whispered the last two words, mulling it over. He carefully weighed the bag of medicine in one hand and snuck more glances at the girl.

"I can't just..." He looked over at her and made a face, and would have gestured, if not for both hands being occupied. "Magic it back to rightness?"

"I will respect your desire to help, if you respect my privacy."

Blinking, Shinji agreed, but not before wondering what she meant by _privacy_. Rei used to walk around the apartment naked, before Misato explained a few things. He hooked the back on the stand and made sure there weren't any air bubbles or kinks in the line. Her reasons made a certain sort of sense, a 'people' sense... And Shinji realized he honestly just did not get people, even Rei. Especially Rei.

Still, he had a direction to go in, and that made all the difference. Rei guided his attention back to the engine, and started to explain. "I require a device, better than this." she ran her hand up the converted lamp body.

Shinji scratched his head, frowning. "They make those, they're called infusion pumps, I'm not sure why Ritsuko-sensei didn't use one..."

"I am unsure as well, but I know they won't work. I want a better one."

"Better." The word stuck in his head like few others. He'd used it a lot in the recent past. Better was _easy_ for him, but this was... "Rei, that's... I've never done anything like that. You're asking me to what, design a better infusion pump?"

Her smile was tiny, and growing more and more iconic to her. "Correct. Construction, clothing, cooking. Now precision engineering." The smile grew a bit wider, and she gave his hand a squeeze. "Two weeks ago, you learned how to program the MAGI, and then helped develop an entirely new language, or am I mistaken?"

Shinji stared, gaped even. Rei had grown a second head, or swaths of new personality. At that point he wasn't sure which. Something cracked in his chest, a little cough that broke into a full on burst of laughter. "You're right, you're right. I... I just want things to be easy, for everyone."

"Not everything should be easy, Ikari-kun."

"I know, just..." He kicked his toe at the pavement. "I'll see what I can do."

Shinji's stomach growled again.

* * *

><p>Saneda Ayumi had been born in the year 2000, inside a half-ruined hospital, in mainland China.<p>

She was too young to remember that country, or to remember the half-year of war, just after Second Impact. The Valentine's day treaty had been signed before she began to crawl. Ayumi, like an entire generation of children, grew up without television, books or a thriving entertainment culture. At that point, Japan was nearly uninhabited, save for the sturdy few who clung to the highest hills and mountains.

Ayumi was rare as well, for she had a surviving grand-parent; her mother's mother. One time when Ayumi was ten, she had asked the old woman while they walked through Tokyo-2 how different the world was. Grandma had looked around at the paved, even street lined with shops and bright signage, and the crowds of people along the sidewalks. She had to admit, not much had changed.

That question, and the subsequent conversation stuck with Ayumi long enough to become a bit of trivia that hung around at the edge of her mind. Stuck in enough to make her ask a few questions. Her teachers had one pointed out something she hadn't even realized. Ayumi's first response had been to _ask_. Why became obvious with a little thought. There were no libraries anymore, not really. They had to explain to her the phase 'look something up', and how it had fallen out of use. Only national archives, guarded from flood and looting. Books were rare, and the open, free internet had died, leaving a faint memory in the minds of people, and the still-working remnants of global communication.

Earth and mankind had suffered an apocalypse, a true worldwide disaster. All the stories, her parents said, ended with humans dying out, or pushing to the stars, but rebuilding? It never happened, not really. But Ayumi walked to school six days a week, every morning, in a city of gleaming steel and glass. The cars were electric, instead of gas. People had jobs, government made sure money had value, and wild plants grew in the unreclaimed countryside. A lot of the world _had_ been lost to Impact, but it still all ended with a teenage girl in Japan, going to school.

Dozens of students milled about the courtyards and pathways leading to the main school building. The athletes vaulted the retractable bollards at every gate, before being gently nudged back in line for the metal detectors. Some kids smiled at the men and women in sharp black suits, others shied away from the sign of obvious authority. Transferees or teenagers with immigrant parents brought in their own unique tempers.

The vast majority of the student body grinned and bore the inconvenience. Security was worth it, and most of them had chosen to forget _why_ it was so necessary. The terrorist invasion had happened barely two months ago. Some of them _hadn't_ forgotten, or why. A few boys and girls would perk up and watch as Saneda Ayumi passed by. They had nothing against her directly, but she was part of the Pilot's clique, a pilot's _girlfriend,_ and that made her _interesting_.

Schools all over the planet, all throughout history had celebrities, most of the time it was through simple charisma and exposure. Other times deeds made them local legends. Tokyo-3 Municipal High had known Rei was an Evangelion pilot for _years_, before the Angels even started attacking. But for the longest time, Rei never did anything of note, other than be aloof. Shinji on the other hand, had arrived on the heels of the first assault of an alien invader, and gossip _adored_ coincidences. Especially when they weren't.

Envy was part of school life as well. A few boys coveted her as a catch, comparing themselves to Shinji. Girls on the other hand gaped at the audacity, of climbing the mountain to snare _the_ prize. A few were brazen enough to comment directly, ranging from friendly teasing to almost wrathful.

If some students were jealous, others held pity for the pilots. Whenever they ran into Shinji or Rei in the halls, they would smile, offer a kind word. Those who were there, at the last minutes of the kidnapping, had the most extreme reaction. Shinji had stood for them, _fought_. He stepped out into smoke and gunfire, stronger, closer and more real than any hero real or imagined. The amazing spectacle, the lights and superhuman action, they weren't sure if they could believe it. Maybe it had been a stress reaction. Whatever it had been, it was a secret, and one those kids planned to keep.

But at the same time, those teenagers hadn't just seen Shinji fight. They had seen him _kill_.

There were people in that school who remembered that, and remembered it well. Some knew it was terrible, having to take a life. They knew because of their mothers and fathers in the police or military, or those who worked in NERV. Others wondered why he, or the other pilots were even _allowed _to attend classes. A _killer_ sat next to them, taking lessons. He had _shredded metal_ with his bare hands. There were rumors that Ayanami was an alien, and could _fly_. The most rational of the dissenters couldn't call Shinji a murderer anymore than they could say so of Toji. Still, it weighed on them.

Ayumi passed by another girl in the hall during lunch, a Nanba Kasumi. Neither of them knew each other very well, though from where Kasumi stood, Ayumi was effectively part of canon. She wasn't _really_, though. Shinto didn't work that way for one. Kasumi's order had shifted, its membership ebbed and flowed in response to the vandalism, weeks ago. Some were more devout, others shied away, realizing how serious things were getting. For many it was a sort of modern make believe, a diversion. Some were asking questions Kasumi couldn't answer, or the answers she came up with scared even her.

Ikari Shinji was _special_, there were no doubts of that. He had saved lives and killed. He brought the sun down to base earth, and the last time anything like that had happened, it had been in the myths of ancient Japan, through Amaterasu. What could be more awesome and terrifying, a powerful young man, or a young god? No one had said he needed to be _nice_.

No one had said he needed to be _good._

* * *

><p>A few days later, Misato rounded up her three charges. "Shinji, Asuka, Rei-chan? A word?"<p>

The move over to Asuka's apartment had been slow, moving forward in fits and starts. Misato and Asuka both procrastinated to a level that left even Shinji a little bit upset. He had been working the whole time, preparing Misato's kitchen for remodelling. Rei dealt with good days and bad days, trying to strike a balance between her IV drip and daily life. Shinji _did_ end up treating her, in a limited fashion. He restored the strength to her limbs, but the underlying cause continued to baffle him.

Still, each time he examined Rei, he gained just a bit more insight as to her condition.

Finally though, the kids trooped into the living room, taking seats around the relocated table. Rei was last, having to move her drip stand around stacks of construction materials.

Misato sat cross-legged atop the table, leaning back and braced with extended arms. _This_, she thought. _Is going to suck._ "So, you've all missed about three weeks of school."

Asuka was the first to react, planting one elbow on the table. "Seriously? We spent a month trapped in the MAGI, we might have an _Angel _locked in the Geofront, and who knows what's coming? You want us to go back to school?" She threw her hands up on the last point, incredulous.

"Firstly," Misato started ticking points off on her fingers. "You were in the test plugs for about fifty hours, not a month. Secondly, that's classified, so even if _you_ know, don't talk about it here!"

Huffing, Asuka dropped back in her seat. Stupid confidentality. Secrets had a way of getting out, better to be honest about things. She was sure any resulting panic would have been short lived. Misato was one to talk too, considering she blabbed about Third having superpowers last month.

Misato was still going, however. She ticked off the last point, before fixing the three kids with a look. "Thirdly, you all need to get back to normality."

That threw the pilots for a loop, for different reasons. They all rocked back on their metaphorical heels, trying to reconcile their lives with _normal_. Even setting aside their status as Children, they couldn't do it, couldn't fit themsleves into that category. Normal could not hold a child-prodigy and self-styled warrior scholar, a magic-powered super-teen, and an bio-engineered young girl.

Misato blanched, for the moment wondering if that had been the wrong choice of words. There was nothing to be done though, so she plowed ahead. It came down to an age old wisdom, one Misato got from her parents, every other responsible adult she could remember. Routines were what kept you going when life went crazy. Pushing for that was part of her job as an authority figure. Of course, Misato had realized not too long ago that she _wasn't_ responsible, and only _looked_ like an adult. Her eyes slid over to Shinji for a moment, before sighing.

"I'm not worried about your grades, not really." Misato pulled out a handful of computer disks, marked with the pilots' names, and subsequently tossed them aside. Threats weren't going to do her any good, probably wouldn't ever. Instead she tried to lay out her reasoning.

"I mean, Shinji's a straight-A student, but he has the thing." Misato waved at her forehead. Shinji and Rei both nodded immediatley, but it took Asuka a second to remember the gold disc. "I honestly just want him spending time out of house."

The woman stopped for a moment, and looked past her kids to the stacks upon stacks of boxes and uninstalled appliances. "...Spending time not _building_ the house."

She turned back to Asuka, who had started to sound disturbingly like a whistling tea kettle. Misato unconciously slid back an inch or two. She held a hand up, apologetic. "I know, I know! University graduate, with honors, leading mind in your field. But spending too much time cooped up here still isn't good for you either."

Misato shrugged then, as if to say 'what can you do?' The explaination seemed to mollify the redhead, thankfully. The other Children weren't the type to make a big deal out of it. Shinji was naturally studious, but Misato could tell he'd have rather stayed home, working.

Slumping forward, Misato let her head fall into her hands, groaning. "Uuuugh. Sometimes I wish you three were actual soldiers. Then I could just order you to do it, for your own good."

Asuka snorted, the the eyepatch made her glare even more intense. "Why don't you? You're our guardian and commanding officer, aren't you?"

Misato looked up from her palms and stared into Asuka's one good eye. "Because asking nicely is going to work. Because it's the right way."

The redhead reared back slightly, slightly nonplussed. She looked to her left and right, hoping Shinji or Rei would speak up. They didn't, leaving Asuka to argue alone. The urge to spit fire built up in her chest right alongside a certain niggling, squirming feeling. Asuka wanted to gnash her teeth, but the logic had already taken hold. The tension in her neck drained out alongside a petulant, resigned sigh.

"_Fine_, we'll go back to school."

* * *

><p>Deep inside the Geofront, below Central Dogma and the test cages, there was a secure vault. It was designed to isolate volatile samples and potential vectors of contamination. To achieve that end, most sub systems were compartmentalized, like air circulation, power and water. The few semi-permanent connections to the greater Geofront area could be cut and locked off with armored plates. Similar precautions were in place for emergency pilot care and post-combat surgery.<p>

The vault in question had never been activated, until then. No Angel remains had been recovered thus far, and nor had any pilots come close to risking contamination. Ritsuko never expected to use anything like it. She knew more than most, exactly _what_ NERV was fighting. The facility was not secret, only remote. Ritsuko all but stalked through the empty corridors with a cigarette in her mouth. She cupped her hands around a lighter and took one long drag. _Fighting to reach our dying moment_.

Research and development had ground to a halt, leaving the scientist with an incredible excess of time. That, for good or ill, had been broken up by various crises. Left alone and with the great engine of NERV put on idle, Ritsuko was _bored_. Investigations into Thaumaturgy remained viable, though breakthroughs were slow and fitful. The rituals all felt so arbitrary, most of the time, and asked for the strangest of things. One particular recipe called for 'pure water', after Shinji translated the concept. The problem wasn't getting the water, it took Ritsuko three tries to find the right permutation, but the requirement still bothered her.

She ran her ID badge through the main lock and waited for the system to cycle. Water. Pure water. Why, Ritsuko could not honestly say. She leaned forward and thumped her forehead against the door frame once, twice. Nothing in her experience or education really prepared her for any of this. Pure water... The damn ritual asked for _pure water_. Shinji said as much, translating as best he could from half-understood concepts. Ritsuko's head started to hurt, but not due to the pounding. Humans built stories out of their experiences, they made myths to explain their natural world. And even myths had their own logic.

Ritsuko was going to scream, however, if anything required _eye of newt_.

Finally the exterior door opened. Inside, she walked through narrow hallways and past angled windows, looking down into another chamber. That particular room had been refit recently, with other facilities having donated their own equipment to the cause. There weren't any fine lines of a well-made lab. Instead the vault was cluttered, but not. She tossed her spent cigarette aside and opened the last interior door. Unlike all the others, that one had a mechanical lock, wholly dependant on muscle power.

Inside, the final, secure room was almost all bare concrete, aside from floor to ceiling static protection, and hastily installed. Ritsuko made a point to take off her simple heels, padding out barefoot onto the silicone mats. Signal security was paramount, to the point of denying every conductive point of contact or reception with the rest of the Geofront. That included ground access for electrical discharge. A 'dumb' capacitor system in the floor and walls protected the sensitive equipment inside. The nearest phone terminal was two doors away.

Being primarily a neurologist, Ritsuko did not know _precisely_how the fault security worked. The kinds of electricity she dealt with lay a different field after all. She didn't know the math and specific resistances of all the materials beneath her feet. She did however understand it as a man-made 'path of least resistance'.

A lot of effort went into making sure _information_ could not be transmitted, by any form of broadcast or wire interface. Along one wall locked in Faraday cages, were disassembled computer parts, intended for future testing. None of those precautions were there to protect the Geofront. That they _did_ was merely a fringe benefit. Inside that secure chamber was a potential, exotic superweapon, something that could subvert the strongest computer systems in the world.

In the center of that room was Ritsuko's new favorite plaything: the extra MAGI brain Maya had cobbled together. A single insulated chair waited for her.

She sat down and spun once, before sliding up to the console and screen. "So, what secrets do you hold, friend Angel computer?"

* * *

><p>Hikari was the first to greet them.<p>

The pig-tailed girl had thrown her arms around both Shinji and Rei, as soon as they had reached the school grounds. When he had first arrived, Hikari was an inch _taller_ than Shinji. Now she half-dangled with her feet more than a foot off the ground, hanging from his shoulders by one arm. Asuka watched as the girl chattered, somehow with perfect diction and unintelligible speed. She asked how they were doing, where had they been, they had missed so much work. Hikari cut herself off with a gasp, when she finally noticed the IV drip leading into Rei's arm.

Then she turned to Asuka, and saw her apparent lack of an eye. Asuka had to admit though, the concern was pretty impressive. She'd been at school for maybe a _week_ before the accident. Hardly enough time for anyone to really care about her. Hikari pressed her hands together and half-bowed, looking up at Asuka through her eyelashes. She asked what had happened.

A small crowd had built up around the pilots, and suddenly, everyone hung on Asuka's word. "It was just a training accident."

Rei had come equipped with an official note, excusing her from most physical activity. None of the teachers would have called it into question though, not when they could plainly see the drip bag. Unfortunately, that note also kept her out of the classes she _enjoyed_. Bookwork and the like stopped being interesting to her several months ago, mostly due to her early upbringing. Rei knew psychology and other sciences of the mind far more than she did high-school history and math. It _bored her_, she realized, and Rei wondered if that was how Asuka or Shinji felt every day.

Her hangers on had retreated a little, to a safe distance at least. Part of the reason for that, was that the pilots had missed White Day. When Rei had realized that, she breathed a slow sigh of relief. She had _no idea_ how to respond, or even if she should have. She looked over at Shinji, and could tell he was relieved as well. Kensuke lapped up the attention, somehow having cultivated a near fan club in the past few weeks. Meanwhile Suzuhara Toji was visibly torn between Hikari, who hovered nearby, and acted as a buffer between him and his school celebrity status. He was the only person visibly marked by the school attack, with a scar drawn across his cheekbone. Without a visible reminder, everyone else seemed to take a half step back out of sight.

Well, perhaps not everyone. Asuka had already started as an exotic foreigner. Rei found the girl's hair difficult to look at, she understood why different was _interesting_. From her seat in the classroom, Rei watched as more students crowded around the Second Child, questions about her absence, and her new piece of black eyewear.

Class was about to start, and there had been no sign of their teacher. Hikari, for all her bluster and lung capacity, could not reign in the crowd that day. All _morning_ the kids crowded around Asuka, and for once she was the center of attention. At that moment though, she wanted to scream. Boys and girls would jostle in line, suddenly curious about the prosthetic. It _was_ stylish, Asuka had to admit, but there were limits to her patience.

She shot up out of her seat and slammed her palms down against the desk, whirling on the seventh person who asked the same question: "How did you lose your eye?" Asuka had half a mind right then to lift the patch and show them all her fully intact blue eyes. The left eye still _moved_ too, the muscles weren't damaged after all. Instead she twisted out from her desk and towered over the boy. An impressive feat, considering Asuka reached up to just about five feet tall.

Asuka leaned in towards the questioner, her nose almost touching his. "I did _not_ lose an eye." The black matte plastic on the side of her face seemed to stretch out forever in all directions. The boy quailed where he stood, and Asuka licked her lips, leering. "_This, _however, lets me _see your fear."_

Something snapped, and the choking tension burned away in an instant. Asuka was suddenly all sunshine and smiles, without a hint of frustration or fury. She dropped gracefully back into her seat, before looking up at her poleaxed audience.

"Any other questions?"

Then the door opened, and nothing further was said. The new teacher of Class 2-A had arrived.

An older man entered the classroom, with a fine leather briefcase dangling from one hand. His suit was charcoal grey, and to a lot of students, achingly familiar. He seemed much livelier than their previous teacher, who had so far enjoyed several weeks of retirement. The newcomer was taller, with broad shoulders, a thin face, and a lion-like crest of thinning grey hair atop his scalp. Asuka didn't recognize him immediately, but Shinji and Rei did.

The old man smiled warmly, turning to write his name on the board. "I am Professor Emeritus Fuyutsuki Kozou, PhD of Theoretical Metaphysical Biology, and I am here to teach you for the remainder of your high school curriculum ."

Shinji very nearly fell out of his chair. "S-Sub-commander!?"

The older man winced, but only just. "Yes, Pilot Ikari?"

While not displeased, Shinji could barely find the words to even ask the question. He pushed himself back into his seat, smiling and sweating. "You... What? How?"

The rest of the class was utterly silent, waiting to see what would happen next. Asuka, for once, had nothing to say.

Fuyutsuki just shrugged. "The school board was in need of an accredited teacher, and I believe I am sufficiently qualified. I think it would serve us all if I were here, both to keep a closer eye on you Pilots..." He glanced at Asuka, and the girl shrank in her seat, now suddenly realizing just who this man was. "...And to use my time to educate all of you on... Well, everything!"

He held up a hand to forestall any questions, Kensuke was practically salivating. "Pilot Ikari has unfortunately broken several NERV confidentiality agreements... As did Pilot Sorhyu... So I will have to explain; I am not only a former professor of Tokyo-2 University, I am also part of NERV, serving as second-in-command."

Now having fully introduced himself, the old man, now teacher, walked around his desk. He flipped open the lesson planner with one finger, before planting both hands on either side of it. "So, class. What have you covered so far?"

* * *

><p>Between all the recent upheavals, and the general expectation of Angel attacks, school life in Tokyo-3 was rather ad-hoc. When the current generation started, they followed the traditional pattern of students being organized into a single class, staying together year to year. They switched teachers and subjects from period to period.<p>

When Fuyutsuki became their teacher, he brought with him a unfathomable amount of clout, and an undeniable _presence._ Few minded the prestigious academic and his unique teaching style. He organized Class 2-A into it's own university format, seminar-style course. Fuyutsuki would teach all subjects, and he was confident his various certifications made him well suited to teaching all the required material. It seemed to mollify the various citizen dissenters, having a NERV offiical on site and in control

That first day was largely one of question and answer, an orientation process. He had the full day with them, aside from lunch and physical education. Fuyutsuki hoped to engage his new students as best he could, learning their names and what they had covered so far. Children, teenagers, ranged the gamut from studious and attentive, to largely disinterested. Asuka in particular was almost twitchy, having never done well with authority in any form, let alone an actual intellectual superior.

Still, Fuyutsuki was an old hand at teaching, though most of his pupils had been in their early to late twenties, attempting their post-graduate studies.

When the topic of the day meandered around to Second Impact, Fuyutsuki was struck numb. To most student in that class, it was a _joke_. A story their last teacher told at length without fail. He was sure the anecdote had been interesting or useful the first time, but not the hundredth or more. His hands were somewhat tied, but Fuyutsuki could not let that misunderstanding hold.

He stepped away from his desk and started firing off questions, leading ones. Asuka was the first to notice, knowing more about the _real_ Second Impact than possibly Shinji. Rei watched silently from her seat, as the second-in-command at NERV pushed his new students to be curious.

It started small, with bits of trivia that quite a few people knew, but hardly anyone had spoken of in a full discussion. The Cicada that plauged Japan for more than a decade were one such thing. Their seasonal life cycle had been disrupted, and suddenly their breeding conditions occured all year round. Only the coldest months in the still-warm winters of Japan were silent.

Then a student mentioned that any planetary impact event capable of altering the Earth's axis would also be one that should have destroyed the planet anyway. Fuyutsuki called the girl up to the front of the class and declared her one of the next Great Minds of her was absolutely correct, he went on to say, pointing out myriad other inconsistencies that man and science had yet to explain. The impact forces were just one example.

Once, there was a species of sightless salamander, having long since lost its eyes to natural selection. Somehow, after Second Impact, those amphibians regained sight, but lost their sense of hearing, baffling biologists the world over. Not just by the apparent switch, but the speed in which they adapted. Years, less than a decade. Migratory birds and fish either succumbed, dying out as their instinctual patterns were upset, or finding new paths to flourish. The world lost nearly as many species of life in the past fifteen years, as it had in the past hundred. But at the same time, dozens more surged out to replace them, almost out of nowhere.

Technology had shifted as well, regressed in some areas, advanced in others. Fuyutsuki had told them about the heyday of the Internet, and the dot-com bubble that had burst in the face of Second Impact. He had to stop for a moment, to explain what 'dot-com' meant as well. Biological research, including genetic engineering however, had taken off post-Impact, spearheaded by think tanks like GEHRIN. Most of the crop-produce the world ate today had been created in those labs.

Now the class buzzed with questions, enough that they started looking for themselves. Laptops were pulled open, and smaller cliques formed around topics of debate.

Through it all, an old man basked. He missed teaching so very much.

* * *

><p>"So, Misato was right. We <em>did <em>need to get out of the house."

After school, Asuka and Rei had pushed deeper into downtown Tokyo-3. Despite the fortress city being _a fotress_, it still thrived as a metropolitan center. It had good blocks and bad blocks, some with glitzy neon signs and new youth culture. Others were more staid or trendy, with malls and boutique shopping. And some parts of the city were dark, inclined to crime and violence.

The redhead had all but bullied a Section Two agent into finding them a car and driver, as the city mass transit wouldn't have handled Rei's IV drip very well. Flanked by a pair of Section Two heavies, Asuka and Rei stood outside an arcade. The same arcade Misato had brought Rei to, nearly two months ago. It hadn't changed much.

Asuka _beamed_, striding up to the windows. "Nothing like this back in Germany. There were some in America, but they all served alcohol. I couldn't get in."

After school, the arcade was packed with kids and teenagers. Asuka stood still for a moment, adjusting her prosthetic. First to shut off the augmentation, and second, to make it play nice with the game screens. A few patrons from Tokyo-3 Municipal recognized the girls and gave them a wide berth. Some from Asuka's display that morning, and some who noted Rei's drip stand. Asuka hooked her fingers around Rei's wrist, tugging her deeper into the arcade. She had stop and remind herself though, to let other girl set the pace.

Rei's memory of the place was dim at best, but Asuka seemed able to navigate by some unknown sense. Asuka's head swiveled left and right, before zeroing in on a particular row of machines. Attached to the wide screens were steering wheels in the style of high-performance cars, as well as cushy seats. Asuka had found a racing game.

Asuka stood proudly, with her fists planted on her hips. She looked down at Rei, but smiled, fierce and playful. "So, as pilots we're equally matched."

The girls took their seats and took in the controls. The consoles, stick and wheel were molded from garish plastic and foam, and while not bad, it felt nothing like the real thing. Rei decided to not let it bother her. Asuka meanwhile leaned forward and stretched, lacing her hands together and extending her arms straight out in front. Her back arched, and a crackling series of pops almost drowned out the attract demo.

Unlacing her fingers, Asuka looked over at Rei with a fiery smile. "And here we have a unique opportunity to settle that score." She pointed at the paired cabinet screens, ready and waiting for head-to-head competition. Asuka planned to teach her a lesson, or several. Rei nodded once, and pulled her NERV card out to pay.

Nonchalant, Asuka settled back in her seat, practically oozing a sense of smug self-assurance. She reached out and tugged at the controls. They were sticky, and made an awful, ugly sound. "I think you should feel right at home."

"Perhaps." Rei blinked, and hummed thoughtfully. That must be what people meant by 'trash talk'. _Fascinating. _

Asuka continued to crack wise while Rei checked to make sure her IV wouldn't get in the way. Their NERV cards had been swiped, and the screens confirmed their supply of credits. Rei let her hands hover over the wheel and shifter, but Asuka stopped her with a happy, teasing purr.

She looked up to see Asuka's smirk grow even wider. "I think we could make this a little more interesting. Loser buys winner lunch."

Rei cocked her head, letting her bangs and ponytail drape over that side. "Wouldn't some people find it suspicious, for two young girls to be eating alone together?"

The cocky attitude vanished in an instant. Asuka lost her grip on the steering wheel, along with all the color in her face. A second later, her cheeks went from pale to burning incandescent. "No one would see it like that!"

Thinking back, Rei felt her lips curl up into an almost imperceptible grin. "We should establish a contest underlying the meal, to maintain appearances. Whoever is treated the most wins."

Asuka's voice went high and shrill, mortified. High enough that other players nearby stopped see what was going on. "Wh-What are you talking about? What has Misato been teaching you?"

Rei couldn't say precisely _why_, but the thought of Asuka's impending sputter brought a tiny smile to her face. She glanced sidelong at Asuka, holding the other girl's eye while one hand drop onto the shifter while the other took the wheel, thumbing the start button and initiating the race.

She held Asuka's attention for that critical half-second, long enough for Rei to try her first tiny, experimental smirk. "Flirtation."

* * *

><p>The new cabinets <em>had<em> to be custom made. Anything else was unacceptable.

Misato's apartment was empty save for Shinji, his tools and materials. Drop cloth and plastic sheeting spread out all over, from the kitchen into the living room. The table saw he set up out on the patio. Shinji pushed a length of wood into the spinning blade, and saw that his cut was clean and true. More raw lumber waited nearby, stacked up three feet or higher. He designed, and then he measured, checking everything against the blueprints at his side and in his head.

And along with every cut, Shinji counted each breath.

One, two, three, four, in time with his slow, steady heartbeat. He inhaled and held, feeding another board into the machine. Pulling the cut halves apart, he exhaled. There was a sense of something, or a sense of no sense. A new quality in the air and world around him. Shinji had only recently started thinking about it, wondering about that pervasive element. He could not see it, touch it or taste it, but he felt it all the same. When he had first Exalted, he had been jittery, humming with some lingering charge. Back then he thought it'd been nerves, or lingering shock. Now he knew better.

He held up the latest cut and blew away the sawdust. The boards would need sanding, to reach the tolerances he required.

Shinji had gained something, more than just height, resilience, or magic. His perception had changed, taking in a whole new layer of existence. It moved whenever he took a breath, and _thrummed_ when he called upon his powers. Before, he had described some of his powers as opening a door, unlocking a potential wellspring of arete and prowess. Those were his simplest expressions of will, a step above his most instinctual tricks. Past that, his techniques grew more formalized, predictable and logical. A logic Shinji did not yet fully understand.

He finished cutting boards hours after school, well into the late afternoon. Each piece of wood he put to blade told him more of its nature. If some things were doors, other things were paths. He felt... _direction_, a place his power wanted to go. It lead to inspiration, and insight into a larger world. There was a gap in his understanding...

The doorbell rang.

Stacks of lumber, uncut marble, and boxed appliances made it somewhat challenging to reach the door. Shinji weaved past every obstacle, and hit the door control just before the third ring. Ayumi stood just outside, pert and smiling broadly. Her hand hovered over the bell console. Shinji smiled back, but couldn't keep the surprise off his face or out of his voice. His girlfriend stepped inside and took off her shoes, but hesitated when she saw the plastic covering the floor. The pair backed their way out of the entrance and into the hallway, but stopped at the edge of the dining room.

He scratched the back of his head, wracking his mind for excuses. A way to pardon the mess, but Ayumi was too fast for him, and too curious. "I thought you lived with someone, from NERV. And what are you doing?"

"Misato-san is next door.,.. Uhm..." He waved at the shared wall between Asuka's apartment and Misato's. "Remodelling."

Ayumi leaned to the side and peered around him, past Shinji's arms and into the dining room and kitchen. Both of her eyebrows arched high. All the furniture had been moved elsewhere, and she saw that sawdust was starting to spread into the living room.

She looked back at Shinji, "Oh, what else did you have planned tonight?"

"Uh... I was going to..." Trailing off, Shinji waved again, this time at the tools and materials.

He had no idea how to explain without babbling. Then Shinji realized he'd been waving with both arms, one towards the neighboring apartment, and the other at the construction. He'd been blocking her from getting past the whole time. Shinji felt his throat tighten up, and red move into his cheeks. Finally, he dropped his arms and sighed.

Ayumi just smiled, unconcerned. She looked around the apartment one last time, before turning back to Shinji. "So nothing then... You can come with me! To dinner."

Shinji gave the construction one last pleading glance. It wasn't like he was under any particular time pressure, and he wasn't going to sleep that night. He still had to be mindful of noise though... Ayumi stuck out her hand and waited, rocking lightly on her heels and toes.

She understood, and he was glad they could meet eachother halfway. Shinji took her hand with a slow, small smile. "...Okay sure."

* * *

><p>Asuka slapped at the wheel, turning hand over hand and struggling to get back on track. Her car ground into the side rail, throwing out a long tail sparks and the most awful metal-on-metal sound. She wanted to glare, to turn and unleash the full and uncompromising <em>indignation<em>. But Asuka couldn't even spare a glance, not when the race was that close. She kept her eyes on the screen and seethed. It was against the law, a crime against all mankind, morality and ethics. There was no justice in the world, and she was trailing Rei by two seconds.

She still managed to shriek, however, high and incredulous. "You can't_ say that _with a _straight face!"_

Blinking, Rei shifted smoothly to take an upcoming turn. A computer driver snuck up on the left side, forcing her to drop back and giving Asuka the chance to recover. The Second Child took the lead, and Rei felt new wave of hot adrenaline wash through her limbs. It was not really driving, or really even a car, but it was close enough.

And besides, she had discovered a _lever_."I am not sure why. I was only-"

Biting off a curse, Asuka cut Rei off and stomped on the gas. The whole game cabinet rattled, and two boys walking by rapidly changed course. "No! Not now! Not to me, _not in public!"_

"I was only inquiring as to-"

"No!"

"But-"

Asuka snarled, part flustered, and part trying not to _laugh_. Rei had to pick _now_ of all times to stumble on to _double entendre_. The redhead wheeled around one last turn and slumped in her seat. Both player cars crossed the finish line and ranked in the middle, high enough to advance onto the next track. The girls had enough time to catch their breath. Asuka even allowed herself the luxury of pushing her hair out of her eyes.

Rei looked over at the redhead. "Are you-"

Asuka raised one finger. "_Not_. A word."

Macho, technopop synth Music kicked back in, signaling start of the next track demo. The game panned over the upcoming course, weaving through the turns and showing off bleachers full of digital fans. Asuka and Rei wiped their palms on their skirts, before laying them back on the wheels and sticks. Both had worked hard to get to that point, burning through credits with wins and losses. They'd even earned a small audience, but only the bravest souls remained after hearing Asuka.

The last of the previous race's endorphine high dropped off, leaving the pair with a cool sort of calm. They were _combat pilots_, they lived, breathed and ate high-stress situations. At least that was what Asuka believed. She drummed her fingers against the wheel, aiming to stay meanwhile wiggled the gear shift, testing. Someone put their foot on the gas, and their car rumbled in response. The pre race countdown flashed on screen, and engines started to rev up, higher and higher. Timing was everything, for that critical opening surge of acceleration.

Asuka started glaring once the race queens stepped out onto the track. "...Wouldn't be caught dead in a skirt that short."

When the countdown hit five, Rei looked over at Asuka out the corner of her eye. "I am having fun, Asuka-san."

At zero, they hit the gas and tore out of the blocks. Asuka couldn't stop the smirk, and honestly didn't care to try. "Yeah, me too."

* * *

><p>The pilots and Misato lived well outside of downtown Tokyo-3. Far enough away that they had to take the train every morning to get to school. Rei used to live in the city itself, but those apartments had been demolished once their last tenant had left. In the middle of evening rush hour, the trains heading into the city were empty.<p>

Shinji and Ayumi were alone in a train car, sitting together and comfortably close. Or comfortably distant, depending on who you asked. His hand practically engulfed hers, and Shinji had to admit, he liked it. Sometimes though, it was harder than it sounded. There was a sort of prickling tingle every time someone got close to him, some in his skin, and the rest inside. The feeling slowed Shinji down, made him question himself.

Ayumi rubbed her thumb against his knuckles, and Shinji decided to stop thinking so much.

At night, Tokyo-3 was a different place. LED signs and advertisements flooded the streets. In the daytime, alleyways and the fortress structures were safe and utilitarian. After dark, the shadows seemed to reach out for everyone. Late winter was cold in Hakone, but Shinji barely felt it through his shirt and slacks. Ayumi curled around his arm with a smile.

The pair wandered along the main roads, washed out in bright lights from storefronts and restaurants. Shinji towered over his girlfriend by a bit less than two feet, and he had to take short steps, compared to her. Their mismatched heights drew a few stares from passerby, but little else. There were other differences as well. The boy could hear cars and people across the block, or behind walls and in the apartments above. The shampoo Ayumi used that morning lingered slightly, and was enough to cut through the less savory city smells.

A twenty-four hour cafe caught their eye. Shinji eyed the sign and figured it was more accurately a _bistro_, in how it was set up and run. The place was also upscale, or about as upscale as it could get while running all day and night. Ayumi tugged him towards an outdoor table, and a waiter appeared at their side a moment later. Noodle bowls dominated the menu, and service was quick.

While they ate, Shinji tried not to think about the quality. His perspective was hopelessly biased and there was too much salt and he was rambling in his head. He chewed, and his arm stopped in mid-air. The next mouthful hung on the end of his chopsticks. Broth dripped back into the bowl, and ripples cascaded all around the bits of beef and vegetable. He stared straight past his girlfriend and everything else, lost in thought.

There was a pattern all around him almost imperceptible. Or maybe it was patterns upon patterns. Shinji couldn't _see_, though. The closest sense he had was _taste_, but not with his tongue. Instead he took in the flavor with his lungs, every time he drew breath. Shinji felt it there first, and then in his heart, as if that were his source of consciousness. Potential soaked itself into every chair, table and chopstick.

Sitting across from him, Ayumi blinked and reached across the table to poke his hand. Her smile was audible. "See something interesting, Shinji-kun?"

Shinji felt his attention snap back, almost painfully. Interesting? His eyes locked onto hers for a second, before dropping down to her lips, the smile, and then back up. _Crap_. Don't panic. Misato always said panicking was bad and he'd become suddenly too aware of his limbs- like the hand holding the food. Shinji very carefully lowered the chopsticks, and sweat broke out along the back of his neck.

He groped for a compliment, something. "Ah... You're pretty, Ayumi-chan. A... different kind of pretty."

The girl just cocked her head to one side, unabashedly curious. Drat, now he'd have to elaborate. "I uh... I live with Misato-san. And then Ayanami and Sorhyu-san moved in..." Shinji hemmed and hawed some more, waving his hand back towards his home. "They all belong on magazines, and it _terrifies_ me."

"I mean, it doesn't seem real, like I'm living in a dream that looks good but is going to turn bad. No that's not right..." He frowned, and belatedly, Shinji realized he started rambling. Once his tongue got going, there was no stopping it.

Red crawled up his neck and into his face, all the way to his forehead. Beetroot, he kept talking. "You're... Normal? Special because you're normal? Normal because you're special? When you smile, it's just a smile. It's honest and cute and just..."

Shinji trailed off, and the silence stretched out between them for a very long time. Even the sounds of other patrons and the clinking ceramic seemed muted.

"That was stupid. I'm stupid. I think I'll go pull a bridge down on myself." Shinji slumped in his chair then pitched forward, dropping head first into the table. Every bowl and plate bounced around by an inch or more. He mumbled past the surface. "It's okay, I'd survive it. I just need to be alone under several tons of rock right now."

Wide-eyed, Ayumi just gaped at her boyfriend for a long moment. Then her shoulders started to shake, and the giggling began in earnest. She pressed both hands against her mouth, trying to stifle it, but failing miserably. The laughter died off when she looked up and saw the edges of all-consuming mortification take over his face.

"I uh... Shinji-kun... Uhm..." Ayumi's hands stayed at her lips, but now she worried her fingertips.

Stammering some more, she fidgeted in her seat, wiggling side to side and at a total loss. She had no idea what to do. Finally, Ayumi decided that when in doubt, err on the side of cute. She reached over the table to tap Shinji on the head. Once, twice, three times.

When he looked up, she smiled and said. "C'mon, your food's getting cold."

* * *

><p>The walk back to the station was short, and more than a little awkward. Shinji wanted very little other than to be <em>somewhere else<em>. He couldn't just _run_ though, she was his girlfriend and that meant something. Responsibility. He'd messed up badly, and now he had to fix it. Preferably in a way that let him escape without further making an ass of himself.

Ayumi meanwhile was making that anything but easy. She wrapped herself around his arm once more, and leveraged her own shorter strides to keep him from running. A small part of the boy considered cutting his losses and roof-hopping away. Desperation pointed out that he'd done so only once before. Still, it wasn't all bad for Shinji, he could almost feel her concern.

Standing on the platform, the pair waited for the next train. Shinij had no where to hide and no excuse, and he tried very hard not to pull away.

"Shinji-kun," Ayumi saved him the trouble and let go, but not before grabbing onto his sleeve. He shifted, more by reflex than anything, and she follow. Ayumi stepped around to face him, looking up and up. "Shinji! Just, wait a second, okay?"

She took his hand and gave it a squeeze, while her other hand reached up to his chest. She looked down at her feet, but Shinji had no trouble hearing her. "I'm sorry I laughed, earlier. I shouldn't have. I mean it was funny, but I didn't realize."

A train shot by on one of the other lines, and a surge of wind pulled at their clothes. Shinji stood unmoved, but looked down at the girl. "Ah... You didn't do anything wrong."

"Neither did you. Well..." Ayumi thumped her head against his chest, and her hair hid most of her smile. "It's usually never a good idea to compare your girlfriend to prettier women."

Shinji let out a weak laugh, rubbing the back of his head. He half-swallowed the 'okay', before continuing. "I'll ke-ummphh!"

From that point on, Shinji vowed to never underestimate how high a girl could jump. He also would consider himself lucky if he managed to remember how to get home.

* * *

><p>It came down to the last credit. The track had been selected and the girls knew the stakes; loser buys dinner. Asuka was confident, and pleased in a way she couldn't fully put into words. She saw Rei's reflection in the other screen and her intent to win. But that mirthful glint paled compared to Asuka's fiery eye. The starting light flashed, and the cars raced out of the blocks. Split-second reversals, expert maneuvering and sheer blind luck decided the outcome.<p>

Asuka declared herself victorious, and was subsequently kicked out of the arcade.

Out on the sidewalk, Asuka tugged at her rumpled uniform. They didn't have to _shove_. Rei joined her a few moments later, carrying her IV stand. The drip bag was empty, and Asuka watched Rei pull out the needle, but she couldn't remember the name of the tube still stuck in her arm. A black car came around the corner and rolled up alongside the girls. An agent stepped out, silently demanding the medical refuse. The bare stand went in the trunk, while Rei handed the needle and bag over. Disposing of everything like that wasn't the _proper_ thing to do, but it worked. The car pulled back into traffic, and let the girls return to normality.

"You going be okay without that?" Asuka jerked her thumb at the retreating vehicle. Rei just nodded, confident that she could go for an hour or two without constant infusion. With her concern satisfied, Asuka switched back to a blinding, expectant grin. Rei had no trouble taking the hint.

"I have lost. Do you chose where we eat?" Rei waited for Asuka's confirmation before continuing. "I do not eat meat."

Triumphant and practically oozing smugness, Asuka spun on one heel and started to strut. Tossing her hair over her shoulder with a smirk, she laughed. "Not a problem. You better keep up though, 'cause you're buying!"

It took almost no time to find find a suitable restaurant. Asuka could accept Rei not liking meat, but she wasn't going to pass up a chance to indulge in some high quality beef. Then Asuka stopped and realized Rei was _infecting her_. She forced the red from her face and adjusted her train of thought. No euphemisms, just good, savory food.

The barbeque place they found proved to be _excellent,_ with a specialty grilled kebabs. Asuka rocked side to side, taking in the smells and menu. She couldn't see any veggie platters, but Asuka was sure Rei could handle herself, and settle the bill. Twisting, Asuka all but floated along, high on victory. She made her way deeper into the restaurant, ready to find a seat.

Rei joined her a few minutes later, carrying two plates full of skewers. Asuka dove in with a gleeful squeal.

Without anyone she cared about watching, Asuka relaxed, slightly. She enjoyed her skewer with her elbows on the table, sitting across from Rei. The table and seats were high enough up that her toes dangled up off the floor. It felt like _normal_, for the first time in nearly two, three months. It seemed like everyone in Japan ate their food cold, and had heated beverages instead. That didn't work for her though, not one bit. She wanted hot food and cold drinks, her proud German heritage demanded it!

Lost in her own cultural hype, it took Asuka a moment to realize Rei was staring at her. She blinked, and spoke past her last bite. "What?"

Rei began pulling off bits of beef, pork and chicken from her skewers, leaving her with grilled vegtables. She held up a rebuilt kebab and was about to take a bite, but stopped. Instead Rei glanced down at the extra plate, then back at Asuka. "As the winner, you may have my meat."

For a moment, Asuka stopped thinking. It was fortunate that she had already swallowed. "T-This has- I want nothing to do with your meat!"

Everyone in the restaurant froze in mid-bite, and conversation crashed utterly. All eyes turned to the girls and stared. Asuka's face _burned_, growing more and more red until it matched her hair, then went past it into beetroot. The redhead twisted in her seat and _snarled_, fixing all present with a glare. Slowly, One by one, all the other patrons went back to minding their own business.

Asuka turned and refocused her glare on Rei. "Stop. Hitting. On. _Me."_

"I have not touched you." Rei tilted her head to one side, visibly confused. She raised her arms and glanced between them. "Would you prefer I use my hands?"

Asuka gaped at her, slowly flushing red. She... she had _not _just said that.

"As far as I understand, this is a date." Rei began to tick points off on her fingers, laying out everything that lead to her conclusion. "We are both of the age that dating is the most common form of courtship. We are sitting across from each other, participating in banter. One of us is paying for the meal."

"We are both attractive, and I am under the impression that girls our age are open to experimentation." She paused and counted her fingers again. "At least, this is what I am led to believe, from my limited experience."

Asuka could only mumble the word 'experience'. The rest left her reeling. It was hard to hold the miscommunication against her, she hadn't even been raised by wolves. It was worse than that. Rei had been raised by _no one_, and then she had been socialized by _Misato_. She had to remind herself that there were things Rei _didn't know_.

It took her a few seconds, but when forced on her back foot, Asuka always came back swinging. Her petty frustration gave way to righteous anger. Asuka snarled again. "Gonna have to punch someone."

When Rei looked up, Asuka shook her head. "Not you, someone back at NERV, for why you're... being you. You're talking like a textbook again too."

"I see." Rei let her hand fall back to the table, and offered an extremely subtle, helpless shrug. "If this is not a date, and we are not courting each other, what are we?"

A question! She could handle questions. Grabbing her glass of soda, Asuka skipped the straw and drank deep, making a point to chew on some ice to buy time. Rei waited patiently, though she did not blink once. When Asuka's glass hit the table, she had an answer.

"What are you, stupid?" Asuka gave the other girl a sympathetic, if slightly disbelieving smirk. "We're friends!"

* * *

><p>The following morning, Katsuragi Misato woke up the same way she always did; slowly, and with great reluctance.<p>

Pen-Pen had elected to stay with Shinji during the remodel, leaving the girls free to spread out through Asuka's apartment. Any other time, Misato would have insisted Rei stay with her. The girl needed a steady supply of affection, as far as she was concerned. Unfortunately, the drug Ritsuko prescribed was necessary, forever. Rei could get by a couple hours without it, but sleeping was out of the question. So that meant Rei had her own room, and a bed made from a converted lounge chair. Her IV stand had been returned the previous evening.

Her hopes for an impromptu slumber party had been dashed, but Misato was not one to give up so easily. She could bide her time.

Asuka shuffled out of her bedroom just as Misato turned into the hall towards the bath. Bed-headed and bedraggled, the Second Child squinted past her bangs. A quick round of _jan-ken-pon_ decided who got first shower. Rei was still asleep, and neither pilot nor officer had any reason to wake her.

Saturday was normally a half-school day, but NERV demanded the pilots for testing, and briefing on a new initiative. After her own shower, Asuka stood towel-clad in her bedroom, frowning at her closet. She almost reached for her uniform, but stopped at the last minute. She wanted to feel _nice_. Her hand moved to the right and pulled out one of her most treasured possessions.

Something about the dress made her think back to the day she bought it, and what Kaji had said to her. Even now, Asuka couldn't help but laugh at the memory of his accented English. She hung the yellow sundress on her closet door and spun on one heel, already feeling better.

She still had no idea what he meant by _Marilyn Monroe_, though.

By the time their hair was dry, Asuka's stomach started to growl. Shinji was like clockwork, up all night and at the stove every morning at five or six. Misato stepped out of her bedroom wearing her own iconic black dress and uniform jacket. Asuka appeared a few seconds later, pulling her hair back into her headset. She'd already put on her eye patch. They both glanced at the hallway leading out, then at Rei's bedroom door.

Misato tapped her beret against her thigh, smiling softly. "I'll let her sleep in."

Asuka nodded and headed for the door. "We'll save some for her."

Together, the pair slowly made their way next door. Misato did so because she hated to interrupt Shinji while he was cooking. Asuka followed, more bemused than anything. Misato punched in her code, and the door slid open without a sound. For the past few days, the hallway had been the only space in the apartment free of construction. That hadn't changed. Something else had.

Misato pointed over Asuka's shoulder, whispering. "Huh. He really did take out a wall."

Ahead, the hallway utility closet had been torn out. A new, freshly painted wall stood in its place. Misato wasn't a construction expert by any means, but something about it didn't _quite _add up. They both heard Shinji inside talking to himself, and caught the edges of his sunlight aura. The glow spilled into the hall and probably lit rest of the apartment. Misato's driving glasses cut through the worst of the glare. Asuka just covered her good eye and set the patch to filter.

Then, the smell of breakfast hit.

Looking down at Asuka, Misato shrugged. "Maybe he installed the cooktop early?"

The redhead had no answer. After what felt like hours, Asuka and Misato finally entered the half-finished kitchen. Shinji _had_ installed the cooktop. Along most of the cabinetry, the marble counter top, and the refrigerator. Cardboard, Plastic sheeting and drop cloths were heaped up in corners and edges, and there were still things waiting to be completed or installed.

Misato had forgotten to take off her shoes, and her low boot heels made a new, unfamiliar sound. She looked down. Yep, Shinji had redone the floor as well.

The boy had his back turned, bent over the wide griddle and gas burners. Wreathed in gold and wire traceries, the halo of arms spun through the air. Asuka and Misato only saw the display in small slices, like flickering impressions of a hand or fingers. Asuka was the first to notice something else was off. She tugged on Misato's sleeve and pointed at one counter, practically overflowing with cold food. Flour, powdered sugar and syrup spread out in spills or drying clumps.

"French toast." Shinji's hands blurred, and the corona flared brighter. "...Done."

A plate of finished, hot breakfast pastry appeared, and was all but tossed onto the stack of food. Asuka's mouth started to water. Shinji didn't seem to notice. "Fried eggs and bacon... "

Misato wasn't so caught up in the moment. She reached through the glow. "Shinji-kun?"

Spinning, Shinji blinked. His apron, arms and pants were smeared with raw batter and dough. Raw bacon clung to his hand, while in his other he held a pair of eggs. One slipped and shattered against the floor.

He looked down, then snapped back up to his guardian, wild-eyed. "I'llcleanitup!"

At that moment all Misato wanted to do was hug him, but well, he was _a mess_. Still, she put a hand on his cheek and smiled, feeling him relax. "Shinji... What's going on?"

"And where'd you get all this food!?" Asuka stood on tiptoes, caught between getting away from the mess, or trying to find something edible. Her stomach growled again, and she fought off the blush.

"Ah, twenty-four-hour grocer... nevermind." Shinji scratched the back of his head, but stopped and realized that hand had held the bacon. He sighed and let his hand drop. "I learned a new trick. Technique."

"Technique." Asuka echoed. She huffed impatiently.

Misato winced, shrugging and letting her jacket collar rise up on her neck. "We never got around to explaining that part. He does things like old kung fu masters."

Meanwhile Shinji grabbed a mostly clean dishrag and wiped his hands off, and his arms and head. He was stalling, and almost seemed to vibrate, caught between crippling shame, and something else. Like showing off a report card. His attitude made Asuka want to gnash her teeth. The boy tossed the rag away when he couldn't delay any further.

"I figured it out last night. I was working on the cabinets, the table saw?" At their nod, he continued. "Well, I was cutting boards, cutting and cutting... And then when I was about halfway through, I realized I wasn't using the saw."

Shinji pointed at everything in the kitchen. Again, the whole room was nearly half-assembled, half-_complete_. The wall Shinji had knocked down and rebuilt wasn't a placeholder or in progress, but finished. The floors were done, as were the cabinets, and there was no sign of any new plumbing or electrical work. Most of the kitchen was seamless. The only other problem was the mess. Shinji sighed again.

"I did all that. I cut wood with my bare hands. I drove nails and turned screws. Drywall, insulation, paint. Yesterday, everything would have taken me about two weeks." He leaned against the last clean part of the counter, visibly exhausted. "I did all that in one night."

Asuka spun slowly, taking everything in. "A night. Ten hours or so, and you did all this?"

Shinji nodded. Right then, Misato very much wanted to sit down. She trusted every new wall and counter implicitly, but she did not trust what might have been on it. Misato smiled though, both to remind him she wasn't angry, and because she was happy. It did a good job of masking her concern too. He'd gone into fugues before, focusing on some project or other until who knew when. Asuka meanwhile hovered between some flavor of fury, and stubborn skepticism.

Fidgeting, Shinji turned back to the counter. "Look, I'll prove it. Scrambled eggs."

Grabbing three eggs, Shinji fanned them out between the fingers of one hand. He held the other out to Misato and Asuka, palm forward and bare. A silent pulse of gold fire coated his arm up to the elbow. He flicked his wrist and tossed the eggs up, while his burning hand swept an arc through the air. The eggs hung motionless in mid air, and the shells burned away.

The yolks and white fell, and he struck once more. Time seemed to slow as raw egg skipped across his flattened palm. Shinji twisted at the hip, and just as quickly a plate from the counter was in his hand, neither had thought or cared to look. When his arms came to a rest, Shinji showed the girls a plate of perfectly cooked scrambled eggs.

Asuka glared for a long minute. "Oh that is just _bullshit_."

* * *

><p>After that morning, the trip to NERV was uneventful. Asuka and Rei had claimed the back seat of her car and talked, quietly. Shinji meanwhile sat upfront, and had spent most of the trip staring out the window, lost in thought. It suited him, as far as Misato was concerned, but she sometimes wished he had nicer things to worry about. Or simpler things.<p>

True to his word, Shinji had cleaned the kitchen. Misato had wondered out loud if he knew a 'fast cleaning palm' technique, but his frazzled look told her 'no'. He told her then that he was tired, in a way he couldn't fully explain. She believed him, but Asuka remained suspicious. Once Rei had woken up and gotten ready, the pilots and officer headed out.

Now, Misato sat in the control room of a test cage, alone save for Ritsuko and Lieutenant Ibuki. Ritsuko was happy; the head of Project E had _lots_ of tests planned that day, and the first one happened to be a synchronization check. Quite a few people had expected Asuka or Rei to balk, but they were using the actual Evangelions this time. The redhead trusted her machine implicitly. Rei was usually just too detached to feel fear. Shinji's only complaint was fitting through the plug hatch.

Tests were boring though, and Misato rarely let opportunities to have fun at Ritsuko's expense go by quietly. She leaned back in her chair and sing-songed. "Guess who broke the laws of physics this morning."

The blonde woman squinted at the monitor. "I'm listening."

Misato laid her her head down on the monitor and looked up at Ritsuko with big eyes and a bigger grin. "Shinji made breakfast, with his _hands_."

Ritsuko blinked, turning to stare at her friend. "... That's the usual method, yes?"

"No I mean, _only _his hands!" Misato sat up and waved her arms, smiling even wider.

Blinking again, Ritsuko's eyebrow arched high. "Well... good, you'd have something to worry about otherwise."

The lieutenant slumped in her seat, defeated.

While Misato's chances for a cheap laugh died, Shinji had been called back to the control room. His score hovered stubbornly at forty-six, and no amount of adjustment got a better ratio. That worked out just fine for Ritsuko though, as she had something else for him to do. He stepped in a few minutes later, still in his plugsuit and with a towel draped across his shoulders. Ritsuko slid over in her rolling chair and pushed something into his hand.

A metal cylinder about the size of a soup can, and handmade were his first thoughts, then a significant amount of 'no idea'. The drive over had helped, but Shinji still felt a bit off from earlier, and had a hard time focusing. Glass panels along the sides let him see inside the device, revealing artificially grown crystals. He gave Ritsuko a bleary look.

"A fun little widget," she began. Ritusko plucked it out of his hand and held it up into the light. "We know you have a quantum of power, you can increment it, scale it. Some things take more out of you than others."

She rolled around some more, almost giddy. Misato and Maya watched the normally severe woman giggle. "Well, I wanted to measure it more accurately, but it's been tough. I went back to the original soul cameras and started thinking, and came up with this."

Misato stopped the chair with one boot and took the device, turning it over in her fingers. "And 'this' is?"

Ritsuko fixed her friend with a squint, as if trying to remember something. "Oh! A container, for Shinji's... Fuel, for lack of a better term."

The top came off with a few twists, and Misato looked inside, holding it close to her eye. "Are you sure it'll... work?"

"It _does_ work, at least somewhat." The blonde woman set the container down before holding up her hand, letting Misato see a bandaged thumb. "I made one earlier that could contain the sublimated blood offering, but that wasn't an ideal test."

Shinji blinked, tilted his head, and stared at the container before looking back to Ritsuko."You didn't make this with thaumaturgy, did you?"

Ritsuko shook her head. "Aside from the blood offering test, no. I realized part way through I could have done it differently with those techniques. I want isolate as many variables as possible though, so."

She waved at the cylinder. "I made that with nothing but techniques and technologies available to me _before_ you Exalted."

That was something everyone present had to stop and think about. It was March, 2016. Misato had forgotten, and it shocked her more that she _could_ have. The first Angel had attacked a bit more than a year ago. It was almost hard to remember what it had been like before. Shinji had come to Tokyo-3 at the same time. The night he decided to pilot had also been the night he Exalted.

Quite a bit had changed for Ritsuko as well, considering thaumaturgy. She couldn't help but mumble. "... Of course, sufficiently applied mathematics are possibly a form of magic..."

Shinji coughed into his towel before taking the container. Misato stepped back with a smile, while Maya and Ritsuko leaned in, curious and expectant. He'd never tried this before, pushing power _into_ things. The closest he'd ever came was with his effortless ability to weaponize everything. Looking closer, Shinji understood the potential, not unlike the potentials he saw for new techniques, but different. There was a place for his power to _go_.

Sunlight was an unforgettable part of his new life. Warmth and purity and _might_ were his to command. Shinji felt something, a kinship with the actual sun, the gaseous burning ball of fusion... and he felt an unmistakable sense of _something_, a flavor or aspect he couldn't quite place. The Solar offered up a tiny piece of himself, and the crystals drank it in.

Asuka's voice rang out through the Evangelion's external speakers. "I'm sure this is all amazingly important and fascinating, but we're _still here._ Is this test going to end any time soon?"

* * *

><p>As always, there were more tests to perform. After the synchronization checks were finished, Ritsuko tugged all the pilots up to another one of her labs, while Misato tagged along.<p>

Asuka sulked, sitting atop a console, and still in her plug suit. "I don't get why we still have to be here, or why we can't change out of these."

Misato rolled her eyes and sighed. She glanced back at the girl and frowned. For someone who could stop traffic wearing skintight red tech-latex, Asuka found a lot of things to complain about. "If Shinji has to suffer, I think it's only fair you show your support."

The second child chose not to dignify that with a verbal response.

The tests were entertaining, at least. Some new initiative was in the works, and Ritsuko had gone beyond minimum requirements. One side of the small lab was taken up by plastic dividing screens, in turn creating a changing room. Along one table were nearly a dozen oversized plugsuit variants. Shinji was the intended end-user, but Ritsuko was certain the prototypes could work for the girls after some refinement. The first new models were simple, based around additional armor or adjusted life support. Others were more exotic. Oddly enough, Ritsuko had kept quiet on _why_ Shinji was the intended end-user. Misato didn't have much of a problem with that though, not with how much fun she was having.

The scientist herself slumped in her seat, while another round of bickering broke out. Rei, thankfully, remained as disciplined as ever. She tapped her pen against the table, waiting. "Ikari-kun, are you ready with the next suit?"

His reply was muffled by something, and Shinji stepped out from behind the divider. Everyone, even Rei, blinked. Asuka hopped off the console and stood next to Misato, grinning. Now, things were getting _interesting_. The older woman was busy holding her mouth shut, stifling laughter, while Ritsuko paled. The grin on Asuka's face shifted from 'mirthful' to 'predatory'.

The redhead glanced sidelong at the scientist, licking her lips. "Is the helmet supposed to look like a bug? Because it looks like a bug."

The helmet did look very much like a bug. Instead of eye-slits or camera lenses, the front-top halves of the face were taken up by faceted yellow panels. Compound eyes. The new designs also had to avoid NERV coloring at all costs, so no red and black, no purple and green, and no white and blue. Instead Shinji was forced to walk out in a tight, armored black plugsuit, lined with iridescent panels and painted a strange, beetle brown. He also kept bumping into things as he walked, but only a little.

On top of all that, the helmet was defective. Shinji couldn't speak through it.

Ritsuko groaned, and let her face fall into her hands. "I'm going to kill those two..."

Bickering forgotten, Asuka and Misato curled into each other and laughed, while Rei just stared. Ritsuko sighed and checked points off on her list. "Alright Ikari-kun, we'll forgo most of the tests, but numbers five and six, if you please?"

Shinji 'mmffphd' behind his helmet and nodded. Test five was basic, punching a steel beam wrapped in rubber padding. He cycled through some of his basic techniques, and the suit gloves came out no worse for the wear. Durability test was good. He looked over in a nearby mirror and tried not to cringe. After turning back to Ritsuko, Shinji pointed at his forehead, and the gold disc hovering _outside_ his helmet.

"And test six fails, same as the last five helmets." She made a check mark, and then scratched out the lines for suit prototypes seven and eight. "If Ibuki and Hyuga want to play dress-up, _they_ can wear the suits. I'll take it out of their paychecks too."

Misato at that point lost strength in her legs, still laughing. Beneath her, Asuka held the other woman up with surprising ease, though not happily.

"Alright Ikari-kun," Ritsuko waved the pilot back into the changing area. "Change into suit nine and come out when you're ready."

Looking down at her notes, Ritsuko noted a pattern was emerging. She glanced up at the clock and let out a sputtering breath. Putting the suit on took maybe five minutes, without practice. Test six, on the other hand, took twenty minutes or more. They had to wait for Shinji to fall back into his rest state, and so far, every test had failed. She grabbed some scratch paper and started sketching. Not an artist by any means, she could at least do a diagram. They needed a way to conceal his identity but allow him reasonable freedom... Materials, perhaps a lead-lined helmet. Ritsuko nibbled on the end of her pen. They had to push the visual design away from NERV if at all possible.

Another argument started to build up behind her, and Ritsuko sighed _again_. Without something to distract them, Misato and Asuka got along like cats in a sack.

Oddly enough, she could pick out _Rei_ getting involved. Her voice was so quiet as to almost be loud. She didn't say much, but managed to needle the others with incredible regularity. Ritsuko felt a smile slip onto her face, and she tuned out the din, just like college. No one heard the sound of rubber snapping against flesh, or the muted, masculine cry of dismay.

"-and why should I-" Asuka found a hand pressed against her mouth.

With her one eye, she traced it up to Misato's red jacket sleeve, then to her shoulder and face before seeing the _grin_. She turned and followed Misato's line of sight towards the door. Asuka felt the hand fall away from her face, and found herself going wide-eyed, with one eyebrow arching high.

Shinji _winced_ his way out of the changing area. His tolerance for pain was something of a minor legend within NERV. At that moment though, he ached visibly. It was another plugsuit variant, forgoing armor pads and life support packages for tactical webbing and a harness. Strategically placed straps cinched tight around his thighs and chest.

Every step he took squeaked, though no one could say if it was from suit-on-suit, or Shinji himself. He inched his way towards the nearest chair, but thought better of it, deciding to stay standing instead. The helmet cradled under his arm was thankfully utilitarian. Shinji sighed, then looked up to catch Misato's stare.

The whistle started low and went high, as Misato began at his toes and let her eyes move up and up and _up._ She stopped at his face and licked her lips, ending it all with a brilliant, shining smile. Asuka slapped a hand against her face and dragged down, groaning. The lieutenant crooned, clasping her hands together and pleading.

"Shinji-kun~" One raised finger traced a tiny circle in the air, and her eyes gleamed. "A little...?"

Shinji wilted and shook his head, taking a squeaking step back. He tried to muster up a glare, but it couldn't quite make it past the beet red cheeks or the tight look of pain. Rei meanwhile stood off to one side, no longer staring so much as just looking. Shinji wouldn't have blamed her though, if she smiled. He glanced over at Ritsuko, who was torn between chewing out her friend or stewing in her own misery.

"Akagi-sensei! I thought you said these suits would... help me stand up straighter." He shifted, wincing even more. The straps around his chest creaked. "Not... Not wedge itself everywhere! It's... squeezing."

Misato tapped her lower lip, eyes glinting and grinning widely. "Oh believe me, we can see that."

Asuka likewise had no pity. She brought one leg up to the edge of the console and leaned forward to brace her elbow against her raised knee. Cradling her cheek in her palm and drumming her fingers along her jaw, she almost smugly illustrated how much her plugsuit clung like a second skin. "You'll get used to it. Just keep bending over until it stretches out, you baby."

"Does anyone here notice something wrong, by the way?" Asuka glanced at Rei, who just tilted her head and blinked. The redhead sighed and turned back to the adults, easily dismissing Shinji's presence from her mind. She picked at one of the suit valves near her hip. "I mean, why aren't _all _of these swimsuit cut? Stupid Shinji usually gets pant-cut plugsuits."

The scientist shrugged, admitting she only recently started designing the new suits. Everything else was legacy technology from the past decade. Caught up in the tangent, the girls all but forgot about Shinji. Asuka slid off the console and stood, twisting at the hip and tracing a seam in her suit that ran along the back of her thigh. She looked over, glancing between Misato and Ritsuko. Rei cocked her head once more before trying to see for herself, craning her neck over her shoulder.

Shinji started to pale, and a growing sense of dread seemed to fill the room.

Swinging her chair back around, Misato straddled it. She didn't seem to notice the sour look on Ritsuko's face. _You're wearing a skirt, Katsuragi. _ Misato wriggled in her seat and thought back, nodding reluctantly. "When I tried one on, it did kind of ride up..."

Asuka stopped preening and looked up, curious. "When did you wear a plugsuit?"

There was a part of Shinji at that moment, who wanted to punch himself for being in that situation. Another part of him wanted to shake his own hand. Toji and Kensuke would have probably _killed_ to be flies on the wall. He was most definitely not blind, just... _shy_. The conversation itself he only half-heard, but he'd lived with Misato for over a year now. He knew. He knew all too well. Glancing left, then right, Shinji took a tiny step back, and was met with the sound of rubber squealing. He froze solid, and sweat built up on his brow.

The girls didn't even look up.

Misato twisted in her seat, resting her chin on the back rest. "It was a test. Thing. Ritsuko tricked me." She coughed into her hand. "Never mind."

While the others bickered, Rei continued to self-examine, arching her back and shifting her weight side to side. There were quite a few seams and odd structures... Objectively speaking, they did emphasize her body. She looked over at Asuka, thinking. The red made her eyes sting. Misato proved to be the most easily assessed, and Rei tried to imagine the woman in one of her own white and black suits. Perhaps Asuka was on to something... Or perhaps the Second was inferring too much yet again.

Asuka however had noticed blood in the water. She looked at Misato with an eyebrow arching high, and a smirk tugged at her lips. "What did it look like?"

"Like a plugsuit." The other woman smiled, bringing her charm back up on all cylinders. There was always time for boosting one's ego, as far as Misato was concerned. Hooking her hands on the top of her chair, she leaned away and let her back arch. The lieutenant all but purred. "It did things for my figure like you wouldn't _believe_."

The conversation ebbed for a moment. Asuka and Shinji both tried to come to grips with that image. Asuka, for her part, moved from a look of confusion to sheer indignant disgust. A sketch of Misato complete with plugsuit sprang up in her mind and posed. Asuka felt her teeth start to grind. The gall of that woman. Shinji on the other hand was stuck between a slow-building, silly grin, and _total panic. _

Realizing that, Shinji knew he _had_ to move, sooner rather than later. The lab was growing more and more dangerous by the second, and Misato in a plugsuit was an incredibly distracting thought. Even worse, he couldn't keep the smile off his face. If _anyone_ caught him...

Scowling, Ritsuko rolled over and took her place next to the woman. If Misato was going to go _there_, Ritsuko could oblige her. "Oh it did things alright. _That_ prototype was nothing but fiber-cabling and stretch-mesh. She looked like a bag of oranges."

"Really..." Asuka drawled. Her eyes lit up, cutting away to leer at the lieutenant. She glanced back at Ritsuko, smirking. "Tell me more..."

"I can do one better, Pilot Sorhyu." Ritsuko smiled and tapped a few keys, and let her hand hover over the button. "I have pictures."

The die was cast, and nothing could stop it now. Misato laughed and all but stumbled out of her seat, grabbing for her friend. She grinned past a breathy 'No-you-don't and wrapped her arms around Ritsuko's middle, while the scientist wedged her arm between herself and Misato. Smiling herself, Ritsuko squirmed and reached for the console. Her hand flailed. One heeled shoe slipped off her foot, but she braced her toes against the floor and dug in.

Huffing, Asuka stalked over and tried to pull Misato away. Instead, she was dragged in with a yelp. Tangled up and squealing, the girls pulled and pushed. Asuka tried to pry Misato off Ritsuko, while Misato made every effort to keep Ritsuko from hitting that enter key. Rei and Shinji stood at opposite ends of the lab, befuddled and blushing, respectively.

Someone squealed again, and Shinji found himself growing redder and redder by the second. At least he now had a distraction. No one could hear his squeaking suit over the laughter and shrieks of indignation.

He had just about made his first step when Rei spoke, and the whole room fell silent. "You appear uncomfortable, Ikari-kun. Do you require assistance removing your suit?"

Blanching, Shinji was denied a painless execution. Working her way out of the pile, Misato stood with her hands planted atop Asuka and Ritsuko. "That's a _great _idea! Just have him go out shirtless. You can even forget the helmet. Dressed like that, no one would look past his neck," She let the statement hang for a moment, gleeful laughter building up behind it.

She cut the tension with a wink. "Or his _waist_!"

"M-Misato!" Shinji quickly shoved the helmet over his head and covered his reddening face. Retreating, he bounced off the door frame and paid no mind to the subsequent, horrible bang. "_Love _to watch you leave!" echoed out from behind, and he did not spare a glance back.

* * *

><p>A NERV senior staff meeting was usually limited to four people. It said a lot that this time, eight people were present. Two officers, a UN inspector, both division heads, and three pilots. The floor of Gendo's office started clear, letting everyone present see the Geofront spread out below. A table had been brought in, dominating the center space. Everyone remained standing, however. Shinji and Rei were motionless, while Asuka couldn't help but fidget. Kaji looked somewhat ill at ease, desperately wanting a wall to lean against. Ikari Gendo sat behind his desk with his fingers laced in front of his face.<p>

The glass darkened, and Sub Commander Fuyutsuki stepped forward. "If you are not aware, NERV is now entering the last stages of bankruptcy."

The grey haired man waved his arm, and projectors in Gendo's office warmed up. They threw light out in planes and shapes before resolving as a series of reports. Fuyutsuki went on to explain each graph and chart. Without the full economic support of the United Nations, NERV was stuck at its absolute minimum level of readiness. There had not been a _public_ Angel attack on Tokyo-3 for almost six months. Without irrefutable proof or signs of mobilization, faith in NERV faded. The projection changed to show the 'fake' attack sites. Other forces in the world had worked to further discredit NERV as well.

Asuka snorted, easily ignoring Misato's panicked look. "That doesn't make any sense! You... Why would anyone want to _stop_ a defensive force from doing their jobs?"

"Politics, Pilot Sorhyu." The Sub Commander waved to the holographic display and the financial data. "This is an attempt to bring NERV back to heel."

It took Asuka a second to find her voice. Her mouth worked. "That's... That's _stupid_ though!"

Fuyutsuki held up a hand. "It's wrong to say that politicians are all so foolish, but they and the people who elect them are often short-sighted. To the vast majority of the world, the Angel threat was 'controlled' and 'well at hand'. That is no longer true. Recent events have served to make NERV seem ineffectual, and our funding has suffered the consequences."

He looked over at Kaji for confirmation. The inspector nodded, picking up where Fuyutsuki left off. "For about fifteen years, NERV was a point of pride for most people, an award you show the neighbors. Now it's an embarrassment."

The other adults around the table nodded, grumbling. Misato shifted, cradling her beret under one arm. The pilots meanwhile looked at each other, and the charts. Fuyutsuki waved his arm again, and the graphic changed, quickly illustrating the situation. Money came in from UN reserves and voluntary donations various nations. The costs included repair, research and development, alongside supporting satellite NERV facilities, like those in Berlin and the United States.

Staring at the display, Asuka frowned, intent and contemplative. Her good eye flickered from one entry to another. A timeline showed each installation bright and active, and then as the months wore on and funding ran down, they all went dark. NERV-02 in Germany was the last to shut down. Shinji too was thinking, he _had _known about the budget issues, but the _scale _hadn't quite clicked yet.

The boy looked over at Fuyutsuki, a bit meek and hesitant. "I don't exactly understand how NERV can be... bankrupt? I mean, isn't it too big?"

"And why are we here?" Asuka didn't wait for an answer to her question or Shinji's. She stepped up to the table and planted her feet, glowering. "We're _pilots_. What do we have to do with your budget?"

The response was among the adults was mixed. Ritsuko frowned, folding her arms together, while Misato paled further. Normally the Operations Director _liked_ Asuka's attitude, but now wasn't the best time. Wincing, Kaji hoped his surrogate daughter would someday learn how to run her brain _and_ her mouth. He glanced back at the commanders, but Gendo remained impassive as always.

Clearing his throat, Fuyutsuki gave the girl a pointed look. "Pilot Sorhyu, if I may continue...?"

Asuka stared right back and crossed her arms over her chest, undeterred. After a long moment, she huffed and looked away with a belligerent pout. The girl knew an order when she heard one. Fuyutsuki suppressed a sigh and carried on.

"A series of unexplained events began on November fourteenth. They were first observed in Greenland, then spread worldwide." The projection shifted to satellite and ground photos of various locations; massive craters, strange footprints and curious structures. "NERV did not detect these events, as they bypassed our pattern interception system."

The view changed again. "Our capabilities were called into question."

Ritsuko broke in then. Aside from the commanders, she was the most intimately familiar with how NERV spent its money. "To function as we have, NERV required monetary support equal to the economies of three small nations. Since we no longer have that, 'bankrupt' is the best term to describe our situation."

"We never really _made_ money, as an NGO." Misato added. Once the dam had been breached, the division heads took up the presentation. "Instead partner nations contributed some of their yearly budget to our project. That's stopped, so right now we're only getting enough to pay our salaries and keep the lights on."

Fuyutsuki nodded, and waved to the diagram again. After November, the UN security council had gathered, and demanded NERV hand over control of the interception system. Accompanying that was the rapid decrease in funding. The list of supporting nations reduced, until only a handful remained.

The projection faded away and left Gendo's office dark for the moment. The floor shifted clear once more. The Commander moved for the first time all meeting, but remained silent. After unlocking a drawer, he pulled out eight black folders edged in red. Each were marked with NERV's fig-leaf logo and the words 'top secret eyes only'.

He handed those to Fuyutsuki, who in turn passed the files to everyone present. "This brings up to the main point of this meeting."

Inside, the papers detailed department changes, reorganization and a summary of the next six months, out to five years. There wasn't much time to read, however, as Fuyutsuki continued to explain. The adults skimmed them, save Ritsuko, who wrote them. Rei left hers on the table, while Shinji poured over it dutifully. Asuka had not moved at all, the closed folder hung in hand as a token effort.

"NERV will sever financial ties with the United Nations, and separate into three core divisions." He nodded at Ritsuko. "Research and Project E are to be restructured, and subsequently begin accepting contracts from corporate and academic institutions. We will be releasing patents on Evangelion-derived technology."

Misato perked up, snapping her folder closed. "So basically like GEHRIN, back in the day."

Evangelion technology was AT field technology... And that was _her_ field. Asuka's face lit up, shifting from side to side. She did manage to resist raising her hand. It was a tragedy, really, she almost never got a chance to talk shop. There were advances in cybernetics, neuroscience and the like, and genetics... Asuka felt her thought trail off. It was _obvious._ Of _course_ they hadn't brought her on to consult, she would've seen right through it all. She was an _information risk._

Even so, Asuka only just now made the connection. She had to resist the urge to drag a hand down her face. _Son of a..._ "Am _I_ stupid?"

Fuyutsuki stopped talking, and the adults slowly turned to the Second Child. The old man raised one bushy eyebrow. "Is there something wrong, Pilot Sorhyu?"

Asuka just raised her hands, fighting off the wince. It took everything she had to act like the stammering embarrassed teenager. "Just, just thinking to myself!"

Slowly, they all nodded, letting it slip from memory. Asuka sucked down a hushed, deep breath as quickly as she could, and let it out just as quietly. Her good eye over towards Rei. Back in the simulation world, Ayanami had all but admitted she was _engineered_. The secrecy was making more and more sense.

"You are correct, Major." Fuyutsuki turned back to Misato and smiled. Again, Gendo reached into his desk, handing Fuyutsuki something else. This time it was a small velvet box. He opened it, and inside were a pair of gold pins.

"You, _Major_ Katsuragi, will remain in charge of Evangelion combat operations as a separate division." After handing her the insignia, Fuyutsuki stepped back. "It will take some time before the security council catches up with us. Your responsibilities will not change overmuch."

Standing straighter, Misato worked very hard to keep the smile and look of shock off her face. Rei and Shinji gave her a silent look and a warm smile of congratulations, respectively, while Kaji offered a cheeky grin and wink. She suppressed the reflexive scowl and instead gave the old man a respectful nod. Cradling the tiny case against her side, she wondered how involved jumping two ranks actually was... and whowould have to handle the paperwork. Misato held back a wince, and hoped ferverently no one would blame her for it.

Fuyutuski took his place at Gendo's side, still smiling softly. He turned to Shinji. "That brings us to the third division. I admit it's somewhat unorthodox, but now is the time to be bold."

Commander Ikari stood for the first time all evening. His eyes settled on Shinji, and the boy found himself stepping forward. "Pilot Ikari has been underutilized. In the coming weeks, we will employ him to the full extent of his abilities."

Shinji felt his spine lock tight. He couldn't quite decide who to see the man as; the Commander of NERV, or his father. Behind his desk, Gendo laid out the plan. Shinji would serve as the leading element, at the head of a division composed solely of himself, answering only to the Commander. Demonstrations of yet unreleased technology, getting him out into the greater public, allow to do work outside of the Geofront. It wasn't about the Exaltation, not exclusively. There was no way to fully ignore it, and Gendo said as much. He also said that Shinji's skills were his own, as was his acquired knowledge. NERV needed that.

Part of Shinji's mind was already working. Half a dozen plans started to filter through his head, but that was shot through with a sense of something. A terrible understanding. He was going to have to _lead_. His father was _asking him to lead_. His father had said hospitals, relief efforts. The boy felt his hands bunch up into fists, and the plugsuit gloves strained against his fingers. Looking past the fear though, Shinji realized something else. It was familiar, he was _looking forward to it._

The briefing continued, and Gendo fielded questions with cool detachment. When Asuka had asked why _he_ was the point of sale, the Commander had answered; Shinji could pass off as an adult, an anonymous soldier or employee. Asuka and Rei were both publicly recognized as Evangelion pilots. The prototype suits were _disguises_.

Now the Commander had moved on, talking about synchronization technologies. Asuka looked up with a tight frown; more cybernetics. She felt her eye patch cinch a little tighter against her face, still too damn many secrets. Sneaking another look over at Rei, Asuka suppressed the sigh. There just wasn't anything she could _do_ right then. She grit her teeth and fought off a small snarl. Her foot started to bounce, and Asuka ignored the pointed, urgent look Misato shot her way. Golden Boy was busy being the good son and doormat, and no one else was watching her. If she couldn't do something now, she'd have to settle for later, and fidget in the meantime.

That wasn't the only thing that got to Asuka, either. Thinking about it, there was almost no reason to hold back on selling a direct neural interface, even secrecy couldn't justify it. An advancement like that was like a license to print money. She wasn't sure what made her angrier; that a conspiracy possibly existed, or that it made people do _stupid stuff_. Her foot started to bounce even faster.

Asuka cut her thought off when Rei stepped forward, holding her almost ever-present IV stand and drip bag.

"Commander Ikari." The girl stood at attention. "I request to remain on pilot duty. I will abstain from further field use. It will not be a problem."

"Denied." The Commander looked at each person in turn, taking their measure. "Everyone present is aware that Pilot Ayanami is capable of manipulating her AT field. This is classified information and will be treated accordingly."

One by one they all nodded, Asuka and Misato most reluctant of all. Shinji was still reeling, but he mouthed the words 'AT field', staring off at nothing. Kaji meanwhile was taking mental notes, as clearly and completely as he could. Then, something brought him up short. The smile on Fuyutsuki's face was almost eerie, and meant for him. Something in the old man's grin told him that jail cell was still an option. The inspector tugged at his shirt collar as inconspicuously as possible.

Asuka nearly choked on her tongue. She _knew_ more about AT fields than almost anyone in that room, possibly more than Fuyutsuki or Ritsuko. Rei was keeping her soul from leaking out with drugs and sheer force of will, and this man, this _bureaucrat_, had the gall to file her away like a defective utility. Dismissing all of that, and reminding them all to keep quiet was almost too much. It took nearly everything Asuka had to not blow up right then. She looked down at her hands and had to force them to relax, having made a fist without realizing it.

Rei did not bow or even nod, she merely spoke. Flat, dead and even. "Understood."

After all the talk and planning, the sudden silence was jarring. Her tiny changes in inflection and all the little half-executed expressions stopped, utterly. Asuka looked from Rei to Gendo and just stared. The man had said _one_ word to her, and Ayanami had gone back to a porcelain faced _doll_. Even worse, it wasn't Rei's fault. The control Asuka had on her temper cracked audibly.

She marched up to Gendo, dodging both Misato and Kaji. Fuyutsuki wisely stayed out of her way as she passed the table and stopped at the Commander's desk. Her hands slammed into the surface, and Asuka stared up at the Commander, growling.

Gendo only afforded her a small look out the corner of his eye. He hadn't even flinched. The Commander turned back to the others, picking up where he left off. "If all goes to plan, Pilot Ikari will carry us forwa-"

Asuka cut him off with a shout. Again, the others tried to silence her, to help protect her from reprisal or herself. The Second Child wasn't having any of it. She rounded the desk and stood in front of him, hands gesturing wildly.

"I'm not finished with you!" The anger made her drop words. "You can't do that to her! Who do you think-! -treating her like that, you-!"

The elder Ikari just tilted his head slightly, looking past the girl with a tiny, dour frown. He took a moment to straighten his jacket sleeves and push his glasses back up his nose. Asuka's righteous fury hit maximum. Her fist snapped out in a textbook perfect arc, ready to smash those lens into powder. Every adult was one step too late to stop her.

Shinji was not.

Asuka's fist stopped less than an inch away from the Commander's cheek, shaking at full extension. Shinji had his arms wrapped around her middle, and managed to take a half-step back before Asuka could flick her fingers against his father's face. The commander hadn't moved at all. It took Asuka a few seconds to realize she'd been picked up off the floor, dangling a foot up in the air. The girl twisted, squirmed and kicked, driving her elbow into Shinji's sides and head, snarling viciously. After the third blow, her arms started to go numb. The Third barely flinched.

Kaji hovered nearby, unable to get near while Asuka kicked and spat. The Commander's glasses gleamed orange. "Take the pilot out to lunch, inspector."

When Shinji dropped Asuka into Kaji's arms, she very nearly managed to break free, wrenching an arm loose and breaking for the Commander again. Misato was there though in time to help the man haul the pilot out of the office. Despite her size, Asuka moved like a cat, switching between dead weight and fury at will. Fuyutsuki sighed, wishing there was a chair to fall into.

Asuka screamed, snarling and snapping at everything she could reach. Just as they reached the door, Misato slinked back, pale and panicked. She moved to the door while Kaji struggled. Back deeper inside the office, the remaining officers and pilots watched, helpless. Turning slightly, the doll-like facade dropped away, and Rei met Asuka's eye. The redhead blinked once, then stilled, almost sagging into Kaji's arms. He hauled her through the door and Misato closed it behind him. The Third Child stared as it slid shut.

The office was quiet. Misato willed herself to stay standing upright, and to remain in the chamber. The etched lighting in the ceiling made her feel sick. When her eyes dropped back down, she caught sight of Rei. There was going to have to be a conversation later. Ritsuko sucked on her teeth and tried to look unobtrusive. Standing off to the center, between the door out and Gendo, Shinji stood. He looked back at his father, then at Misato, then Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki.

His hand curled up into a fist. The decision was made.

Ikari Gendo took his seat behind the desk, and planted both elbows on the table. The plan was set. There was only one thing left to say. "Any further questions?

There were none.

* * *

><p>Asuka tore into the sandwich, and Kaji questioned the wisdom of compromise.<p>

The door to Gendo's office slid open, and the remaining pilots and directors of NERV stepped out. Kaji leaned against one wall, while Asuka sat on a bench opposite. Takeout wrappers spread out on the seat next to her. She ignored the returning adults, keeping her covered eye angled toward them. Misato turned to Kaji, who tried to play things off with a shrug, but the looks on his face told her everything. Asuka had refused to leave, so he returned with lunch instead. No one was particularly in the mood for a smirking insight about which 'orders' he had followed.

The Second Child had an appetite. By the time the others had shown up, most of the food had been picked over. Rei and Misato shared a look, then turned back to Asuka, for different reasons. Things were starting to change, and no one could do anything about it. When Shinji stepped forward, he did not dominate the small hallway. Instead he only occupied space.

An apology was the first thing on his mind, but he had no idea how to offer it. He cast a shadow over Asuka without meaning to, and his mouth started moving without him. "...You tried to hit him."

The girl just looked up at him with one icy eye. "Yeah. Why haven't you?"

* * *

><p>"We can begin in three weeks."<p>

The table had been removed, vanished into the far wall. A chair in front of the Commander's desk took its place, and Fuyutsuki settled into it. He let out a long, weary sig, tapping one of the folders full of plans on his thigh. Gendo sat behind his desk, for once not hiding behind his hands. There were still details to take care of, bureaucratic necessities and loose ends. The new division needed a name, for example.

Regardless, the plan was set in motion. The meeting was held only to cast the players in their appointed parts. It also served to inform the commanders, identifying the state of NERV and its components. At the scales they worked at, control was sometimes an illusion.

Sometimes it wasn't. Fuyutsuki leaned forward in his chair and braced his chin against his thumbs. "Tell me, Ikari. How do you plan on handling existing witnesses."

"The ones who've seen the boy's display?" The other man blinked, but only once. "Their silence has already been secured."

Fuyutsuki tried very hard not to assume the worst. He was not above voicing his concerns, though. "'Secured' could mean many things, Ikari."

Gendo leaned back in his chair, looking past his glasses. "I am not the former USSR or the Cartels, Sensei. I can order the death of any man woman or child in Tokyo-3, but to do so would be foolish."

"Reassure an old man, then."

Drumming his fingers on the desk, Gendo thought on his answer, and Fuyutsuki tried not to let his surprise show. When it did come, the reply was clear and uncompromising. "Ruling by fear is effective, but costly. Once death is used as a deterrent, I must keep killing, without fail."

It was a cold comfort to know _efficiency_ was what kept civilians alive and well. The Sub Commander nodded once. "Very well, Ikari."

The pair fell into silence then, save for Fuyutsuki taking a moment to sort through the folders and hand them over to Gendo for storage. The Commander looked ahead, not always scheming, but developing idle contingencies. He would have been a writer, if he had a more creative bent, though anything he cared enough to write about would have ultimately been incriminating. He contemplated the JSSDF, and their movements into the future.

Fuyutsuki meanwhile looked backward, towards the classics and history. His fields were more psychology, but he mapped the mind with literature and great works of art before. He leaned his head back, drifting. The mirthless smile worked its way onto his face without effort.

Gendo must have noticed the sardonic look. "Something amuses you, Fuyutsuki?"

"I was going to quote several of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, Ikari." The old man gave the younger a dry smirk. "Far too many seemed relevant."

"Glib Praise doesn't suit you." It was also unexpected. Gendo was at that moment _extremely_ curious as to where the old teacher was going.

"No, it doesn't, considering what just happened." Fuyutsuki frowned, face growing stony. The deep lines on his face stood out under the etched light above.

It had been a lapse, Sorhyu's sudden outburst. It was obvious by now that the scenarios were shifting. There were just too many variables now. As far as either of their memories were concerned, the pilots being trapped in the MAGI should _not _have happened. There had to be allowances made for incidental events, the Scrolls never predicted things like Shinji arriving _just_ as the first Angel was attacking. That had been purely Gendo's doing. But now, things were changing, almost too fast to manage. They had no choice though.

The Commanders put everything they had into faith. Different kinds, for different reasons.

"It seems more and more of my old controls are falling away." Admitting the loss was the same as reclaiming it, in Gendo's mind. The Sub Commander couldn't begrudge him that.

Fuyutsuki nodded softly. He hated to say it, but he had to. "Each pilot is beginning to exhibit undesirable behavior... most of it is so far harmless, aside from Rei."

That was true. They had not anticipated Rei developing friendships and shedding the chemical shackles. The blame for allowing the latter fell on Gendo, however. "She is beginning to take risks, her immediate judgement is flawed."

The smirk came back, and Fuyutsuki's eyes crinkled at the corners. "So in essence, a teenager. She _did_ turn fifteen not long ago."

No reaction from the other man. If Gendo were amused or not, Fuyutsuki had no way to tell. Teenager or not, Rei _was_ a special case, mentally and physically.

"She does not concern me, not as yet. Rei has given me a lever, anyway." Now Gendo shifted, moving back to his habitual stance. "Several levers. The Children are becoming friends."

It was left unsaid that relationships like that could become assets, or liabilities. All tools were valued, but some were to be used only as a last resort. Each of the pilots were in their own way similar to primed hand grenades. In the case of the Third Child, the only difference was that he did not need his Evangelion to be dangerous. Any influence directed at the boy had to be applied with the lightest touch, or an unforgettable impact.

At the moment, the Commander preferred the former. The logic was simple, as far as Gendo was concerned. _In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant_.

And now for the sticking point. Fuyutsuki laced his fingers together in his lap, leaving his thumbs pressed together. "And your son?"

The Commander acknowledged the question, barely. He felt no need to use a proper word.

"Our information manipulation will only go so far, anonymity will not last." Fuyutsuki shook his head again, letting it sag forward. "I fear he will collapse."

"The Third will endure. That seems to be his talent."

* * *

><p>Bureaucratic processes took time. It had been three weeks since the plan was put into motion, and only now did things begin to move. Money, law and reputation worked hand in hand, pushing forward. The world had not <em>forgotten<em> what NERV stood for, stood in the way of. It had only chosen to ignore for convenience. That was a mistake, and Ikari Gendo planned on proving it.

When the order was given, NERV was legally disbanded. A single phone call followed on the heels of that command, leading to several more. Commands filtered down and out through Japan into the United Nations and the world at large. Leverage was applied, securing the Geofront facilities along with the personnel and technology. NERV had dissolved, then reformed.

NERV and its people had been ready for the transition months ago. In a matter of weeks, the scientists, engineers, technicians and operators all re-aligned with their new purpose. To most of them, little had changed. Loyalty and cause had united them, and a continuing, steady paycheck was the most basic of their rewards.

Around the world, nations were wary. NERV dedicated itself to the deployment of Evangelions, the associated technologies, and _defense of mankind_. To hear it convert to a for-profit concern was... unsettling, to say the least. The concept of a private military company had died in the late nineties, right alongside half the human race.

Japan in particular had an uneasy relationshp with the research group, and the sudden shift in policy did not help matters. The JSSDF still chaffed under the embarassment of the first Angel attack, and their inability to defend their homeland. Meanwhile, the Parliment and House of Representatives considered NERV a point of tenuous pride.

* * *

><p>Seasons changed quickly in Post-Impact Japan. By the last week of March, winter was pushed aside by the first signs of Spring. Rain fell in lingering bursts, before the sun burned the clouds away. Days with clear skies happened more often, and as the temperature rose higher, the Cicada emerged en-masse.<p>

Months ago, the northern shores of Lake Ashi had been choked with the flash-boiled remains of fish and aquatic plants. Reclaimation efforts had slowed to a halt, following the budget crunch, but nature took over where man had been forced to leave. Gulls and other scavengers had swept inland, nearly picking the area clear. Though nearly devoid of plant life, the water was dark and clean once more. The nearby hillsides were still scarred, however. Whole faces had been melted, or gouged out by positron beam. Evangelion footprints pockmarked the area.

To a soldier, or the military, seconds were an eternity. To a politician and a government, three weeks was no time at all. Men and women of office from all over the world scrambled for private jets and international flights, angling for Japan. The date line, one ambassador had said, did _not _equate to time travel. Of course, that was the point. NERV was smaller, quicker and able to react much more readily, compared to full nations and their governments. Declaring the event on such short notice bore the mark of Gendo's personality; control the tempo, strike fast and hold nothing back... or make everyone believe so.

A stage had been constructed over the past week, a short way from the shore. More screens lined the scaffolding. Ten yards out from the platform's leading edge, the gritty lake sand had been packed flat and even, waiting for rows upon rows of chairs. Shinji had insisted on that separation, if the demonstration went as he thought. Those seats extended back towards the city in layered arcs, while towers holding white screens dotted the area. Projectors waited nearby, waiting for the show to start. To the right of the stage sat a decommissioned tank, its main gun had been sealed shut and its tip painted white.

For possibly the third time in his life, Gendo made a public appearance. The man sat behind a desk not unlike the one in his office, resting on his elbows and fingers laced. Fuyutsuki waited along with the NERV division leaders, ready to begin. _Major_ Katsuragi and _Professor_ Akagi were dressed for the occasion, in full uniform and lab coat respectively.

JSSDF Generals and their staff filled rows of seats, alongside industrial consortiums and academic institutions. Dignitaries and UN observers found space wherever they could, and private think tanks and research firms filled out the flanks. Past all that, extending out into standing room seating and beyond, were civilians. Citizens of Tokyo-3, invited by the MAGI municipal systems.

An impromptu festival had grown in the span of a morning, spreading out into clusters of tents and food stalls. Television cameras and reporters shoved for position, and more than a dozen different security teams clashed and spat at each other, mired in the human sea.

There was one other person on stage that drew an unmistakable amount of attention. In a world of true giant combat robots and equally massive monsters, it was still strange to see the fantastic made real. A man sat uneasily, hunched up in his chair. A few people wondered what a _pilot_ was doing there, especially with no Evangelion present. Plugsuits weren't exactly common knowledge, but somewhat recognizable. The suit itself was flat grey, lined in straps and webbing. Some considered him Special forces perhaps, or NERV security. The face-concealing helmet was curious though. Masks were a thing of fiction, usually, but so were monsters.

An hour before noon, Fuyutsuki Kozo took center stage. A podium and microphone waited for him, and cameras relayed his image to massive screens dotting the arena. He'd written his own speech, and a nearby teleprompter helped him remember the lines.

"Greetings, all of you. Welcome to this demonstration." The old man offered the cameras a wave and a grandfatherly smile, while his eyes crinkled. "My name is Professor Fuyutsuki Kozo, formerly of Kyoto University, and now second in command of NERV."

Fuyutsuki let his hands drop onto the podium, but the smile continued. "Nearly twenty years ago, GEHRIN saved the human race. They gave us genetically tailored crops, adjustments to key sections of the ecosystem, and the foundations of applied Metaphysical Biology."

"GEHRIN became NERV, and we have continued that tradition, first with the Evangelion weapons platform, and now further still." He paused for a moment, letting everyone take in that statement, and the reminder. "From this point on, NERV intents to keep that pledge and to exceed it, helping forge a new vision of humanity's future."

The displays behind the old man changed. His image vanished, and a list of plans replaced it. "We will release technologies, scientific breakthroughs and advancements in human enhancement."

Some didn't believe it; limb regeneration, cloned organs, cybernetic enhancement. All of it sounded unrealistic, implausible. Those who knew NERV, and the people within, the geniuses and their resources... The military observers glanced sidelong at their peers and subordinates. Things were about to get _very_ interesting.

The speech continued, and Fuyutsuki kept his voice restrained, venerable. He was a _professor_, after all. "For years we have labored in secret, within classified projects and generous funding, and now is the time to show how far we have truly come. Not just as a people, not just as a species, but as a reborn civilization."

Among the delegates, ambassadors and United Nations personnel, it was a shock, the latest in a long list. Most of the UN was still reeling, still asking _how_ Ikari had done it, pulled the rug out from under them so easily. This event, the demonstration was another upset, demanding their attention and giving them no chance to react. It was Ikari's signature style.

Meanwhile, intelligence analysts were hard at work in their home offices, tracing the paths and influence that allowed it. Most were confident, believing Ikari could only pull a gambit like that once. Few people wanted to contemplate that Gendo could do it again.

Now a bit of steel crept into the old man's voice, more than most thought possible. His fingers dug into the podium, but he still spoke softly. "Our task, above all else, was the development of Evangelion technology, and the deployment of same in defense of mankind. That is no longer enough. We must do more, and that is why we are here today."

Fuyutsuki stepped away from the podium and held an arm out to the next speaker in line. "May I present Major Katsuragi Misato, NERV Director of Evangelion Operations.

* * *

><p>Elsewhere, in an apartment complex on the other side of the city, two young girls watched the event on a tiny, floor-level television. Between them on the couch sat a hot-springs penguin.<p>

Asuka Langley Sorhyu scowled at the screen. "...Stupid plan. Stupid golden boy." _Stupid NERV._

Rei was silent, simply watching. The screens showed Misato as she made her way up to the podium. She somehow managed to look professional, panicked and gorgeous at the same time, and they just seemed to_ adore_ her. Asuka glowered even harder, idly wishing that black dress uniform would combust at her will.

She could not resist a shot though. "I bet she's sweating like crazy under that thing."

* * *

><p>Misato had finished her speech fairly quickly. Earlier that morning she had said something about having the best image amongst the JSSDF and UN. At first, Shinji had thought it was just her normal flirtation, but he quickly realized she meant it. Misato <em>had<em> served in South America, apparently. The military men and women in the crowds were nodding along, if not smiling and at least mollified.

Of course, as far as flirtation went, she could have meant it both ways. Red picked up on his cheeks without meaning to, but he at least didn't need to worry about embarrassment. The helmet concealed his face completely, only leaving a thin slit across the eyes for cameras. It used the same basic interface as Asuka's patch. It had taken him a few days to get used to it, seeing through the mental link instead of a screen or projection. The visor flickered whenever he spoke, purely as an intra-personal function. Considering the crowd sprawling out ahead of him, Shinji valued any ounce of unconscious humanity he could project without meaning too.

Next in line was Ritsuko, going into an overview of their medical, cybernetic and genetic advances. Some of it was bluster, marketing, but a lot of it wasn't. She eventually reached one of the topics he'd been dreading. She had planned to tell the crowd the story of her arm, though fortunately, she decided against showing them the photos. Hardly anyone _believed_ her, especially at first. As she spoke though, people started to wonder, people wanted to hope.

Shinji hated lying. Dishonesty bothered him in a way he had trouble describing. Secrets and lies were useful though, and he could accept that. He felt his fingers tighten up into fists. If he could help more people by lying, he'd do it. He wouldn't like it though.

Ritsuko ended her speech, but Shinji didn't remember a word of it. The most important part of the demonstration was coming: His.

* * *

><p>Stepping back up to the podium, Fuyutsuki begged for a few moments to prepare for the demonstration. Luck was in their favor, it seemed; everything would be ready at noon.<p>

The old man called for their attention. "Today, we are going to demonstrate our human enhancement prototype, the result of applied Metaphysical Biology."

Rising, the anonymous soldier stepped forward. The cameras captured him in full detail, towering over Fuyutsuki at a bit over six feet. Hopping off the platform, the masked man made his way towards the weight. Fuyutsuki returned to his seat, smiling.

The demonstration was all up to Shinji now. Stage fright was suddenly a very real, urgent thing, but the helmet helped keep it at bay. He marched up to the tank somewhat awkwardly. The production suit was better than any of the prototypes by far, but it still took time to break in. The small concern helped him keep his mind off the bigger problems, like having half the city on the shores of Lake Ashi, or the other half watching him on TV.

Waving to the cameras, Shinji felt more the fool.

Turning back to the tank, he wanted to tap his chin. The helmet prevented that, so he settled for the front right tread. He couldn't _lift_ the tank... not all of it. Still, he could do something. Wheels, or treads in this case, made it fairly easy. Bracing himself under the front axle, Shinji set his stance and _pushed_.

Everyone watching expected nothing to happen, or for an obvious trick. Instead, one end of the tank rose up, higher and higher until the disabled main gun pointed skyward. In a rush, Shinji stepped back, and the tank dropped down hard on its treads. The soldiers and officers in the front rows winced, covering their eyes and kept a grip on their hats.

Strength was only part of the display. Tank defenses had been designed to resist and deflect high velocity armor penetrating ammunition. It had no answer for rending intent. Shinji lifted both hands high and brought down his fists, driving them into the tank front. Dents appeared beneath his fists, one, another, and more. Metal buckled and peeled away in mangled strips. Those closest to the action realized he was _punching holes through metal_.

Pulling his hand back, Shinji shook it free of debris. The glove knuckles looked a bit worse for the wear, but they were meant to be replaced. Now for the tricky part. Mental controls let him command the suit, and hologram generators lining his arms and legs warmed up. They glowed a dim gold, etched into the grey surface like thin veins. Behind him, a faint, shimmering hexagon appeared. Shinji sucked in a deep breath and sank into a familiar stance.

Now was the time. Shinji didn't want to do it, not that exact thing, but it was agreed on. It was the best way to disguise their actions, to build on for things to come. Moving over to the tank, Shinji stood before the vehicle, with his back to the crowd and facing the lake. The pilot raised his fist, telegraphing the punch for all to know. His fist shot forward, and everyone present _knew_ without a doubt what was going to happen.

His fist hit the ruined tank, and for a moment, everything was still. Cameras caught every detail in slow motion.

For one second, a tank sat in front of the stage. In the next, the tank _flew_, ten, twenty, thirty yards out over the lake. It tumbled end over end, and the main gun cut into the water with each full rotation. Finally it slid to a stop, cleaving a trench in the water before sinking. The crowd behind him stared.

Masked and anonymous, Ikari Shinji offered a tiny, almost hesitant bow. Up on stage, the hologram of Ikari Gendo smirked and vanished.

The demonstration was over.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: <strong>Whew.


	31. Skunkworks

People hated uncertainty. They loathed it, despised it in a manner most would have trouble articulating. It was so uniformly reviled, and so inherent in the human condition, that people could not even name it. Uncertainty was risk, and mankind had a long, storied history with that concept. The world had changed again, and now everyone scrambled to keep up.

* * *

><p>Three men and two women sat around a half-circle table, gearing up for another hour-long round of bickering. Monitors hung down on steel arms, while their screens overflowed with data from the past ninety-six hours. Papers littered the table surface, stained with coffee and smears of cigarette ash. No one among the staff was willing to point out the building maintained a no smoking policy.<p>

Their names weren't important, and no one looked to them expecting or requiring much personality. Their voices, however, were in high demand. One man slapped the table, hard. His eyes slid from one side to the other, glaring at his fellow hosts. "Going _private? _On who's authority did they-?"

To his left, the blonde woman cut him off with a wild, out-of-place sneer. "How did Ikari even get this through the UN?" She stumbled on the name, slightly. No one seemed to notice or care.

"The last few motions passed through the UN... They had riders. A tweak here, an appended clause there. This-" There was a pause, like the speaker had to bite back an expletive. "-cannot happen, not in our world. This isn't some Hollywood Spy movie."

Around the table, the other speakers nodded, for once in agreement. In the center, one older man frowned, the most composed out of all of them. He looked at each of his fellows in turn before sighing. "The fact of the matter is, Gendo Ikari made it happen, and now we have to deal with i-"

* * *

><p>In another time, the internet would have enabled millions of people to share, analyze and assess NERV's demonstration. Post-Impact, global communications had fallen, stagnated. Nations were isolated, and only recently had the human race found enough lift capacity to restore their global satellite network. Most of those satellites had been in turn lifted by NERV-ordered shuttle launches, wedged in with payloads holding the first wave of intercept system devices.<p>

So, in tiny cliques and basements, men and women of a particular sort poured over captured video. They translated the original Japanese speech, compared it to the transcription, and did it all over again.

A voice spoke over the video, of what people were starting to call 'The Punch'. It looped over and over, focusing on the first few seconds where the man in the suit began to walk. "You'll notice here how uneasily this alleged person moves. Bio-mechanical analysis is... Inconclusive."

The video scrubbed forward, and the crackling hexagon appeared. "An AT field; while it has been proven that all humans possess one, there has been no recorded instance of a manifest field prior to Project E." The video began to loop on those few frames. "This leads me to believe this is no person, not a man, but a remote weapon system. A human-scale Evangelion. The helmet is simply camoufl-"

* * *

><p>"-ank you for joining us today, Minister." The hostess stood up and held out her hand to shake. An older woman, she called back to an earlier age of government, wearing smartly cut pantsuit and jacket.<p>

The old man's craggy face broke into a brief smile, but it did little to move his large nose. He took her hand with a short nod. When the pleasantries were finished, everyone got down to business. The Federal Minister of Education and Research rolled off to one side, letting his powered chair navigate deeper into the conference room.

The host sighed. "I know this isn't exactly standard procedure, but it's not every day we hear about... Well, I'm not even sure if I can say it, but an actual super-soldier."

"Don't say that fucking word." On the right, someone piped up, blustering. A heavyset man whipped a chair around and dropped down hard enough to make the hydraulics whine. "The public might be taken in by the dog and pony show, but we can't afford to concede defeat by giving Ikari the legitimacy he wants. This is a _joke_."

Another analyst stepped in. "We're starting to see some results from our own experts in the field, and NERV prepared a release package for us." He dropped a thick folder on the table and then fell into a nearby seat. "Professor _Emeritus_ Fuyutsuki Kozo is not someone you screw with, not when it comes to Metaphysical Biology.

"He was there at the spear tip, back when MetBio was taking psychotropics and dream analysis. He _taught _Ikari Yui. If there's anyone alive could have weaponized the human soul, it's th-"

* * *

><p>The question came out of nowhere. He was just on his way to the movies, and the light thrust in his eyes nearly blinded him.<p>

"Nerves going public? Is that some band? I've never heard of-"

* * *

><p>A tiny thumb mashed down on the power button, hard enough that the plastic creaked. The television shut down with a thin electric whine, and Sorhyu Asuka Langley tossed the remote away with a snarl. She had the good sense at least to aim at a nearby cushion. And not miss.<p>

The girl slumped into the apartment couch and oozed down until her thighs hung off the front cushion. Her chin dropped down against her collarbone. "Not a damn thing on."

The boy next to her only grunted, sitting in nearly the exact same position on the opposite end. "Yeah."

A minute passed, then two.

Asuka snapped back up and whirled, eye patch and uncovered eye locking on. "Who the hell are you supposed to be?"

Suzuhara Toji looked up at the girl and shrugged back into the upholstery. "I'unno. Who the hell are you?"

* * *

><p>Ikari Shinji was not at home in Misato's apartment. He was not in Tokyo-3, disguised or otherwise. Nor was he training, increasing his skill and familiarity with the Evangelion.<p>

Instead, Shinji was locked in the Geofront, inside Central Dogma and well away from the main control room. On those particular floors, there were no great banks of MAGI hardware or test facilities. The air-conditioning always worked, and dust was beat back every day by paperwork and hands on keyboards. Massive rooms stretched out for hundreds yards, divided up by plastic, plywood and fabric-covered walls; cubicles.

Shinji was in NERV accounting, and there he found something he could not stand to do.

It all came down to problems. He was good with problems, and had realized that fairly early on, even before he Exalted. Schoolwork caught his interest the most when it was a puzzle, a mystery to solve. Music soothed him because it _wasn't_ a puzzle, but still complex and and inviting. Shinji leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. The act was purely psychological though, he'd long since forgotten the feeling of eyestrain. He glanced at the clock and noted it was four, again. A tiny bit of will confirmed the time, and that he'd been in the office for nearly three days.

Lunch... or dinner. Shinji couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. The brief rush of joy and potential freedom died when he glanced back at the screen. He still wasn't finished working. The pilot wrenched his neck from one side to the other, but the vertebrae refused to pop, feeling just as limber and relaxed now as they had hours ago. His hands dropped down to the mouse and keyboard, clicking through budget reports and annual expenses. It would've been nicer if the number _would_ start to blur together, but no, he read them all in perfect clarity. Shinji groaned, and let out a sputtering sigh.

He checked his math and willed more of his power forward, confirming that the new allocation would free up resources to be used elsewhere. The time spent hadn't been a _total_ loss, he had to admit, but... He reached out and shut the terminal off, sighing. Shinji had to be honest with himself: he did not care about managing money. At all. It was a problem and it needed to be solved, but even knowing that, he could not muster up the drive to do it.

Shinji pulled himself out of the chair, acutely aware he needed a shower in the worst way. The walls, desk and floor were bleached white, and paint had started to peel on the second day of work. He glanced at the sun damage. Someone was going to have to fix that. Shinji shook his head and sighed. It wasn't going to be him. He had _responsibilities_ now. With each passing hour he realized more and more that his time could have been better spent doing almost _anything_ else, like curing cancer.

He gave the computer one last glare and hoped he'd never see another spreadsheet again.

* * *

><p>Fuyutsuki stepped out onto the penthouse deck and headed for the railing. He stood on the highest point in Tokyo-3, and the tallest civilian structure in the <em>Ashigarashimo<em> district, if not the whole Kangawa prefecture. The fortress city seemed to spread out below him. A thin band of suburban houses and sparse farmland divided the city from the rest of the overgrown hillsides and lake shore.

Mornings were often choked with mist from the Geofront ventilation and the muggy, water-logged grasslands outside the drainage zones. Spring brought hotter days, and pollen. The wet grasses dried out by noon and winds kicked up cloying, yellow clouds of dust. Whole sides of buildings were plastered with the stuff for weeks at a time.

If he had binoculars, the old man could have tried spotting the flood trains and landlocked shipyards. During impact, the tidal waves had lifted docks worth of ships deeper inland , and peeled trains from their tracks. Those same waves seemed to drop everything in almost neat lines and rows, leaving train cars embedded wheels first in streets and hillsides, like stakes. Tokyo-2 and later Hakone were the prototypes for Japan's reclamation efforts, tearing apart those old wrecks and salvaging them for raw materials. The very tower he stood on was probably built from reclaimed materials.

Before stepping into Tokyo-3 Municipal, the old man rarely had a reason to come out of the Geofront, let alone explore the tallest tower in the city. He attempted the stairs, but pushing seventy, the near hundred flights was a bit much. Nor was the building special. A mere office building, albeit one on the front lines in a multi-millennia war. Companies leased out floors and office space, their staff filled desks and cubicles. Most were branches of NERV, removed by however many degrees. Private industry too. Japan's particular form of socialism had survived the Second Impact as well.

That last point proved to be a telling one. Japan never owned NERV, and its control over the city was thin at best. There were contracts and such, checks and balances, but NERV was a work of art, to those who knew what to look for. SEELE and Gendo had spared no expense or talent in making their tools and stacking the odds in their favor.

Money... A lot of their problems came down to it. Who had it, who gave it, and how much NERV got. Gendo valued loyalty more than anything, with gullibility following shortly after. He had signed the order to protect NERV's payroll from downsizing, electing to curtail unnecessary Evangelion research and Ritsuko's various pet projects. The Commander had reasoned, correctly, that progress on those fronts would have been made regardless of any monetary resources. Raw materials, facilities, none of that mattered. Most were free to take and use within the Geofront itself, something Shinji lamented, after he bought a painfully expensive amount of tools and supplies. Of course once expended their stockpiles could not have been replenished, but Gendo gambled, and it paid off.

Fuyutsuki mused, wondering if the Scrolls and their maddening updates had given the other man an insight. Without a physical copy to compare to, the Sub-Commander was left to contemplate the supposedly latest revision: "Red".

His mind wandered again and the wind picked up, warm enough to be pleasant, but still unmistakably more than a thousand feet above ground. Money, it always came back to money. It was artful really, Fuyutsuki had to admit. almost _no one_ knew about the budget crisis, not when it started started, months ago, or now. The old professor never was one to have his finger on the pulse of a culture, though. He wasn't very good at keeping up with _people_ either. He'd missed Yui's signals, after all, and only recognized them for what they were well after Impact.

So he couldn't say, even to himself what was going to happen. NERV had pulled something out of their hat, something unprecedented. To the citizens, civilians and employees of NERV, it was another miracle of modern science, a mark of pride. The people in the city below didn't know how close they'd come to losing everything to a power play.

Fuyutsuki sighed and stepped back, straightening his cuffs as he went. Class tommorow, and there was much still left to do.

* * *

><p>Shinji found himself sighing a lot more than normal.<p>

He sat at the dining table in Misato's apartment with a pile of tubes, pipes and disassembled pumps spread out before him. Manuals and reference books crowded along with the metal and plastic pieces. tiny Ingots of surgical steel and titanium waited for the next phase in construction. A pressurized jet injector would have been the best delivery system, if Rei didn't need _so much_ of whatever that serum was.

Pen-Pen waddled past the boy into the kitchen while Misato tried her hand at cooking. Shinji had to mentally stress the word 'try'. It was _edible_, but Misato didn't want to shake the last of her college habits. The stove and the microwave were her slowly-expanding domain, moving outward only as she confirmed she wasn't liable to break any of the huge appliances instead of marveling them from a distance.

Because of that, the Third Child had made a point of buying the best instant meals. That however didn't help much when Misato combined a microwave curry platter with oven-ready twenty-minute, pre-cooked barbeque ribs. He suppressed a shudder, and was glad the kitchen had good ventilation. He turned back to his work and put the woman out of his mind. There was just too much to do and not enough time.

Focus however proved to be a mixed blessing. Misato had moved, and a pair of hands draped over his shoulders. She stepped forward with her hips pressed to the chair-back, leaning in to hug him from behind. "What's got you down?"

Shinji winced, and the back of his neck tingled. Ever since he got taller, Misato went out of her way to... He snapped his eyes shut and took a deep, calming breath. "N-Nothing, really. I just screwed up."

The microwave hummed loudly, more so than the last one. Shinji hadn't spared any expense either. Misato blinked, glancing back down at the boy, curiosity piqued. Her magic-pilot had a very strange definition of 'mistake'. She gave him a light shake, hoping he'd explain.

A bit of steel between Shinji's fingers seemed to melt into a ring. He set it aside with a sigh and looked past her arm, toward the remodeled corner of the apartment. "The kitchen. I screwed up on the kitchen."

Misato eyed the new installation. The complete, restaurant quality, stainless steel built with his own two-hands kitchen. The 'Marry me, I'm a man-god' kitchen. She looked back down at her pilot and friend. Her incredulity was audible. "Screwed up."

Raising his hands, Shinji shrugged. "I realized two days ago how to design a better... everything I just installed. Easily better." He sighed again. "A day, maybe two and I could make a dishwasher that actually _washes_ dishes, instead of sanitizing them."

She pulled away when the microwave beeped, humming thoughtfully. Pen-Pen hopped around at calf-height, squawking faintly. The woman spilt her meal, leaving a third for the hot-springs penguin and the rest for herself, and grabbing a beer for the both of them. She nudged the door closed with an expert swing of the hip and found a wall to lean on, digging in. Pen-Pen popped the beer tab and readied the straw.

While Misato ate, Shinji worked. His thumb and forefinger made straighter, cleaner cuts than any tool he could name. Rubber, metal, wood or stone, there was no difference. Surgical tubing would have been fine for a prototype, but he needed a better alternative, something smaller, low profile. Rei had to _wear_ her new device. Or he had to implant it. Shinji felt his mouth go dry.

Another beer can hissed open, and Shinji fixed his guardian with a sour look. Misato leaned against the kitchen counter, between the sink and fridge. She stuck her tongue out. "It's only my second one today. I missed this morning's."

Shinji just rolled his eyes and went back to work, while Misato mused about her dinner, and the remains of. "Our washer didn't clean dishes?"

Parts of an electric motor slipped out of Shinji's hands, and he looked up at the woman, staring. His fingers twitched, but he could not find the words to voice his disbelief. Misato took that as answer enough and smiled, heading out of the kitchen and towards her room. She reached for the hem of her tank top just as she passed him, and Shinji found himself twisting to follow her, first with his eyes, then his head and shoulders.

The boy wondered then, who was the least functional. The woman who disrobed so casually, or the boy who barely registered it. Her shirt was gone by the time Shinji found his voice, and the door slid shut by the time he spoke.

"...No, it didn't."

* * *

><p>Sorhyu Asuka Langley gnashed her teeth, and railed at the unfairness of life. She needed transportation. <em>Rei<em> had a car, or at least the potential for a car. Or could borrow Misato's. The teenager had all but stomped out of her shower, having dressed without drying. She grabbed the cause of her frustration and headed over to Misato's apartment, some twenty feet away.

The door opened in response to her keycard, and Asuka let herself in. "Misato? Anyone home?"

Silence was her answer. No delicious smells or the foul stink of an instant-meal-experiment. Pulling out her eyepatch, the pilot held it up to her eye and scanned each room. Nothing on thermal in any of the rooms or through the apartment walls. The television was off, and Asuka couldn't even find the _penguin_. Asuka ended the scan on the kitchen interior wall, pocketing her prosthetic with a huff. Misato was at work, and was thus unavailable to solve her problem.

She had run out of shampoo.

The convenience store a block over didn't carry her brand and she had pointedly ignored the myriad other off-label bottles, even as a stopgap. Her hair was still wet, and the back of her t-shirt was soaked. The girl grabbed a towel from Misato's closet, fuming, and not quietly. If Rei wasn't in her room, she was _probably _down in the parking garage, or at NERV. Effectively miles away, as far as Asuka was concerned.

No sign of the golden boy either, but that wasn't a surprise. Ikari was in and out of the building at all hours. He was at least _quiet_, a point in his favor, but the boy still bothered her. What he did to the _tank _was still fresh in her mind, even a week later. Dangerous, very dangerous. She was having trouble placing _why_ though. That clip was more intense than she'd ever seen him, other than when he left to brood, and- _mien Gott _she was sounding like a bad pulp novel. Abort, _Abort!_

She punctuated that termination of thought with the assistance of a nearby wall. Her forehead made a satisfyingly resonant sound. Two thumps got her back on track, and her thoughts shifted to Rei. Asuka was coping, compartmentalizing, and she knew it. Something stank in NERV, and it reached all the way up to _Ikari Gendo_. The girl felt her jaw tighten. Rei was a problem, no- Rei still _had_ problems, and Asuka had no idea how to solve them, or even where to start.

Misato was out of the question, same for Akagi-sensei... or any other adult. The realization hit her hard, almost enough to make her double over. She couldn't even trust _Kaji_. Asuka needed allies, and the pickings were slim in Tokyo-3. Left with nothing else to do but snoop, Asuka started picking her way through the apartment. One particular door caught her eye, and she realized Misato had a home office. A musty dusty home office at that. The girl wrinkled her nose and closed the door behind her.

The Tank-punching-Wunder was another problem. Asuka couldn't fight Gendo, not now, not the way she wanted to. Shinji though, Shinji though she just couldn't pin down. Her jaw strained again, on the other side that time. Boys were pigs, and blind in so many ways... but no boy could be _that_ dense; hormones made people stupid, not _blind._

And the boy had to be super-powered, and _magical_ at that. That was just insult upon insult as far as Asuka was concerned, and her blood started to run hot. Blatant violation of physics she could get, AT-fields were localized bubbles of subjective reality, but the _Gott-damned tank_. She recognized the demonstration for what it was, but there was no denying the visceral image of fifty eight thousand pounds sailing ninety feet, in complete defiance of inertia.

Still, all of that was just a smokescreen, a distraction. Everything came back to Rei... and how she was being brushed aside.

Asuka found herself back where she started, in the entry hallway near the kitchen. She raised her fist, ready to punch the wall. Before her hand could make contact, the apartment shook. A great number of things happened in Asuka at that moment. Blood drained from her face, and her lips twisted up in a scowl. The subject of her confusion had decided to blunder in by some cosmic whim. Shinji rounded the hallway corner, shuffling into the living room. He stopped on a dime, blinking at Asuka. She thumped her head on the wall one final time before turning to face her opponent.

Some part of her kicked itself for not actually strapping her eyepatch on, it made glaring more effective. Two blue eyes worked just fine though, and she made a point to look down her nose at him, even though Shinji stood some two feet taller.

"Do you know when Misato will be back?" Asuka planted both hands on her hips and fixed the boy with a _look_, scowling. At that moment she remembered grabbing the empty bottle before leaving her apartment.

The boy proved to be useless, shrugging. "She's at NERV."

Asuka held back the snarl, but only just. "I know that! Do you know when she'll be back?" She started to tap the bottle against her thigh, and her scowl intensified.

He shook his head, but managed to gut out a question. She didn't answer right away. Instead, she tossed the bottle, maybe a little harder than absolutely necessary. Not that it mattered, Golden Boy just waved his arm and there the bottle was, safe and sound. Asuka was about to elaborate when Shinji cut her off, holding a hand up for delay. He flicked the cap open and took a whiff, and his nose curled. Whatever Asuka had planned on saying died in her throat.

"Wait here." Was all he said.

Asuka had lifted her hand, ready to give the boy a piece of her mind, he had already turned away. Asuka felt her wrist go limp, and she followed his path out with her one good eye. He didn't head back toward his room, or try to move past her. Instead, he made his way for the balcony. When he hopped up on the rail, Asuka found herself moving, going from standing to dashing in two and a half strides. The boy turned on one heel and back to face her, seemingly unconcerned about the _seven story drop_. She couldn't help but notice he still had the empty bottle of shampoo in one hand.

He jumped, and it took Asuka a painfully long second to realize he went _up_. She rounded the dining room table and stomped out onto the balcony, craning her neck up to catch him cross the ninth floor and scale the roof. Shinji came back a minute later, jumping off the roof and _landing_ right next to her. The patio furniture and planters rattled in response..

"You don't want to use this stuff." Shinji tossed her empty boutique brand soap aside and handed her a self-bottled something-or-other. Still dripping wet, Asuka made a fair show of _bristling_, hands clenched at her sides and shaking.

At that moment, Misato swept into the apartment with her uniform jacket draped over one arm. Asuka remembered the Major had been making a habit of coming home halfway through the day to take a shower and prep for long nights. Misato flashed her pilots a distracted smile, and Shinji unknowingly took the opportunity to escape, once again via the balcony.

Misato passed by Asuka, but the other girl didn't notice, still focused on the new bottle. The Major cocked her head to one side. "Did Shinji drop that off? I would have told him if we were out."

Asuka blinked, and her head snapped up, staring at Misato. "Huh?"

The older woman pointed at the bottle, and made a point taking her beret off and shaking her hair out. It _sparkled,_ and both of Asuka's eyes twitched. "That's the shampoo he makes."

Shinji had vanished, and there was no other target worthy of her fury. The redhead blinked again and turned back to the bottle, and her fingers dug in. "_Kotze."_

* * *

><p>"Nanba-chan! wait up!"<p>

The black-haired girl twisted on one heel, blinking owlishly. Kikuchi Ami raced down the road, kicking up a trail of dust behind her. Nanba Kasumi faced her friend, but continued to walk toward the shrine. The old road had been buckled by floods and combat, but the tall wild grasses held on just the same. Panting, the other girl bent over with her hands on her knees, begging her friend to stop.

Huffing and puffing, Ami finally caught enough breath to speak. "Togusa-san said the man moved like Ikari-kun, even with the suit..."

That was the pressing question on a lot of people's minds. The Evangelion pilots were something of open secrets in Tokyo-3, especially within the high school itself. Kasumi's little religious study club had mushroomed overnight, and the girl had been hard pressed to give her new inductees any concrete answers. It wasn't like she had any herself.

The senior shook her head and sighed, offering half an answer before trailing off. "We all saw him during the school attack..."

Kasumi cradled her school bag in both arms, and her lips drew up into a thin line. She was _sure_; you couldn't forget something like that. Not just how Ikari fought, but all of it, the aura, and the undeniable impression of _victory_.

Letting her arms drop to the side, Kasumi let the bag hang by one hand and shook her head. "I just don't know anymore. Too much is happening."

Shinto was about interaction, and the _separation_ of man and spirit. A spiritual lifestyle, an awareness, it prepared her for a lot of things, but not when gods walked the earth. Not that Ikari was _necessarily_ a god. Maybe a more recent descendant. The original Imperial Family of Japan died in Second Impact, ending that line of Amaterasu...

Ami gave her friend a wry smirk. "'In a chaotic life, seek guidance from kind spirits, and be pure in mind and body'?"

Kasumi's face screwed up in a playful pout, reaching out to snatch some tall grass and toss it at her friend. Ami laughed, shielding herself with both arms. The older girl huffed. "No fair, quoting me! I could really use some guidance though..."

After picking the grass out of her hair, Ami smiled. "You always seem more relaxed after leading a ceremony, may as well take it one day at a time?"

That plan suited Kasumi just fine, and the pair started toward the shrine in earnest. More of the curious and somewhat faithful were already probably there. Ami was right too, Kasumi _did_ usually feel better after performing a ritual. The two girls continued on in silence, while the late-afternoon trains pulled into the station. Behind them, the solar towers spun in place, aiming to catch the sun.

One particular thought leapt into Ami's mind, and a smile followed shortly. Kasumi raised an eyebrow at her friend, and Ami had an eager answer for her. "You know, if that was Ikari-kun... he looked great in tight latex."

Kasumi was quiet, until finally she matched Ami's smile with one of her own. "I'll say."

* * *

><p>For the past ten years, apathy and a single-minded force of will had governed her life. With several months of new, unaltered experience behind her, Rei could tell the difference between mere existence, and <em>living<em>. She rather enjoyed that understanding. She'd almost been overwhelmed on those first few nights taking the altered prescription. Her hormones shifting into normal regulation had nearly done her in.

Now though, cars passed her by on the street. People noticed her as they crossed paths. Sunlight felt warm and the air was cool, edging into humid. On the train heading for the suburbs and Misato's apartment, Rei smiled to herself. To some, ignorance was bliss. To Rei, _awareness_ was bliss.

The idea of coming home from school was also still fresh and new to her, being able to acknowledge Misato's flat as a place to live in, instead of a mere shelter. Her old apartment had been... less than, somehow. Objectively speaking the Major's residence was an incredible step upward in comfort and utility, but for the longest time, Rei never noticed the difference, nor would she have ever thought to compare. Even as she opened the front door and crossed the threshold, Rei couldn't help but feel somewhat ambivalent about her past. Misato-san however had been _horrified_ at the state of Rei's dwelling, but the pilot herself could not fully comprehend _why_. Her old apartment had been sufficient, after all, just like Misato's.

Her roommates were nowhere to be seen, but she could hear Asuka through the common wall both units shared. Better to say Rei heard Asuka's choice in radio station. Ikari-kun was most likely on the roof, or in the parking garage working on something. The kitchen table was still flooded with the components and sketches for her new infusion pump. Curiosity was also a new and interesting phenomenon, but Rei decided not to indulge. She headed for her room, aiming to satisfy other priorities.

Her room was tiny, but like many things in her life, it was sufficient. Experience with extended hospital stays had taught Rei how to handle herself with an extra appendage, the IV stand and drip bag. It had gotten to the point that she barely even noticed it, until it got in her way. It was simply impractical to work on her car without full mobility, and swimming was not an option, not as long as she had a hole in her arm.

Regarding that hole, Rei set about removing the needle. She closed the IV shunt, careful to avoid disturbing the drip chamber or the tube itself. Withdrawing the needle from the catheter-port in her arm was next. As long as the adjusted LCL solution was active, her accelerated healing was suppressed. Even so, she looked over her fingernails, and wriggled her sock-clad toes, just to be sure.

Unrestrained by the tube and IV stand, she stood and stretched briefly, relishing the pops and crunches of various bones shifting comfortably back into place. It was a habit she picked up from Asuka. As she went about changing from her school uniform, Rei noted she was not entirely used to the sounds as her red-haired friend.

Pain and discomfort had lost their novelty fairly quickly. In the past, she could just power through inconveniences like aches, sickness and injury, relying on that all-encompassing numbness. Rei did miss that sometimes, the almost maniacal focus. But, if she were to be fully honest with herself, the other side effects were not worth it.

Despite the changes in Rei's life, Parts of her though remained machine-like, and she knew it. Her thoughts were sometimes crystal, based on images and fractal associations. Other times she was logical and straightforward. Even so, awareness of one's self was often incomplete. One could not see their mind in a mirror, after all. That sense of self was almost an illusion, or a delusion. Perhaps like a lucid dream. Her life before the change in perspective had been distant, like it had happened to someone else.

Looking over her bare arms and stomach, Rei thought back to the first Angel attack, and her injuries then. Her bones had healed straight, but hair-fine surgical scars tracked across her arms and torso. Considering that her skin was so pale, the lines were almost invisible. And even then, she'd be the first to admit having _no idea_ as to their aesthetic impact. She frowned to herself, thinking back on that choice of words. Language had influenced her thought more than she expected, and Asuka had been accurate, she _did_ talk like a textbook.

A tanktop and loose shorts replaced her uniform. Comfortable clothes were something of a requirement in the apartment, and Misato-san both encouraged and embodied a casual home environment. Her dirty clothes went in the hamper, and Rei found herself with an hour of freedom from the drip. She turned slowly, taking in the walls and simple bed.

Her room had been for storage, previously, lacking windows and a closet. It was again, sufficient, if mostly empty. A hanging stand for her clothes covered one wall, and cardboard boxes full of books and magazines waited for a proper shelf. Misato-san had donated some of her own automotive poster collection, hoping to add some color to the otherwise empty space. Rei had since moved on to magazine clippings. The oldest additions were mathematically precise, cut and pasted up at perfectly right angles. The more recent clippings were increasingly haphazard, and Rei had to admit, livelier.

Rei took another slow turn through her bedroom, having barely touched her hour of free range motion. She looked down at her stack of car magazines, then at the catheter in her arm. Rei's lips pulled to one side, not _quite _pouting. "Perhaps I need an additional hobby."

Thinking further on it, Asuka would probably know more about such things. If nothing else, the Second Child was entertaining company.

* * *

><p>The command center was quiet, in the midst of a shift change. Hyuga was the only senior operator at his station, but his lunch was unpacked on one console, while a thermos of the Prinbow Cafe coffee steamed gently nearby. The commanders where elsewhere, leaving the project heads and lower echelons to relax.<p>

One technician had a particularly dark sense of humor. A section of the massive holographic display had been set aside for an ascending timer, counting the days, hours, minutes and seconds since the last Angel attack. He had programmed it to include a 'percentage certainty of attack', every passing moment made it tick higher and higher.

It had been locked at one-hundred percent for months now.

At her normal bridge station, Ritsuko toyed with her latest distraction. Shinji had dutifully provided her a sample of his inner reserves, and had described it as something like watching a rag soak up water. The power _wanted_ to move, for lack of a better term. Ritsuko had created a secondary container as well, essentially a glare shield, in order to cover the inner container's glass panels.

She twisted the cylinder, and her face lit up and warmed under a tiny pool of sunlight. Inside, an incandescent, almost-imperceptible flake of light seemed to float between crystal spars. It wasn't like a candle flame, or an electric filament. Instead it was more like a chip of shifting gold. At the moment it also repeatedly defied contemporary laws of physics.

For example, The little point of energy never wavered. It produced the same amount of heat and light, even days after Shinji had provided the sample. Ritsuko had the thought then to see what it'd do next to a photovoltaic panel. The result was nothing; no reaction. The light would not warm water or paper or anything else she had considered exposing.

The light warmed her hands and skin, but nothing else.

Each test had made her more and more unwilling to _open_ the container as well. Ritsuko simply had no idea what would happen, but results might be dangerous, or even lethal. She had bottled lightning, and until she made a second cylinder, Ritsuko was loathe to release it.

"So... What now?"

Ritsuko looked up from her project and blinked. Misato sat nearby, pensive and thoughtful. The scientist hadn't even noticed her arrival.

Misato tried again, when Ritsuko just continued to stare at her. The dark-haired woman felt her shoulders drop. "What now? I mean, we're a privatized research and development company... What does that even mean?"

"I mean, what does it mean to NERV. Our big plan is _licensing_. What are we going to license?" Misato shifted in her seat, and the chair springs seemed to sigh for her.

Blinking again was Ritsuko's standby response. That question however, she could answer. "Anything we can think of, really. Anything we can safely release to the public without compromising ourselves. Setting aside the Third as our gambit, we have cybernetics, medical technologies, computer science and engineering..."

The operations director started to play with her hair, twisting the end of one side between her fingers. "So where do we start?"

Ritsuko shrugged. "Our human resources department has been picking through employee records for experience in the private sector, marketing and the like. We have things to sell, but we don't quite yet know _how_."

"Huh." Misato normally would have left it at that, but one particular detail wouldn't let her go. "Wait, we have an HR department?"

The blonde woman just reached out and very deliberately tapped the console she sat next to, the one clearly marked as direct MAGI access. Misato let out a soft 'oh' in comprehension. She fidgeted again, uneasy. Ritsuko turned back to her container, but her heart honestly wasn't in it.

There was something, however. "We're getting our first group of clients in this week."

Misato perked up, hand freezing with her hair twisted around two fingers. "Yeah?"

"American Research teams from the JPL, MIT. Kenya's sending someone from their university of medicine..." Ritsuko leaned over to her console and brought up the schedule. She tapped in commands without looking away her friend. "You didn't get a memo?"

Misato gave the other woman a tiny smile. It was the happiest she'd looked all afternoon. "You know me, Rits. Paperwork and I... And my office?"

Just a bit chagrined, Ritsuko nodded with her own slight smile. She leaned back in her chair and stretched, the upcoming event temporarily forgotten. Her back let out a series of crackling pops, and Ritsuko let out a long sigh of relief. Misato's own grin slipped, taken over by concern.

"Ah, Ritsuko... How long have you been here?" The dark-haired woman subconsciously tugged at her own cheek, glancing at the bags under Ritsuko's eyes.

Ritsuko felt her lips quirk up in a smirk. "Literally, figuratively? Existentially?"

Misato's hands fell to her lap, after folding one leg over the other. "Cute, I mean here in the Geofront, in the labs?"

The blonde gave her friend a dry look that answered all questions. Misato let out a snort, but smiled all the same. "Excuse me for being concerned. You're as pale as Rei, but at least she has an excuse."

Normally the bickering would have escalated, but neither Ritsuko or Misato were particularly up for a long, drawn out battle of wits. Turning back to her screen, Ritsuko remembered the schedule, and got back on track.

She tapped a few keys, scrolling down, but as Ritsuko neared the end, her face fell, and she trailed off. "Closer to home we have the JSSDF of course, Tokyo University..."

Before Misato could ask, Ritsuko pulled off her glasses and sighed, leaning back into her chair until her collarbone faced skyward. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and groaned. "Shit... I forgot about him."

If it weren't for the way Ritsuko said it, Misato would have pushed full bore into teasing. Even so, she couldn't keep the knowing tone out of her voice, not completely. "Him who?"

"Tokita." Ritsuko's voice dropped lower into dismay and disgust. "Smarmy troll. He's one of the lead engineers at Japan Heavy Industries. The bad kind of engineer; good with numbers but not with physics."

"Huh?"

"Numbers as in money, and an insufferable know-it-all."

Misato blinked once, then _winced_.

* * *

><p>Around the world, eleven men and women secured themselves in their homes, offices, research facilities and armored bunkers. In the rural hills of Western Europe, a mansion sat on the top of an earthen rise. Inside, oak furniture and century-old wall paneling gave way to a forced, all-consuming blackness. Kihl Lorenz felt the whine of anti-surveillance jamming pick up, first in his ears, and then his nerves and eyes.<p>

The darkness shifted, and Kihl was no longer in his home, and no longer Kihl. Instead he was SEELE 01. He sat in a pool of light, surrounded by the ten familiar monoliths, each marked with their number and declaration; sound only. His own identity was similarly masked.

SEELE 02 hummed. "This situation grows unstable."

04 clucked in disappointment. "Not so unstable as to forget our places." The monolith seemed to turn, facing 01 and looking at Kihl through the disguise. "How was Berlin? Did the studio lights treat you well?"

Teasing at each others identities was an old game amongst the equally ancient council. Kihl paid it no more attention than necessary. "As well as can be expected, Prime Minister."

After the pleasantries, the meeting progressed. Like many times before, SEELE spoke with many voices, and one purpose.

"We had expected better of Ikari."

"It is a gamble, outside our normal projections, or that of the Scrolls."

"Another concern we must address. What of Ikari? And his son. The disguise is effective, for its simplicity."

"Indeed, this demonstration confirms it; the contractor's intelligence is legitimate."

"And the quashed reports of the JSSDF."

"NERV's push into the private sector will be short-lived. Our countermeasures are in place."

"There is no concern then, regarding the pilot."

"None. This is similar to a plan Ikari had intended for the First Child. He is adapting to an imperfect scenario."

The shared chamber fell silent at that. Now that the topic had been brought up a second time, the council could discuss the more pressing of situations. SEELE 05 picked up the conversation.

"We have three viable predictions now. The version Ikari Yui started with has changed twice in the past twelve months."

"Further research indicates that the point of divergence is at least six months _before_ the Third Angel arrived." 05 paused for a moment. The others heard the shuffling of paper on the other side of the monolith. "We have confirmed with our Agent that until that point, our scenario was proceeding as expected."

"The first alteration refuses to translate properly, using an as-yet unidentified First Ancestral linguistic group. The second alteration, and the one we all currently remember, is a single phrase or concept, 'Red'."

SEELE 01 took up the briefing once more. "A single word is not enough to define our futures on. Until further notice, we must refer back to the previous instance of the Scrolls, and act accordingly."

02 hummed again, thoughtfully. "It will take great effort to align the probabilities once more. Gaghiel was intended to intercept the First Angel en-route to Tokyo-3."

"The sample is under safekeeping in NERV as we speak. If nothing else, Ikari's plans for ADAM are still in line with our scenario."

The seventh monolith shifted, impatiently. "Our man has proven unreliable in the past, easily compromised by his ideology."

"Katsuragi and the Second are his levers. We have the inspector well in hand."

07 flickered, and the councilman appeared, undisguised for all to see. He looked at each monolith in turn, glaring through the holograms at the people behind them. "I disagree."

One by one the other monoliths vanished, until only Kihl remained.

* * *

><p>Another school day ended, and Asuka found herself walking the last leg of the trip home alone.<p>

She could understand Rei getting sick notes, drifting wordlessly out of class with a complimentary ride home from Section Two. Or simply choosing to hang out with someone else, the First Child had been hanging around the nerd and jock during lunch, after all. That still didn't help Asuka and her lack of company. The oh-so-wonderful Third was _busy_, or at least that was his excuse. Busy sucking up to Misato, probably, or someone else in NERV.

And speak of the devil, a painfully familiar blue sports car drew up alongside the sidewalk. A two-note blast of the horn signaled Asuka's day going from bad to worse.

Misato leaned over from the driver side and pushed open the door, smiling past those huge sunglasses she adored. "Glad I caught you! Get in, something's come up."

Asuka tossed her school bag behind the seat with a snort, and plopped down, huffing. "Couldn't it have waited?" She jerked her chin at the hillside suburbs, and the general direction of their apartments.

"Maybe," Misato admitted, pulling back out into traffic. "But I was in the area. Our first wave of potential clients will arrive at the end of the week, and Ritsuko and I want you there as part of the demonstration."

The pilot felt her uncovered eyebrow arch upward. In the face of such a guileless pretense, snark was _required_. It was her righteous prerogative as a teenager "...Again, this couldn't have waited?"

The car glided through traffic while Misato spun the wheel hand over hand, aiming for the highway. Sunlight washed over the window and flooded the interior, and every bit of chrome and steel inside lit up like a flare. Asuka's prosthetic cut through the glare on one side, but Misato's glasses were almost too hard to look at.

The light didn't do a thing to stop Misato from talking though. "I was in the area."

Asuka bit off her first, natural response. Instead she huffed again and recrossed her arms, not above pouting. It was petty, but she was glad Misato could still see her briefly stop squinting long enough for an uncovered eye roll. After that, Asuka made a point of staring out the window, away from the other woman.

Still, she _was_ curious. "So what do you want from me?"

Misato didn't answer until Asuka looked her way. When the pilot glanced sidelong, Misato tapped her sun glasses, and Asuka got the message. "Plus," The major added. "Anything else we can think of. Or anything you think of."

What little conversation the pair had ground to a halt, and the silence stretched out for several minutes. The car bumped over a line of interlocking steel and concrete teeth, set into the road. They just crossed the barrier from Fortress City to interdiction zone. Misato's apartment complex wasn't far now.

Angling toward the exit ramp, Misato's lips tugged down into a tiny, pensive frown. She looked at the pilot out the corner of her eye. "Asuka... is something wrong?"

The girl just kept staring out the window, utterly silent.

"If there is a problem, I need to know. it's my job as operation's director. I can't help you if I don't know." Misato drummed her fingers against the steering wheel, smiling and angling her head down to look up at Asuka. "You know, I could always order you to tell me."

Asuka's jaw _nearly_ dropped, and she whipped her head around, hair waving behind her. She could not believe it, at all. The woman had _no idea_ what was going on. For a moment Asuka considered just telling her, but she held her tongue, just barely. Even so, such a blatant assault on her pride could _not_ be ignored.

The Second Child brought her nose up so high and fast, her eye patch strained against the straps. "No, there is nothing the matter that would affect my piloting. My piloting is _perfect_."

* * *

><p>Asuka stormed up the stairs, vaulting as many steps as her legs would allow. She'd left Misato waiting at the elevator, and welcomed the burn in her muscles. Anything to get a little <em>less<em> angry. She wanted to go home, relax, and _not think_ for maybe two hours. And splurge on takeout food. Reaching for her door, she swiped the card key, but something stopped her.

The door was already unlocked.

Hitting the console, the door slid into the wall pocket, and Asuka stepped in. Maybe Rei had decided to stop by... Pulling her shoes off, the pilot tossed her bag at the open closet and headed for the main room. All she needed was the phone on the... end table? There was no end table. No tables at all, or chairs or even...

"Where. The _fuck_. Is _all my stuff!?"_

Her apartment was barren. Asuka stood at the end of the entry hallway, jaw hanging loose. The unpacked boxes were gone. So was the couch, chairs and dining table. She turned slowly, taking in her kitchen. The counters were different, as were the cabinets. Dishes she'd left in the sink that morning had vanished, _along with the sink_.

It was no apartment. It was the padded room she'd spend the rest her days screaming into.

Something in the master bedroom moved, slamming into something hard enough to shake the walls. The girl felt her fists curl up tight so tight, tendons creaked. Right at that moment, Sorhyu Asuka Langley wanted nothing more than to have a weapon in her hand. Asuka stopped and clenched her eyes shut, willing herself to believe '_when I open them, everything will be back where it was, and I will not be screaming my lungs out today. Ein... zwei... drei...'_

On the count of three, Asuka opened her eyes. The bedroom door slid open without a sound, and the_ gottverdammte _Third Child ducked under the frame. A muscle along Asuka's jaw spasmed, and a vein stood out on her temple, even as her face burned red. Shinji all but _ambled_ toward her, dusting his hands off as if nothing were wrong.

"I was working on Rei's infusion pump and I got to thinking about making this more compact. So I remembered you had a _lot_ of stuff, and I just wanted to help, so..."

Shinji rambled, heading deeper into the living room. There Asuka realized the room wasn't _empty_, but there wasn't anything taking up the center spaces. Instead the walls were covered in cabinets and consoles. A wood-faced, floor-to-ceiling monstrosity dominated the side wall opposite the master bedroom. The Third reached out and touched a door panel with two fingertips, and it swung open. Mixing a growl with a squeak, Asuka couldn't help the tiny jump, or keep the shock out of her voice. A _couch_ appeared, sliding out of the cabinet, cushions and all.

He turned back and had to gall to _smile_. "I redid every room with stuff like this. Almost perfect space-saving. Bedrooms, bathrooms. Hadn't gotten to the hallway closet..."

Asuka meanwhile stared at the couch, then back up at him. Slowly and deliberately, she pinched each finger beneath her thumbs, cracking each joint one after the other. Her jaw worked next, teeth grinding loud enough to be heard. Shinji took an unconscious step back. Good, he should be afraid. Her uncovered eye practically _glowed_.

Step by step, Shinji backpedaled, first heading for the balcony window, but Asuka cut him off. He changed directions, this time shuffling towards the kitchen. Focused wholly on the girl, he couldn't see what was behind him, especially not the extended counter and cabinets. He snagged his heel on the edge, and Asuka was there.

Hands raised like claws, the girl stepped into the boy, digging her fingers into his shirt. No time or chance to draw blood, but she was tempted, so very tempted. When she had a good grip, Asuka dragged Shinji down to her level, until her prosthetic bumped into his face. She choked off the slow boil of invective that built up in the pit of her stomach. Any other time, she would have been happy to unleash it, and demolish the entire room before her like some primal volcano god.

She had priorities, however.

Whispering, Asuka tilted her head just so, aiming right at his ear and making sure he heard every word. The boy practically shivered when her breath tickled his ear.

"Where. Is my stuff."

Shinji took a half-step back, but bumped into the counter, truly trapped. "I-I put it away. I cleaned everything and fixed whatever was broken or worn out."

Asuka let out a breath, slowly. She was close enough to feel his body heat, and the sweat that built up on the side of his neck. The fear was delicious. "You touched my stuff. You did my laundry."

The boy could only dig himself deeper. "I've done Misato's laundry. and Rei's."

There were no words for the blatant violation, the unforgivable trespass. It was simply _not proper._ Asuka pulled away with a snarl, all but breathing fire. Shinji took the chance to make a break for it, and very nearly made it, crossing the kitchen in the space of a single step. Asuka was faster, however, and her arm snapped out, driving a fist into the wall and stopping him cold. While the stinging pain worked its way through Asuka's knuckles, something inside the cabinet shifted. A panel flipped open, and a thin board and hinge contraption fell out.

The hidden dining room table deployed between them.

Shinji winced each time the contraption bounced. "I made it better. I was only trying to help."

Asuka raised her hands to the heavens and brought them down, slamming into the surface provided. "Get out. Of my. _Fucking_. _Apartment."_

* * *

><p>A bit less than an hour later, Asuka paced back and forth outside her apartment door, fists clenching and unfolding. At some point Rei had come home, carrying her drip stand and watching the redhead stalk. It took five laps before Asuka registered her presence, and two more after that before she stopped long enough for a greeting.<p>

Rei cocked her head to one side. "Is something wrong?"

Asuka didn't answer with words. A rumbling, gnashing scream worked its way out of her throat. She flung her arms up first, then lunged for the door. She _almost_ slammed her fists against it, but stopped at the last minute.

When she was finally spent, Asuka sank down into a low wide stance, limp and more than a little livid. Her uncovered eye rolled and locked onto Rei, half-hidden by her bangs. Arms flailing, the Second Child stumbled over the words, but her hands tried to speak volumes. Fingers hooked into claws throttling an imaginary throat shifted into one fist punching an open palm, complete with a burst of dark laughter. Rei watched, unblinking, with the same general intensity of a cat following a bit of string.

Then Asuka's apparent good mood vanished, and she managed to grind out something intelligible. "Stupid- glowing. Ikari-_asshole_."

The blue-haired girl took the explanation at face value, but it was clear she was missing the full context. Asuka could handle that. She flicked one arm out at the door, in what she hoped was the universally understood sign of 'please, after you'. Rei took the hint and went inside, and Asuka stomped in behind her.

Rei entered the kitchen and took everything in, slowly. It had only been two days since she'd last been inside. Bare floors, unadorned, functional cabinets. She looked back at Asuka. "I do not understand. You have cleaned, but... the cabinetry is upsetting?"

Asuka stepped into the dining room and spun, arms out and waving at every wall and bit of bare floor. The one covered eye _probably_ screwed with her expressions, but not _that_ much. There was no way Rei could miss the incredulous look on her face. She shook her arms a few times for emphasis, and Rei just watched.

Finally though, she found the words for it. "_I had stuff!"_

The shrill shriek at least made the _emotion_ clearer, if not the actual reason. A closer look at the cabinets and redone kitchen filled in the blanks. Rei blinked once, smiling slightly. "Ah. Ikari-kun has applied himself to your apartment."

Asuka shook her head furiously. "No! Stop, I don't want to think about what else he has applied to my apartment!"

She held up one finger and stalked into the living room and the wall-side cabinet, giving the front panel a decent kick. The door bounced open and the couch inside unfolded. The bit of furniture seemed to kneel before the Second Child. Another cabinet became a deployable desk.

Whirling to face Rei, Asuka turned with her hands planted on hips and _glared._ "He touched my stuff. He fucked with _my _apartment."

Rei was quiet for a moment, taking a step closer to look Asuka in the eye. Finally, she spoke. "I will not allow you to harm Ikari-kun." Asuka very nearly choked on her tongue, and Rei continued speaking. "If this is an offense, Ikari-kun must be disciplined, but I will not allow assault or murder."

Coughing, Asuka tried to clear her throat. There was no way Rei could have just _said that_, so straight-faced. She just stared at the other girl, nonplussed. Asuka _really_ hoped it was a joke, she truly did.

"I'm not going to kill him!" Shock gave way to suspicion, and Asuka's uncovered eye narrowed. "...Did you just use sarcasm?"

There was a long, drawn out moment of silence, and Rei stared at Asuka, looking as if she had asked an obvious question. Perhaps she had.

"Well I still want to kill him, but not like with blood and guts..." Asuka's voice shifted from petulant to hopeful, wheedling. "I could shave his head in the middle of the night, that's fine, right?"

Rei shook her head, no. Asuka's eyebrow inched upward, still hoping to bargain.

"Tear the seams out of all his pants?" She earned another shake. Rei apparently wasn't interested in a teenager's form of justice.

Even so, Asuka made one more offer. "Glue his hands together?"

Again, Rei denied her. Asuka threw her hands up, then bowed over limp, letting her arms hang down and loose. She gave Rei another incredulous look."Give me _something _here!"

Rei tilted her head once more. It had become her go-to inquisitive gesture. "I still don't understand why you are upset." She nodded at the new furniture and immaculately cleaned apartment. "Is this not a positive change?"

"Kinda!" Asuka admitted, but it wasn't that simple. She threw her arm out, waving at the redone everything. "That's not the damn point! He... He..."

The Second Child let out another gnashing, throaty growl. Inwardly, Asuka knew it was a losing battle. Regardless, she made herself a mental note to refresh the other girl on the concept of personal space. It wouldn't require hands-on examples, at least.

Asuka sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, exhausted. "Just... Whatever. Help me find where he put all my stuff."

* * *

><p>Slowly but surely, the girls picked their way through Asuka's altered apartment. The pilot gave herself a figurative kick in the head for succumbing to alliteration so easily.<p>

Collapsing furniture and hiding beds weren't exactly a revolutionary concept. Asuka had enough experience with college dorm living and crazed attempts at space-saving to understand the appeal. She had to admit the _design_ wasn't bad. Everything was very clean and well-made, if extremely cabinets themselves were all smooth and white, coated with that common sort of muted-shine paint.

Asuka also had to admit that the new furnishings reminded her of Germany, and the modern buildings she lived and worked in. Taken all together though, with multiple cabinets lying half-open and panels being swung aimlessly, the room was something of a nightmare puzzle-box. One she was not too happy about imagining herself as the devil locked inside it.

Nearly every appliance and fixture in the kitchen was hidden behind some sneaky or stealthy bit of paneling. The stove, dishwasher and water heaters were all tucked away until needed. The refrigerator remained unchanged, but the golden boy had taped up a diagram to one side; a note for later. Asuka leaned in and squinted, even as her eye-patch cleaned up the drawings and chicken-scratch kanji. It took her a moment to realize the eye piece was translating for her as well.

Then she actually _read _the plans. Asuka realized that if he'd had the time, Shinji would have stuffed her fridge into a rotating cubbyhole, hiding it completely. Asuka let her head thump into the cool plastic door, growling faintly. The _why _of it all still eluded her.

Yet another cabinet near the hidden dining table contained a set of wooden chairs. Aside from being packed in like puzzle pieces, they looked normal, and reasonably comfortable. Asuka started pulling them out one by one. It was her apartment and she was going to have it however she wanted, clean or messy.

Looking over her shoulder, Asuka watched Rei investigate the table's release catch. "Did Misato mention the demo we're doing in a couple days?"

Rei took a quick step back before the unfolding table clipped her arms on the downswing. Blinking twice, she stared down at it for a moment before answering. "I'm aware of it."

"Ugh. This place was _normal_ this _morning_." Asuka snarled, shoving the last chair where it belonged. "This is so stupid. You should be involved with everything as much as anyone else."

The table still kept a firm hold on Ayanami's attention. It had deployed almost silently. She hunkered down to explore the hinge mechanism, talking around the springs. "I am satisfied with my current situation."

Asuka let out a gusty sigh, puffing her cheeks up. The pilot couldn't really remember the last time _she'd_ been satisfied with anything. She rubbed at her covered eye before pulling the patch off and pocketing it.

"Well, you shouldn't be." She rounded the unpacked chairs and headed deeper into the kitchen, past the other girl. "Times like this are when you should take a stand, fight!"

Rei pulled her drip stand out of the way while Asuka passed. The Second started closing cabinets left and right. Rei cocked her head yet again, curious. "Why?"

Huffing, Asuka closed another kitchen panel. "Because if you don't, you'll never get anywhere."

"Where would I want to go?" Asuka had to admit, she hadn't really expected an answer. Rei tilted her head quizzically, and Asuka was briefly struck by the impression she was being played once again. She pushed ahead regardless of Rei's deadpan tone. "You're doing that thing again, where you're being literal."

Rei peered over another cabinet door before pushing it closed. "Ikari-kun didn't mean to offend you."

Asuka turned away and glared at the cabinet interior in front of her, confronted with what appeared to be a _retractable spice-rack. _The girl gave it a fitful spin before looking up at Rei. "Then he shouldn't have _touched my stuff_. Or gone into my apartment."

Something must have set her off, because Rei straightened her clothes, took up her drip stand and all but marched over to the hallway corridor. There she turned on one heel and planted herself like a gatekeeper, almost but not quite barring Asuka from the rest of the apartment.

Rei ended this all with a level stare right into the Second's eyes. "He wants to do nice things. It is how he connects to people."

That pulled Asuka up short, and she made a careful effort to keep her voice low and calm. "Then someone ought to teach that _idiot_ you don't connect to people through their things!"

* * *

><p>After resolving their minor standoff, the girls moved out into the rest of the apartment, picking over the rest of the changes. Asuka liked a bit of clutter, so they only put the kitchen partially back together, closing the remaining doors and storing some of the appliances. Most of the living room furniture had been absorbed into the walls, like the couch from before. Asuka eyed the door to the master bedroom, <em>her<em> bedroom, and shook her head. Best to save the worst for last.

The hallway off the living room had gotten a lot narrower when it had been filled with floor to ceiling cabinets. Fortunately, those only held towels and linens. The second bedroom had been redone as well, with yet more fancy self-storing furniture. Without a bed or futon taking up the floor, the objectively tiny room felt massive. Asuka had yet to really find a use it, but it was another example of a boundary being crossed. It was the _principle of the thing._

There was another place they hadn't checked yet. Asuka turned and headed for the bathroom, dreading what she'd find. Rei all but loomed behind her, watching and waiting. Nothing seemed wrong at first. To one side was the small alcove containing the toilet. She laid her hand on the door handle and took a deep breath, but did not exhale. Asuka yanked the door open and willed her eyes to stay open. After a moment, she let out a happy sigh.

Asuka smiled and tossed a relieved look back at Rei. "One for two. Here's hoping I'm lucky."

Of course, as soon as she said that, Asuka put herself in Shinji's shoes. A boy who wanted to do... something. Something nice for a girl. A boy who apparently dealt with a girlfriend, Misato, and Rei for the past year. Asuka followed her own chain of logic to its end, punctuating each new prediction with a wince. She turned and carefully made her way towards the other room, where the actual _bath_ was.

She grabbed the handle and turned, easing the door open bit by bit. She lined her good eye up with the crack between door and frame, braced for the worst. Then, Asuka sagged down, letting out a long breath. She stood up taller, like she'd just managed to shed a massive weight. "Oh thank God he didn't get to the bathtub."

"Actually I think he's planning something."

Asuka flailed, stumbling back and nearly bowling Rei over. Instead the two girls simply tilted back and into the wall behind them, the backs of their heads thumping against it with a low, hollow sound. The good feelings from just a second ago leeched away, and Asuka was left with an aching head and an icy chill that reached into her bones.

She looked up at the newcomer, white-faced and eyes wide. "M-Misato!?"

Major Katsuragi gave the pair a jaunty wave before pulling her beret off, visibly shedding work for her at-home demeanor. That playful lilt to her voice was back again, and had already added a new ache behind Asuka's good eye. To Misato's credit, she seemed content to least leave NERV business back with her car. "I heard shouting earlier."

Indignant, Asuka rocked on her heels before pitching forward, shoulders up and hands clenched at her side. "The walls aren't that thin!"

You _do _have a tendency to project." Misato leaned back out into the kitchen-dining area, and the general state of disorder. "...Were you checking for explosives?"

* * *

><p>He was going to have to figure out a way to make it up to her. That was the only conclusion Shinji could reach.<p>

Of course, at that moment, Shinji realized he needed to _get away_ before she tried to hurt him. He was fairly certain there was nothing she could do _physically_, but that look in Asuka's eye... The boy shivered, again certain that retreat was the proper course of action. Still, the need to appease the girl weighed on him, and Shinji found himself unable to ignore it completely. He could however, change priorities.

To that end, Shinji decided to keep himself occupied. There were so many projects at home he just _had_ to finish before he could feel reasonably comfortable tackling anything outside of the demonstrations scheduled by NERV. Rei's new infuser was coming along nicely, though he'd never realized just how difficult actual _design_ was until he tried it himself. Industrial design, that is, engineering.

There wasn't a magic button he could press that just made it work, made everything come together in his mind. He _had _been applying his innate power to the problem, of course, and Shinji was absolutely certain he had it easier than any given expert. But he did not have a simple solution, not yet.

At the moment though, Shinji needed a break from working small. The small concrete garage was empty of cars, save for Misato's Renault, and the fenced off area holding Rei's project. Taped to one wall was a set of blueprints. The outlines of vehicle bays, hydraulic jacks, cabinets for tools and more were laid out and ready. There was still room for improvement, however, and hastily scribbled notes and additions filled the margins.

The Solar raised his arms and something inside him hummed, readying itself for what was to come. He needed no gloves or tools, and only the most basic of work clothes, a pair of thick pants and boots. He didn't need a shirt either, not when he knew it would have been ruined.

Shinji knew his bare skin was tougher than flying rock and shrapnel.

He brought his fist down and began to work. If Rei and Misato were going to work on cars, Shinji was going to make sure they had the best garage and machine shop ever.

* * *

><p>Ikari Shinji had gone too far.<p>

Asuka stood in the open doorway to the master bedroom, _her_ bedroom. The door itself slid open at the slightest touch, almost floating on air. It just occurred to her then, that all the bedroom walls had been freshly painted as well, or had new wallpaper put up. Nearly every other wall in the apartment had something in front of it.

The stacks of boxes were gone, unpacked, and now Asuka had almost _no_ idea where anything was. Freshly-made dressers and drawers lined walls, giving her some hint, but given the circumstances she was loathe to touch anything. This was the inner-most sanctum, and with it came the fear something might clamor out of the woodworking and attempt to dress her itself.

At the center of it all, up against the far wall, was a new bed. A massive, western style, four poster double-mattress _bed_.

Misato stood behind Asuka, a little numb with shock herself. Meanwhile Rei had simply breezed in, intent on examining the new bed. She found and pulled a polished steel lever built into one of the bedposts. Hidden gears and counterweights shifted, and the bed rose smoothly upward from the floor on embedded tracks. Again, Asuka's eyebrow started to jump madly when she realized Shinji had built a _lifting drawbridge bed_. It stopped half way, and a few moments experimentation proved Rei could push it up to the ceiling, spring-assisted. Asuka and Misato both stared when Rei repeated the procedure in reverse.

Finally, Asuka found her voice. "...He made my bed a deathtrap. Do you _see this_? This... this is cartoon villainy!"

Misato tapped her chin, humming thoughtfully. "I don't know, it seems rather nice..."

Asuka threw her arm out to the side. The evidence was blatant and out in the open. "This is nothing less than deliberate baiting. It has to be. He's luring me into it!"

Ikari had included new sheets and bedding; red edged in white with orange pillowcases.

The girl marched over to the bed and pulled at the comforter. It didn't _look_ hand made, but... Asuka tossed it down and rounded on the older woman. "Where does he _find _the things to make this stuff anyway?"

Misato stifled a laugh, smiling brightly. "I have _no _idea, and I'm a little afraid he'd tell me."

Asuka bit back a snarl, settling for a ragged sigh instead. She screwed up all the indignation and righteous fury burning inside and pushed it down. It just was not the time for it, because at that moment Asuka had been in her school uniform an hour too long. A privacy screen stood in front of the closet, and Asuka ducked behind.

She leaned out of cover, hair hanging back down. Asuka fixed the Major with a dry look. "No peeking."

The dark-haired woman humored her with a permissive wave, laughing weakly. Meanwhile, Rei entertained herself with the moving bed, triggering the mechanism over and over. "If the remodeling makes you uncomfortable, you could stay in my room."

Misato was suddenly _very_ interested in the response to _that_ offer. She made sure to appear as innocent and unobtrusive as possible, watching the screen out the corner of her eye. The girl didn't answer right away, or seem to even acknowledge the offer.

Now mostly redressed, Asuka padded barefoot around the edge of the screen and back into view, wearing a snug pair of jeans and button down blouse. She frowned and hooked her thumbs into the waistband, giving it a quick tug upward.

Misato and Rei watched, looking just as confused as Asuka felt. Despite everything, Asuka felt a tiny smile come on. The last time she and Misato had spent any length of time together, she'd been very much a skirts-and-dresses sort of girl. Either that or plugsuits. The smile got a bit wider when Asuka realized that was the first time Misato had ever seen her wearing pants.

Still, Misato managed to ask Asuka what was wrong.

"...Nothing, just..." Asuka shook her head and finished buttoning up.

She glanced at Rei and was finally going to answer when it hit her. Looking down at her pants, the smile vanished as Asuka shifted side to side. She tried wriggling first, then rocking her hips. A big, back-arching stretch and a quick glance at the new full-length mirror confirmed it, the shirt too. Her voice went low and flat, almost toneless.

"He tailored my clothes." Asuka shifted again, suddenly- _frighteningly _aware of exactly how close the fit was. Back home she'd never been sized for anything, especially since she started filling out. "He _tailored _my _clothes_."

Misato choked back a laugh and tried to fight off a grin. Her eyes cut down past Asuka's collarbone, and one eyebrow arched high. "...All your clothes?"

The bedroom was quiet for a moment while Asuka checked. The incandescent red on her face was all the answer they needed.

Asuka took a deep breath and started counting, first to ten, then twenty. It had never worked before, but at that moment she was up for anything. Misato and Rei looked worried by forty-seven, no doubt concerned she might hit her own customary shade of crimson. Another breath and Asuka was calm. Mostly. She started pacing, still a bit wound up.

Rounding on Misato and Rei, Asuka only had one question. "Has he done this for you?"

Misato wiggled her hand, as if to say 'some but not all'. Rei tilted her head to one side, thinking. "I have no frame of reference either way."

Stamping her foot, Asuka huffed and fumed to herself. There was no justice in the world for her, it seemed. Free expert tailoring accompanied blatant violations of privacy.

Still, Asuka took a moment to just enjoy the fit, even a little. "You'd know if he had." She clapped her hands started to rub her palms together. "Right then. Discipline. For tailoring my stuff, and not having the courtesy to do the same to yours."

* * *

><p>Thirty years ago, Kihl would have paced the length of his office. Instead he sat in his powered chair, barely able to move his arms. "So, it has come to open rebellion."<p>

"You have to admit, it is a clever gambit. Honesty, or the appearance of honesty, can shield NERV from strikes against their credibility."

The other voice came in from the balcony, and the trees and flowers were blooming in post-Impact Munich. Second Impact had warmed the continent, and the old man felt the spring pollen drift into his nose. Or it would have, if not for the sinus filters implanted throughout his skull.

Shaking his head, the old man sighed. "A childish ploy. Gendo has too many secrets, and we all know it. You more than others."

"I know many things yes, but not all things. Even if I did, it's not my place to say and you know it."

Kihl sighed again. Such an imperfect world he lived in. Wasted body, maddeningly cryptic allies and now soul-weaponry madness. SEELE would get to the bottom of it, of course. There would be no other outcome. "Our preparations?"

"Our flight is scheduled and all the appropriate calls have been made, sir. Would you like me to play something, I find it soothing."

The old man sighed for a third, but even he smiled a little. "Perhaps later. Luggage?"

Elsewhere in the mansion, a handful of suitcase clasps snapped shut. "Packed."

* * *

><p>Two days later, Asuka was beginning to call the Geofront her least favorite place to be. It was exhausting, frustrating, and a waste of her otherwise perfectly good Friday off from school. In short, being there was <em>work<em>.

The apartment debacle hadn't helped either. All the cabinets and wall units were _so damn tall, _everything positively loomed over her. That first day after the... remodel, Asuka had almost felt trapped in a museum, or a painfully modern prison. That night, she'd given the moving bed a long, ugly look. Having the choice between a bed and floor, Asuka picked floor.

Now though things were somewhat better. Her curiosity had won over her pride long enough to at least _try _the bed, and it had proved _extremely_ comfortable. Golden boy however was still no where near Asuka's good graces, not by a long shot.

Still, whatever good mood she'd managed to rip from the past few days burned up in the depths of teenage fury. It was time for 'corporate NERV' show and tell.

Set into one of Central Dogma's pyramidal faces, the conference room had an amazing view of the Geofront lake, and the battleship along the shoreline. When Asuka entered, she couldn't help but snort. Called in during the meet-and-greet stage of the day, the pilot had nothing else to do but look pretty. They weren't _really_ going to call on her until it was time for demonstrations.

Asuka however had been required to wear her plugsuit, leaving her simultaneously over _and_ under-dressed for her rank. The eye and brow hidden behind her prosthetic started to twitch violently, and that was just the _start_. The red and black of her pilot gear stood out like a bloody wound amidst the business casual and career military. Misato, again, got away with just her beret, NERV jacket and iconic black mini-dress.

As for _Major_ Katsuragi, she was... somewhere in the press of high-powered nerds and ranking officers. Pain built up behind Asuka's bad eye, and she felt the need to share it. Picking her way over to where Misato was proved to be a challenge, however. A handful of NERV technicians were mingling with the guests, answering questions and such. _They_ got out of her way when Asuka approached. The officers, doctors and engineers seemed determined to get in her way while not even _noticing her_. Nearly every man or woman in that room had six inches on Asuka if not more, and outweighed her by nearly twice as much. It wasn't like school, or even home, where Misato was at least approachable-tall.

Initially, the guests moved out of her way when Asuka approached, stumbling, bumping into each other to make way for her red-clad form. In any other situation she'd have admitted she could get used to this, crowds parting before her, but right now it was a nuisance. Ahead, Misato was all but fortified behind a wall of people. The Major's popularity with the balding and grey-haired was self-evident.

Wedging her arm between what she _guessed_ was a JSDDF captain and a professor from Kenya, Asuka managed to pop out of one cluster of middle-aged middle-aged small talk and into another. Stopping long enough to push her hair out of her eye proved to be a mistake. Asuka was suddenly the center of attention, and she found it unwelcome.

It started with confusion, and despite being adults, Asuka could read the thoughts off their faces as they formed. Uncertainty, bemusement, barely-restrained sighs and probing looks past her towards the crowd, no doubt searching for whichever junior-league executive mistook this assembly for Take Your Daughter To Work day. Then the stares moved to her eye patch, and the neck-to-toe skin suit made Asuka feel even more naked.

Just past the mass of people, Misato looked over her shoulder and saw Asuka's predicament. The crowd moved, and Asuka's potential lifeline vanished. The redhead refused to show weakness however. She twisted in place, standing on tiptoes and craning her neck as far as she could. A sea of shoulders and buttoned jackets filled her view, but between the bodies Asuka managed to catch a flash of dark hair and a red beret.

Then Misato squeezed into the circle, almost bowling Asuka over. The older woman somehow managed to avoid catastrophe by sneaking an arm around the pilot's middle and guiding her out. Once out into open space Misato immediately moved a shoulder-width away, but not before giving Asuka quick, reassuring squeeze. The pilot squirmed and bristled at the contact, while a quick surge of heat crept up her cheeks. Still, Asuka had to appreciate the hug. A little.

Misato let a hand fall on Asuka's wrist and tugged forward, toward the buffet table. Asuka let herself be led, quietly simmering between relief and mounting frustration. Even if the save had been welcome, there was only so much her pride would allow. Having let go, Misato bustled about and came back with two plates full of food, pushing one into Asuka's hands.

The pair ate in silence, watching the military-industrial crowd mingle with the medical and NERV contingents. Leaning against the buffet table, Asuka looked over at Misato with one narrowed eye. She had to turn far enough to stare past her nose at Misato. "You know, everyone knows my pilot status. I'm the guest of goddamn honor." She picked at her plate of finger food and held up a morsel between gloved fingers. "Shouldn't I at least get the courtesy of regular clothes?"

Misato at least had the decency to look chagrined.

* * *

><p>After the initial meet and greet, Ritsuko stepped up and cleared part of the room. Her hand dropped into her pocket, before coming back out with a remote. Asuka's eye and eyepatch-vision followed Ritsuko's limb as it pointed toward the ceiling and the hanging projector. The lights dimmed and a lens and lamp warmed up, while a screen unfurled down the far wall. The first slide dropped in with a whispering click, and Ritsuko took center stage.<p>

"Ladies, Gentlemen, thank you for coming." The light from the projector soaked into Ritsuko's glasses, and the reversed image and glow somehow made the blonde stand out more, made her _belong_ more at the head of that crowd. Any other time it would have dehumanized her, but not there.

She tilted her head and suddenly Ritsuko's eyes were back, focused on the audience. "I remember meeting quite a few of you over the years. Biology, Neurology, Cybernetics and too many related fields to list. Some of you were even once ear-marked for staff positions, but have since moved on to equally more prestigious careers."

Ritsuko flashed everyone a wry, almost Misato-ish grin. "That is life at NERV, I'm afraid. The realities force you to play favorites."

Asuka tried very hard not to roll her eyes, but she just couldn't quite make it. The girl watched as Akagi gladhand and charm the pants off a whole room with just her eyes and voice. The skirt probably acted as a force-multiplier. Most of it was all pointless fluff too, empty compliments and sterile, neutral praise. _Unearned_ praise at that. None of them had probably discovered anything since _before Asuka was born._

The plastic cup in her hands made a surprisingly loud sound.

She willed her fingers and face to relax, and for a moment Asuka wished she could have played stoic like Ayanami. None of those people were her peers. It didn't matter what her achievements or credentials were, none of them knew _Asuka_. She may have been published, but she was not of the community. To almost everyone present, the Second Child was a by-line, an 'A.L. Sorhyu' on a niche field of study.

A hand touched her shoulder, and Asuka bit back a hiss. Wide-eyed, she turned and looked over at a concerned Misato. Her covered left eye had light-enhancement, making everything look garish and over-saturated. The girl huffed, shrugging away from the shoulder and turning back to the buffet table, loading up another plate.

The first run of slides had finished by the time Asuka's frustration settled back to a low rumble. The ideas being presented were at least somewhat interesting. Cybernetic limbs that were controlled by AT field theory and synchronization instead of direct neural interface. There was also something about releasing the Evangelion armor composite to the JSSDF, but the pilot felt her temper spike and missed the full explanation. Asuka tuned out the rest of the speech and spun on one heel toward the exit, the lukewarm catering entirely forgotten.

She had just barely completed the first step when Ritsuko called her title. "-stration is in order. Would the Second Child please join me?"

Even in the dark, the pilot could pick out the dozens of eyes turning to face her. Attention yes, but still unwanted. Still set on leaving, Asuka pushed forward toward the exit. She had to cut through the crowd to do so, and made a point to ignore Ritsuko's dumbfounded stare. The pilot had just about broken free of the audience when someone barred her way.

For a second, Asuka thought it was a NERV officer, the tan windbreaker nearly matched the normal Project E uniform jacket. Someone who wanted to stop her most likely. The girl scowled up at the dark-haired middle-aged man and his smartly knotted tie. Asuka very deliberately stepped around him, and her elbow was ready and waiting to find it's rightful place in his sternum. Ritsuko, Misato and the rest of the eggheads and corporate warriors stared at the back of her head.

Then the man stepped towards Ritsuko started talking, and Asuka suddenly realized all eyes were on _him_. By the time Asuka remembered she was trying to leave, the smarmy jerk had already finished his introduction.

Asuka turned to see Ritsuko push up her glasses and pinch the bridge of her nose. She sighed, and even Asuka could hear the stress on the honorific. "Tokita-_san_, you were invited, so what is your point?"

The oily looking man smiled broadly, hands in his pockets and shrugging like a pleasant neighbor. He turned on one foot and wiggled an elbow back toward Asuka. "I understand NERV's recent scrambling for photo-ops, but why is a _pilot_ here for a research demonstration?"

"More to the point, we're here for your _vaunted prototype_." The man, now-identified as Tokita, shrugged. "I mean, medical technology, cybernetics, neural interface? All wonderful advances, but where's that thing that wowed the world just a few weeks ago?"

Even without a microphone, Ritsuko's voice carried well, drier than the pre-Impact Sahara. "Some things yet remain trade secrets, Tokita-san, which you are well aware of. How is Japan Heavy Industries coming along on Jet Alone? It was scrapped, last I heard."

"Mothballed, if you must know." Tokita let the jab slide off like a bead of water, and Asuka barely withheld a scoff at the man's expense. He was sweating already. She stepped back to have a better viewer of the upcoming slaughter. He had stuck his head in the lion's mouth, and for her part this _mere pilot _was now content to watch Ritsuko disassemble him in front of a captive audience.

He barreled on, regardless. "Something NERV flirts with each passing day. Has the fearsome Ikari Gendo stooped to throwing charity dinners?"

A low murmur rippled through the crowd as the officers and engineers glanced at each other. Asuka caught Misato blanching out the corner of her swept one arm out to encompass the crowd, now left whispering and shifting uncomfortably in their seats. No one had expected a confrontation that day, right there of all places.

The corporate engineer raised his voice, aiming to overcome the audience noise. "I hope I'm not the only one here who realizes that if you already had something worth showing, you'd have already shown it. NERV is just shy of the red and we all know it. In corporate terms, that means a merger, or more likely, a buyout."

Tokita laid a hand on his chest, and for a moment Asuka wondered if he'd studied abroad. She bit back the snort of laughter, imagining the man on stage in period dress and reciting Shakespeare. "Speaking for myself, I'm here for discoveries and results, not black-box projects and promises."

He rounded on Ritsuko with a smarmy superior look, standing tall and fixing her with a pointed finger. "You and NERV are new at the corporate game, so I will give you a bit of free advice, Akagi-san. No one pays the bills on a theory."

Ritsuko just gave the man a lazy, unimpressed look, stepping over to a chair and leaning on the backrest with a bit of Misato-swagger. "Are you sure you want to talk about promises, when your over-sized action figure is scrambling for another windfall? How many backers do you think it'll take to pull it back out of development hell?"

The JPI engineers' brows furrowed, but countered with a wry grin all of his own. "Joke all you like, Akagi-san. I know that Jet Alone has proven human technology behind it. I admit there's elegance to a cybernetic weapons platform, but tell me, how long does it take to _grow_ a replacement arm?"

That question came out of nowhere for quite a few people, Asuka included. Her confusion mounted when she saw Misato cough and sputter into her drink. The dark-haired woman tried and failed to hide her grin behind one hand. She knew something... Asuka dragged one hand down her face and sighed. Ritsuko however seemed unconcerned.

She tilted her head and let the light catch on her glasses once more, then reaching into one pocket and hitting the remote. Above, the projector clicked and rattled, cycling through frames. Peeling off her lab coat, the scientist tossed it over the chair and smiled, standing in her customary sleeveless blue blouse and dark skirt.

"I had planned on addressing this later, but I don't see why not know. Ladies and gentlemen of a more fragile constitution may wish to put down your plates and look away." Ritsuko thumbed the remote once more and stopped the projector.

The noise level in the conference room slowly dropped to nothing. Not even Tokita had anything to say. A projected photo of Akagi Ritsuko spread out across the wall, lying unconscious in a hospital bed. An inch of brown roots proved the woman wasn't a natural blonde. An inconsequential detail, perhaps, but one that helped convince everyone present the image was real.

Asuka felt a bit of bile rise in her throat, and her eyes started to sting. She'd seen amputees before, in Berlin and America, but nothing so... fresh. She worked her jaw side to side and tried to quell the churning in her stomach, but it wasn't working very well. In the photo, Ritsuko's right arm ended at the shoulder, capped in stretched skin and lined with angry, red stitches.

Ritsuko's grin spread wider and she raised her whole right arm, bared up to the shoulder. Remote in hand, she advanced the next slide. "Because, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you full human regenerative medicine."

Hers was the only smile in the room. For nearly everyone present, it was all the proof they needed. The doctors, scientists, engineers and military observers all stared in silence. Asuka watched their faces, and could tell without asking that every one of them just had another 'man-punches-a-tank' moment. Misato sidled up next to Asuka and looked back up at her scientist friend, matching Ritsuko's grin with one of her own. Then the silence broke, and the crowd all but rumbled, filling the room with conversation.

Turning with her hands on hips, Ritsuko tapped her foot until Tokita snapped out of it. The man blinked rapidly and gaped at her, suddenly lost. Ritsuko savored his confusion. "To answer your question, mine took about a week."

That tidbit of information started a whole new round of discussion, but Ritsuko was still focused on Tokita. "Oh, but perhaps you meant an _Evangelion's_ arm. Significantly longer, I admit, but our proprietary advances could could cut our repair times by half or more."

With a click of a button the projector went dark and silent while the main lights came back up. Meanwhile Ritsuko paced back and forth, clearing a new space in the crowd. "Now, if we could get back on track, I'd like to show you one of our working prototypes."

Waving at the back of the crowd, Ritsuko called the pilot and Operations Director forward. Asuka bit off a sigh and marched up to center stage with Misato following close behind. Most likely to ensure she wouldn't bolt. Now everyone was staring at her _again_, and Asuka's skin started to crawl beneath her suit.

Ritsuko waved at the bit of black plastic and metal wrapped around Asuka's eye. "Pilot Sorhyu's eye was injured in a training accident, and as part of our advances in direct neural interface, we've issued her a prototype prosthesis."

It was then Asuka realized that Ritsuko was looking at her, and wanted her to _say something_. The girl willed her face not to move, not to twitch or scowl anything. This was that critical moment, and that familiar anger built up in her chest. Misato and Ritsuko needed her to sell it, if not _sell out_. A bead of sweat crawled down the side of her face, and a muscle in her jaw throbbed.

She looked back out into the crowd. Doctors and professors pushed forward, eager to examine the device. But at the moment Asuka saw fewer academic pursuits more a legion of wizened faces jockeying for permission to dissect her. She wanted to shout, stomp, push back this gaggle of frauds and pretenders with the manifest force of her anger. Misato stepped in as close as propriety would allow, imploring, encouraging, trying to reassure her. Asuka couldn't tell if she was just being an _adult_ and lying to save face.

It was just another grown-up runaround. That vaunted _maturity_ that told adults it was _okay_ to lie and cheat and dance around each other for money, love and power. It never stopped. They had to shill the product, appease the investors, make peace with the overlords _and_ cut expenses. Bile built up in Asuka's throat when she reached the inevitable conclusion. NERV was an expense, the Evangelions were an expense. All of Project E was an expense.

Asuka looked at Misato out the corner of her eye. _Rei_ was an expense, and the Major allowed the cut.

Playing for time, Asuka put on a brittle smile and tilted her head, letting her bangs part to show the device. The gunmetal grey plastic stood out against her white skin. Shilling or not, the Evangelions depended on her right then, and she found the word that described her predicament; dishonor. There was no pride, glory or justice in that room, just that utilitarian objective. Ritsuko and Misato didn't need Asuka the _Evangelion pilot_, they needed the injured wearing the damn miracle gadget.

Everyone waited expectantly for some response, and it dawned how long she had spent gathering her thoughts. She was stalling out badly, and needed to make a decision. All options were all equally terrible. Asuka's gut told her to lie, to be spiteful and downplay the patch or fake vision in her bad eye. Anything to defy expectation. Or... she could swallow her pride.

Her blood ran cold at the thought.

Asuka felt her fists bunch up, subconsciously imagining a pair of orange-tinted glasses grinding to powder inside them. She was going to hate herself for it but... there was no room to fight, not when there was this much on the line. Forcing her hands to relax, she hid her sigh behind a false, cocksure grin. It almost slipped though, when Asuka realized just how close her smile and wink came to one Katsuragi Misato. Asuka damped down her ire and turned up the charm, and the pilot wished that truth didn't taste like ash.

That _woman _was going to hear about this later.

* * *

><p>Most of Central Dogma was empty, save for the unfortunate night shift.<p>

Hours after the demonstration and still in her plugsuit, Asuka found herself in the Evangelion cages. Facing her Unit 02, she sat on the gantry with her chin tucked against her knees, and arms draped around her legs. The Evangelion itself stared back at with four green eyes, bolted between two forty-meter high walls and chest deep in chilled suspension fluid.

For almost ten years NERV had been everything to her. It had been Asuka's cause, her ideal and the reason she got out of bed every morning. And also her excuse. Now everything she'd held on to growing up was rotting. The rational part of her could see the logic too. There wasn't any malice or a grand scheme involved either. No one had set out to destroy the ground beneath her. But maybe that just made it worse.

Her left eye started to throb again. It was more due to how the bottom edge of the patch dug into her cheek, than anything to do with her brain. Knowing why didn't make the ache hurt any less. White mist started to build up above the Eva as more fans and vents opened. Low clouds hung in the distant corners. The cold from massive storage bath seemed to soak into her plugsuit, and Asuka curled in herself a bit tighter.

Piloting was simple. Get in the plug, connect with the Evangelion, and never reach four-hundred percent synchronization. People... they weren't simple. She couldn't pull a person open and see what made them work, or what broke. Instead, she could only see the results, after the damage had been done. Kaji had failed her, Misato was at best _ignorant_. Shinji and Rei were both _weak_, despite all their strangeness. She could forgive Rei for that, it wasn't her fault. The Golden Boy had jumped in willingly, blind or not.

The Evangelion hadn't failed her, hadn't compromised on what made itself great. It listened, when everyone else had proven undependable. Asuka sniffed, willing her nose and eyes to dry out. "You're just a doll... but at least you're still loyal to me. They haven't taken you away."

_Yet_ had been left unsaid.

Fresh tears built up in her eyes, and Asuka squeezed them shut. The only opinion that mattered at that moment was hers, and she was damn well going to hold to her own lofty standards. Too tough to cry, too tough to feel pain. Even with both eyes closed, she still saw the world through her patch, staring straight ahead at the Evangelion. Dolls were _controlled_, and right now just like the Third and Ayanami, Asuka was NERV's little action figure. That, Asuka realized, was a shitty way to be.

She looked up at the cyborg and bared her teeth with a hiss. "No. I'm not a doll... and you're not one either!"

The girl shot to her feet, flat rubber soles driving hard into the steel grate bridge. She reached up and ripped the patch from her face, stumbling from the loss of binocular vision. Her arms shook, and the plastic caged between her fingers creaked under the strain.

With one foot braced on the gantry railing, the girl stood tall and raised her fist to the Evangelion. "I am _Asuka Langley Sorhyu_!"

Her shout echoed off the walls of an empty chamber, and the only ones to hear it were herself and the silent Evangelion across from her. This time the tears came before she could stop them. "...And you're not listening _either_."

She dropped back from the railing, listless and exhausted. There wasn't anyone to care about her, or even complain about the noise. Asuka sucked down a lungful of freezing air, but didn't notice it. For the first time in a long time, she felt something. Something familiar that she'd lost.

Asuka was angry. Better to say, she was _pissed_.

Before it had been a sour sort of helplessness. She had no plan or allies, and nothing to fall back on. Even now Asuka realized just how _silly_ it was to shout at her Eva, to shout at _herself_. The graceful and mature young lady did not care anymore. Now she had fury though, and that was something she could _use_. Somewhere else in the cages, machinery started to rumble throughout the space and below, coolant sloshed faintly.

The girl marched back up to the rail and leaned over, the better to _make_ her Eva listen. "You are Evangelion Unit 02! The production type, the _combat type_. We won't let Ikari or Ritsuko or NERV forget that."

She pulled away from the edge and paced, stomping and shouting at every wall and door and empty observation deck. "There's no man or god or monster or damned Angel that can stop me! You hear me!?"

By that point she was ranting, stamping and huffing though bleary vision. But it was too late for her to stop now, too late to care about the fool she was making of herself. Asuka was on a warpath, ready to burn down anyone who'd dare oppose her, and even words failed to articulate the frustration running through her. She shouted once, twice, three times. Asuka felt that last wordless scream shake her bones.

The girl froze stiff. She knew she had a set of lungs, but... Asuka turned slowly, half-blind and disbelieving. The walls and gantry were shaking. Above, massive hanging lights swung on the thick industrial chain, the square lake of coolant rippling in time below them. Behind her, the bound jaw of her Evangelion moved. A watery, two-note laugh slipped out, and Asuka just then wondered if 'abject terror' was an appropriate follow-up response.

Pride and fury burned away her fear just as fast as it came, leaving something else behind. "You..! "Asuka dashed back to the rail once more, grinning wider than she ever had before. "So you've got ears after all, don't you?"

Her Evangelion growled again, low and throaty, and this time she could _see it_. She watched the red and white jaw brace stretch open, and saw the teeth bolted together behind that armor. The sound shook the cages and the hot breath blew her hair back, tugging hard on the clips holding it down. Her eyes stung, but Asuka couldn't care less.

Asuka rocked back on her heels, shaking like a leaf. The sound within her chest started small at first, punctuated with little wet sobs, but soon burst out into a ringing peal of laughter. An overwhelming sense of joy and relief washed over her with the reverb, and happy tears streamed down her face. The girl felt lighter, richer, and almost disbelieving.

Her fingers cinched around the railing even tighter, and the plugsuit strained against her knuckles. Something brushed against her then, like wind but not. She felt it somewhere, but nowhere in particular. A familiar warmth flooded through her body, and Asuka found herself smiling even wider. _Together_, she thought. Her vision swam, blurred by tears and something else, something stranger. For a split second, Asuka saw herself from the other side, half a room away, leaning over a railing and grinning like the emperor she was meant to be.

"Come on!" Asuka's vision swam again, going liquid and distorted. She stumbled, and the cage leapt into perspective, as seen through four looming eyes. The sensation passed as quickly as it came. Asuka planted her feet and scowled, demanding more. "Is that all you got!?"

The Evangelion hissed and rumbled inside the bindings, and its armor strained to hold it back. Pipes and cables snapped free of the massive restraining walls and tumbled down into the coolant pool below, and Asuka stood tall. The warm wind-but-not wind filled her once more, drowning the girl in an unknown but welcome sense of belonging.

Synchronization had never felt like that, it had always been distant, a cold sort of alienation. Asuka had always tried to dominate the Evangelion's controlling force through knowledge and science. She had trained in it, broke the laws of physics and piloted it across the ocean floor. There was nothing on Earth Asuka knew better, and only the crew who built it knew more than she did.

And the Evangelion always retreated. She chased after it, urging her score higher and higher, but never quite reaching. Now Asuka smiled and laughed, trying desperately to hold onto that feeling. Asuka leaned against the railing and knew she was _mighty_. Her arm moved, and it felt multiplied, massive, the same as the war-machine across from her.

Asuka screamed at the machine, demanding it acknowledge her. The Evangelion howled through sealed teeth in response, so loud Asuka's ears throbbed. The coolant below churned, and the walls wrapped around the Eva's arms buckled and split. Pipes split and vented gas and liquid, and alarms all throughout the cages blared at full. Warning lights strobed, throwing harsh yellow light throughout the chamber.

The two of them had been united from the start, pilot and machine, but now they shared a purpose. Looking down into her own face, up into those four green eyes, she saw herself anew. She was powerful, and most of all she wasn't alone anymore. Asuka looked down at her hand and saw the cybernetic eye patch clenched in her fist.

She held the prosthetic up, rolling it over and between her fingers. The plastic had been scuffed and cracked by her grip on the rail, but its power light still glowed bright blue. It was the first time she felt like she owned it, rather than just holding her own crutch. NERV needed a whole and healthy pilot, prosthetics or not... she was one. This was merely her badge of honor, and the proof that she was going to take their strength as her own whether they liked it or not.

The straps slipped easily under her hair and around her head, the patch itself secure across her eye. An idle amusing thought tumbled through her head as Asuka brushed aside the last of her tears. Perhaps she would paint it red.

Technicians burst through the open doors and forced open hatches, climbing along access ladders. The Second Child whirled in place, surrounded and ignored by the sudden rush of people. Engineers hauled carts loaded with welding torches and masks. The coolant tanks started to drain even as other gantries and restraints lowered into place. Unit 02 still shuddered, and the terminator plug rattled in its socket.

The disorienting two-way vision faded away while NERV employees shouted and boiled around her. But the awareness remained like an afterimage, and Asuka watched with rapt attention. All of them were so much smaller now, including herself, like ants grappling with a raging titan.

She stepped up to the rail for the last time, happier than she'd ever remembered. Asuka's blinding grin shifted into a tiny, wry smirk. Her voice dropped low and soothing, and even she had to admit, the quote that came to mind was appropriate. "...I am the _captain of my soul."_

Ritsuko had tumbled through the cage door half-dressed and gawking, just in time to see the Evangelion _roar_. Its jaw bindings snapped, sending reinforced alloy plates tumbling down. The glass observation windows shattered, scattering a rain of sharp edges. Ritsuko shrieked and stumbled back. A shard of yellow tinted glass taller than her tumbled down, crashing against the gantry platform just shy of her toes.

Asuka turned to face the woman, unmoved and unconcerned by the chaos surrounding her. More glass rained broke against the floor and rails before scattering glittering slivers into the air behind her.

The Evangelion roared again, and Asuka matched it with her own warm, heartfelt smile.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 31: Whew.<strong>


	32. Stress

_Then the magician of the village went up into the tower of his house, and all night long those whom fear kept awake could see his window high up in the night glowing softly alone. The next day, when the twilight was far gone and night was gathering fast, the magician went away to the forest's edge, and uttered there the spell that he had made._

_And the spell was a compulsive, terrible thing, having a power over evil dreams and over spirits of ill; for it was a verse of forty lines in many languages, both living and dead, and had in it the word wherewith the people of the plains are wont to curse their camels, and the shout wherewith the whalers of the north lure the whales shoreward to be killed, and a word that causes elephants to trumpet; and every one of the forty lines closed with a rhyme for "wasp"._

Excerpt from _The Fortress Unvanquishable Save For Sacnoth_

* * *

><p>Inside the Geofront, the waters of the interior lake almost glowed like molten metal, even the flooded depression of Terminal Dogma. The massive collector dishes above focused the late-afternoon sunlight through fiberoptic cables, spanning miles of rock and armor, filling the interior dome with orange and gold light.<p>

Atop Ikari Gendo's desk, thick stack of folders stood tall on one corner, marking the invisible 'in box' shared by nearly every administrator. They were in turn stuffed to bursting with reports and data, going back several weeks or more. Several more were marked with hazard striping of 'sensitive material', destined for a locked file box elsewhere in Central Dogma.

A rare few folders were bound in solid black: _Top Secret - burn after reading._

Ikari Gendo picked up one of those black folders and leafed through it. One corner of hs mouth quirked. "The _full _report regarding Evangelion Unit 02's unscheduled activation."

"Almost a month ago, wasn't it?" The reply came from behind a polished black dividing wall. An electric kettle in the hidden kitchenette began to whistle. Fuyutsuki emerged a few moments later, carrying a tray laden with two mugs and a steaming pot of tea.

"If we take her psychological profiles as accurate, Sorhyu should have been incapable of making a _subconcious_ effort, let alone a conscious one." The Commander sighed and set the file aside, while Fuyutsuki handled the tea.

When that was done, the old grey-haired teacher picked up the folder and hummed, thoughtfully. "The patterns of the human spirit are not an exact science, Ikari."

A handful of soul-camera photographs lableled 'S. Asuka-Langely' were dropped into the desk incinerator. "As we have been repeatedly reminded."

The hot-orange flash of the disposal system caught Fuyutsuki's eye, as did the time and location stamps on the remaining images - Evangelion cages, three weeks ago. "The Second Child did not seem particularly upset about her punishment, either."

"More miracles, then."

Fuyutsuki frowned slightly, but decided not to comment on the other man's mood.

The floor cooled and turned opaque when the clock signaled sunset, blocking out the Geofront landscape below. The sephirotic etching in the office ceiling seemed brighter without the competing light. More reports and charts were spread across the desk, supplemented by relevant holographic displays. Truly sensitive materials were never entered into computer memory, but for now, reduced to most basic form, all the information currently at the commanders fingertips was simply income and expenses.

Fuyutsuki held up a written report and compared to a floating graph. The old man squinted past his nose, reading and speaking at the same time. "Initial responses to our plan are positive."

Rows and columns of numbers and associated organizations scrolled through the air, and reflected off of the Commander's glasses. "Despite Akagi's brief moment of ego."

Protected by judicious use of 'proprietary technology', NERV had managed to earn a significant number of starting contracts, while the funding infusion served to jump start the Geofront's development capability. There was no grand reserve of marketable product though. Professor Akagi's research division was just that, research. No one expected NERV to attempt _mass production_.

Another stride towards legitimacy came from the in-house infirmary staff. Already organized as a college of advanced medicine, it took little effort to apply for recognition and accreditation by the greater academic community. The treatments and cybernetics technologies waited for approval, but nearly every employee in the Geofront had earned their qualifications, sometimes twice over. Fuyutsuki knew where and on whom to lean in order to expedite the process, more so than Gendo in that particular case.

With a reputable 'point of sale' established, Gendo was able to nudge his son towards productive, and more importantly harmless tasks. People from all over the world were making their way to Tokyo-3, willing to pay for treatment.

Looking over the budget, Fuyutsuki hummed again, noting all the entries marked 'experimental treatment'. "It's the old tales of sages in the mountains, working miracles and then being dragged into the world by their compassion, and later the greed of kings."

Gendo did little more than grunt in response. Finances were swept from the desk and projections, then new data filled the gap. What tea remained in the kettle had long since cooled, and Fuyutsuki moved to dispose of it. The Commander meanwhile worked through the remainder of the files, until he reached the last and thinnest folder

Three pages were enough to cover The Third's progress as the 'Special Projects Division. Fuyutsuki suppressed a wince, skimming the documents. "Almost no logistical footprint, but..."

Nodding once, Gendo leaned back in his chair. "His inexperience remains the limiting factor."

The Commander slid the papers and folder off the edge of the desk and watched them fall into the incinerator.

* * *

><p>Ayumi hadn't seen her boyfriend for nearly a month, and the calendar spring was almost over. At first she had been worried, for him. It might have been something to do with NERV after all. She would have asked the other pilots, but their schedules hadn't quite matched up. Ayanami for example had simply withdrawn from school completely.<p>

Gently simmering anger was her theme for the second week. She had started leaving him voice-mails, asking after him, concerned, supportive. All normal reasonable things to do in her position. Her friends concurred. But after a certain point, Ayumi simply could not stand to send another message. It wasn't due to anything either of them did; it was that _damn recording_. Shinji must have made it when he first got the phone. The tinny little phone speakers didn't help the awkward, halting stutter of a novice phone user.

When they first started dating, leaving messages to each other, the awkward recording had been endearing. Now though, Ayumi had just plain gotten sick of hearing it. She'd long since memorized every aggravating little tic; the way he sucked in air over his teeth before speaking, or the stutter when speaking his own full name in the traditional style. _His own name._

At the same time, it was the only time Ayumi had heard his voice, reassuring but almost taunting her. Even if it was starting to drive her up a wall, it wasn't fair to either of them to leave increasingly awful messages, just because of the recording.

The third week made her turn inward. Ayumi had prided herself on being mellow and laid back, mostly. Undemanding, in a word. As far as she was concerned, e_veryone_ needed space, including her, and definitely Shinji as well. But... maybe she'd given him too much space. Or maybe she hadn't demanded enough, if she was this easily misplaced in the hustle of NERV life.

So Ayumi squirmed and dithered, until finally she worked up the courage to head over to Shinji's apartment after school. She idled at the train station, rocking on her heels with far too much time to think. A lot of her friends thought she had something special too, a direct line into Shinji's head, like he was some incredibly deep, mysterious thing. The truth was, Shinji was a _nice person_, and if she had to be honest with herself, sometimes boring.

Any status the student body _thought _she had for being close to him didn't amount for much, least of all on a lonely railway platform.

It wasn't that Shinji was _bad_ for being boring though, or a nice person. Ayumi cringed, suddenly thinking back to why she even approached him in the first place. Back then it had felt like such a good idea, high on hormones and a strong if abnormal first impression. Her crush came about in response to the pilot having some sort of _episode_, after all. Her face burned red at the memory.

Music picked up elsewhere, down the stairs leading from street level up to the platform. Heavy footsteps and rattling chains and bangles matched up with a particularly terrible grasp of English, and an equally bad singing voice. A group of leather-clad men and women ambled up onto the main level, shouldering ancient stereo boomboxes, laughing and singing.

Ayumi eyed the group warily, only able to notice _details_. Amazing vertical mohawks, piercings, makeup and tattoos. And the tacky fashions. The boomboxes themselves were _twice her age._ Mercifully, the trains heading into the suburbs arrived on time, and Ayumi too the chance to escape. The whole trip took less than thirty minutes.

She'd been to the apartment before , more than once actually, but it always struck her how different the world looked beyond the Fortress City. Japan had a tendency to build up and down, conserving valuable land for other uses. Just outside the city, a cluster of multi-story apartments defined a small sliver of old urban development. As Ayumi walked along two-lane streets, Bottom-floor bookstores and grocers called out for her attention. Everything was _tiny_, almost claustrophobic. The streets downtown were wide enough for _Evangelions_.

Before she even entered the parking lot, a handful of men and women in suits appeared. _Everyone_ recognized Section Two, especially after the school attack. Ayumi did her level best to avoid shivering. She passed by another agent sitting next to the elevator, A dark-skinned woman gave the teenager a tiny smile, little more than a quirk at both corners of her mouth. It was enough to offset the black sunglasses and suit.

Ayumi sucked in a deep breath. She'd been _ignored_, confused. Her boyfriend had all but dropped off the face of the earth... and she had no idea why. A hundred selfish little theories had been tumbling through her mind for _weeks_, many of which revolved around Shinji finding better ways of sinking back into his the shell she tried so hard to pry him out of. As though she was only thing keeping him from regressing back to that silent awkward boy she first met. The alternatives were worse of course, that he had found something... _someone_... better at coaxing him to the surface.

She made her way to the apartment door belonging to Katsuragi Misato, and stopped. One arm dropped to Ayumi's side, fingers twisting into the hem of her skirt. Meanwhile, her other hand hovered over the door control. Behind the wall, the girl heard sounds, voices, its of giggling and shushing. A bead of sweat crept down the back of her neck. The door slid open before her hand even moved.

Katsuragi Misato appeared before her, wearing little more than a black bikini top, _short_ shorts and a smile.

The teenager's own painfully fragile grin came out to match it, already strained to breaking by the thin little squeak in the back of of her throat. _Bold_ was the first word that came to her mind. Followed closely by _bod_, if Ayumi was being completely honest with herself. She felt her eyes snap up and down as discreetly as possible. Looking for what, Ayumi couldn't say, but was certain that many people other than her had definitely found it.

For a brief moment Ayumi felt very sheepish standing there, still in her school uniform, almost wilting in front of a grown woman. Caught off guard, a singular, uninvited thought forced its way into her brain. _I've been competing with this? What the hell?_

Realizing she'd been gawking, the girl strangled her internal monologue and willed herself to face directly forward. Ayumi then found herself eye-level with the two first loves for a fair portion in Tokyo-3 Municipal High.

Misato moved, and Ayumi's eyes shot up while red spread across the bridge of her nose and into her cheeks. The squeak in her throat made comeback. An unbelievably tiny part of Ayumi's mind pulled away from Misato's looming figure, long enough to note the can of beer in the other woman's hand when it clunked softly against the door frame, and how she wore her own red cheeks far better._ At least, _Ayumi thought, that if there _was_ a competition, she was _winning_.

Leaning against the door frame with one arm under her chest, Misato smiled and all but crooned. "Saneda-chan."

Cringing, Ayumi found her voice, past the hesitance, bemusement and mortification. "K-Katsuragi-san, is... Shinji in?"

The older woman shifted with one confident swing of her hip, and her smile shone even brighter. "Please, everyone calls me Misato. I loathe formality."

From all apparent signs, the girl could not disagree.

Within the apartment, a high, lilting and vaguely familiar voice tried to peel paint off the walls. A moment later, Sorhyu Asuka Langley arrived, eye patch in place and equally clad in bikini-and-shorts. "If its the pizza, can't you just leave that poor boy alo- Oh."

Still grinning, Misato just shook her head and sighed. "C'mon in."

* * *

><p>The last time Ayumi had been inside the Katsuragi apartment, it had been in the middle of renovation. From what she saw, the kitchen had been completed, and the chore board she noticed the first time over had been repurposed. Now it dripped with notes and what looked like blueprints. to what though she couldn't say. Asu- <em>Sorhyu<em>-san all but stalked ahead back into the main space, while _Misato_ lingered in the hallway alongside.

Then Ayumi actually entered the kitchen, and the arm Misato snuck around her back proved necessary. The apartment interior competed with _houses _for sheer space. The ceiling reached twenty feet high or more, and was positively _cavernous_. And then the girl noticed the far wall, facing out over the suburb skyline. Instead of simple sliding glass doors, the _entire_ _wall_ had given way to... something.

Misato's hand on her back nudged her forward, and Ayumi crossed through the kitchen into the living room, past hand-built furniture. The couch practically _screamed_ at her, begging for her to sit. Ayumi shuffled forward, still content to be guided. Then she crossed the threshold and into the afternoon sun, and realized what that earlier something was.

Originally, the apartment had a veranda, a little platform with waist high walls and dotted with patio furniture. Now it had a _deck_, easily the same size as the living-room.

The earlier attack of self-consciousness was crushed under the vastness of the new space, and Ayumi spun listlessly to face Misato, gaping for a whole new set of reasons. "Wh-What the ffff-fff-ff-"

Misato smiled softly, understanding and warm. "Yeah, we've already had our 'what the heck' moments for all this."

Before the girl could even register the reassurance, Misato turned and called back out onto the deck, and Ayumi followed her voice. "How goes the tanning experiment?"

Ayanami Rei lounged in the sun with a book cradled against her stomach. The tank-top and sarong were a welcome relief compared to Sorhyu-San and _Misato_. One arm still linked to an IV, the blue-haired girl held up a hand and squinted over the top of some of over-sized sunglasses.

"No results yet, Misato-san. Your suggested outcome of 'bronzed beauty' is taking longer than anticipated."

Sliding past Ayumi with a double-handful of sodas, Sorhyu-san breezed in, and her hair all but caught fire in the sunlight. She made her way around the deck, and Ayumi croaked weakly when the cold can was pressed into her fingers.

The redhead for her part completely ignored her. "Still talking like a textbook, Ayamami?"

Popping the top with one hand, Rei held the can up to her lips, pausing long enough to reply. "For clarity, a full report was assumed. I will remember to obscure my intentions for your benefit."

Ignored for the moment, Ayumi cracked open her own soda and took a mechanical sip. She watched the byplay, lost and nonplussed. Asuka scowled playfully while Misato giggled behind the new girl's back.

Throwing herself into wicker chair set under a massive patio umbrella, Asuka smirked. "And so rude! I've been insulted by a math teacher!"

Misato broke in with a laugh, swinging her hips as she crossed the deck and claimed the other free lounge chair. Figuratively stuck between two Evangelion pilots and the twenty-something... former model, Ayumi found and sat in the one regular chair amidst the chaos. The banter continued to flow around her, where Asuka and Misato traded barbs like life-long sisters. Ayumi's mind reeled, barely aware of the soda in her hands or the meandering argument.

The rambling tirade drifted briefly into the subject of house arrests, to school vacations, the quality of good German food in Tokyo-3 and well beyond.. Between them, Rei contributed her own curious brand of observational snark, slipping a line in and content to keep her own side. It suddenly became very clear to her why Shinji was almost never around, avoiding school, the city and the _boring_.

Anyone could become a homebody with a home like this.

Ayumi raised her hand once the most recent round of bickering ceased. "Ah... Ah, is Shinji here? I mean I asked earlier but-"

Misato swiveled in her seat, until her shoulders hung out in open air. Leaning lengthwise off the lounge chair, he took the girl's upheld hand in her own and nudged it back down. She continued her stretch over until her hair brushed the ground, flashing Ayumi another of her bright, shining smiles. Ayumi let it happen, watching wide-eyed.

"Come on now, no need to be so stiff!" Misato laughed warmly, eyes gleaming. "You're not in class anymore, Saneda-san."

Blinking rapidly, the teenager found her voice ."A-Ayumi-san is fine, Misato-san..."

Sitting back up, the older woman tossed conspiratorial wink her way, toasting the girl with her soda. "Ayumi-chan it is. As for Shinji..." The dark-haired woman turned to Rei, head cocked to one side. "Where did Shinji go after he finished the garage?"

Rei gave the woman the tiniest of shakes in reply, barely moving otherwise. "I believe Ikari went to consult the MAGI."

"No, that was yesterday." Ayumi watched Misato nibble on her lower lip, before making a leisurely show of turning to the other pilot. "Asuka?"

The reply came as a huff. "How should I know, I'm not his keeper."

Turning her nose up and away from the question, Asuka folded one leg over the other and crossed her arms. She started to bounce her top foot, along with a strange, clunky looking anklet. Ayumi held on to her half-empty can of soda like a lifeline, attempting to wash down a growing list of half-registered questions. She sat in observing silence as this grown, professional woman reveled in her immaturity, by turns doting and squabbling with her fellow teenagers.

When the latest round ended with Misato the victor, she turned back to Ayumi, grinning hugely. "So, that's all we know about Shinji at the moment, unless there's something interesting _you'd_ like to tell us, hmm?"

The can in Ayumi's hand creaked audibly, and her own hesitant smile turned watery. It was that instant, the sly implications Misato had laid so casually, in which Ayumi knew she was trapped. "Ah..Uhm. That is... may-"

Misato's sunny expression gave way to a sort of lightning-sharp speculation, but the cheerful grin stayed in place. "You know what we should do? We should go to the mall, all four of us."

Immediately, three girls all voiced the same word: _what. _Ayumi stammered while Asuka shot to her feet. Her rapid bluster made up for both her and Ayanami remaining mostly silent. The blue-haired girl had rolled out of her seat and headed back inside while Asuka spoke for the both of them. Ayumi watched as Misato weathered it all, tapping her foot and grinning into the face of Asuka's pacing. The pilot, despite all evidence to the contrary, was smiling too.

It was also the second time that day Ayumi had heard the phrase _house-arrest_. Then she caught the rest of what Asuka said. "-and we don't even know her!"

"As to the latter, that's to the point. As to the former..." Misato smirked, reaching into her pocket to pull out a little remote. Giving it a playful little wag, she thumbed one button and called out for Asuka's ankle to respond. The tracking anklet responded with a two-note chirp, and Asuka let out an exasperated, long-suffering groan.

Having sufficiently cowed her pilot, Misato twisted and gave Ayumi a quick once-over, and the girl was yet again painfully reminded of her boring state of over-dress. The older woman tapped her cheek with one finger, smiling softly. "That won't do at all. I think you can borrow some of Rei's clothes."

_Don't I get a say-_ The thought formed, but she blanched, and her throat closed up before she could voice it. Ayumi managed to get a tiny squeak out for her trouble.

Throwing an arm around the her shoulders, Misato nudged the girl back into the living room and that visibly comfortable couch. "C'mon, it'll be fun. Four gorgeous girls out for a night on the town? Do you have school tomorrow?"

"Ye-"

"Great! We'll get you home before ten." Misato didn't give Ayumi another chance to respond. She planted one foot on the couch seat and raised her arm like a conquering general. "Asuka! Shirt Me!"

"Get your own damn shirt!" Asuka snarled, but not unkindly. She turned on one bare heel and disappeared around the corner, crossing over from the extended deck to her own apartment balcony.

Misato plowed ahead without missing a beat. "Pen-Pen!"

"Wark."

Ayumi stared as the penguin waddled through the insanity, completely unperturbed and carrying a can of beer in one flipper. She turned and there was Rei standing at the other end of the couch, having already swapped out the sarong for a pair of shorts. The other girl stared back, as red-eyed, blank and eerie as always. Misato ducked into her room with a jaunty wave, promising the girls an excellent afternoon.

Left with just the two of them, Ayumi desperately realized that she needed to say something, _anything_. She shot a pleading look at the blue-haired pilot, hoping for something like a sign, salvation, or some sort ultimate truth.

Instead she received a slow, thoughtful blink, and Rei's shoulders inched up the tiniest bit, as though attempting an unfamiliar gesture. The curious tilt of her head completed the message: 'I have no idea either.'

* * *

><p>The test chamber <em>felt<em> warm, like standing in sunlight at noon. Considering he sometimes called himself _Zenith_, it made a certain amount of sense.

his particular room had been set aside from the others, inside the subsurface Geofront facilities and off to the side of Central Dogma. Located barely half a mile away were the old Proving Grounds were still mothballed and waiting for funds to build up. Of course, Shinji wasn't planning on spending much time there, even after it came back online. He had _much_ more important things to do.

Armored crates and blast shields divided the room into cubicles and assembly stations, filled with bits and pieces of his current project. Safe behind those barriers were more than fifty prototypes, components, scribbled blueprints and proof-of-concepts. And the barriers were necessary, because most non-metallic materials and industrial plastics suffered intense weathering when exposed to Shinji's corona. His school shirts had never been brighter, but he'd ruined more than a few pairs of slacks during his construction projects.

Not that the protective measures bothered him that much; he'd rather not ruin another office space.

As for why he was feeling warm, Shinji could only watch the reflected illumination flicker over the slightly-polished steel shielding. Idly he wondered whether the light was telling him to feel warm, to flush as if hit by sunlight, or if it was simply the spartan work environment. By all reasonable sense, it certainly looked like he was working inside an industrial oven.

Every few minutes the burning column of sunfire would rise up around him, and the mandala-halos spun lazily, rolling through indecipherable symbols and patterns. The wire tracery arms followed the motions of his own hands, punctuating each action with an exotic mudra or similar sign. Invention and design itself no longer took an incredible amount of attention. Multitasking was not easy, per se, but nor was it hard. Leaving his hands to run more or less on autopilot, Shinji let his mind wander.

Of the several dozen things that had been vying for his attention, back when he first Exalted, his corona had been one of the last on the list. Thinking back that far, Shinji snorted. He'd been _tiny_ back then, and Misato had been one head taller. _She_ was five-foot four inches.

Akagi-Sensei however had not forgotten his corona. It had taken the project head a bit of time to work through the backlog, but she _eventually_ tested Misato's original red jacket after being exposed that first week. The sturdy cotton and synthetic fibers looked as if they'd been left in the desert sun for _years_. Shinji's coronal display did _not_ function according to particle physics. Or at the very least functioned according to physics mankind had yet to discover.

Later, Shinji looked over the results himself, though he had to take a crash course in particle physics first. The tangible evidence had been fairly obvious; but the _missing elements_ frustrated the blonde woman to no end. There had been _no_ trace of radiation on Misato's jacket, or Misato, or _anything_ bleached white by his solar aura. The effects of Shinji's 'leaked' energy had more in common with cosmic ray exposure than anything else.

It was just as well though, because when he asked her about it, Ritsuko concluded that discovery with no uncertain terms how- "by all accounts, if you were emitting _actual _light, we'd all have been vaporized in moments."

* * *

><p>Shinji was still hard at work, several hours and more than a dozen prototypes later. He stretched a lattice of hair-fire wire between his glowing fingers, running through the math again just to be sure. The pilot brought his hands together with a sigh, crushing the incomplete mesh between his fingers. Instead of being mashed to useless scrap, the few grams of metal compressed itself into a tiny ingot, and Shinji pressed the bit of raw material into the nearest work table. It stuck there like a piece of chewed gum, waiting to be reused.<p>

Turning back to the drawing board, the boy leaned back, and then rolled his head forward. The steel-cored dividing wall shed papers and thumbtacks by the score, spilling over still more prototypes and mocked up devices. A rounded bubble deformed the barrier's outward side with a sound like a sledgehammer striking bone, and there was brief flicker of a rounded sun-disc at its center. Pulling away, Shinji sighed again and rubbed his brow.

Wandering into another alcove, Shinji sighed and stared at his one single working prototype; a highly refined magnetic resonance imaging scanner. He hoped glowering at it might help get him over his current block. It had taken him maybe an hour to understand the basic principle of a normal imager, and the physics behind its construction, but actually creating a _better one_ proved a lot more difficult than he expected.

The actual prototype itself didn't look much different from a regular MRI 'd settled on increasing the resolution, allowing a far more in-depth scan of tissue, among other things. The receiver coils were the main improvement, where he lucked upon a particular design that allowed the MRI to 'see' more permutations in the relaxing magnetic field.

Describing the engineering concepts to people had been easy; it was like adding extra rods and cones to a human eye, to improve vision. He _had_ run into a few issues with interweaving so many radio-frequency coils into a small space, but a bit of shielding had solved the interference problems. The problem _after that_ had been building a faraday cage to further test the device, hence the alcove.

Which all lead to his third and most recent problem; it worked _too well_.

The enhanced design worked _so _well, in fact, that at the moment, there was only one facility in the world that could _interpret_ the imaging data; the Tokyo-3 MAGI. On top of _that_, only a handful of displays in the Geofront could even show the information. He'd had ended up creating a device that captured _too much detail_.

So that left him trying to make something just as good, _without_ relying on a multi-trillion dollar super-computer triumvirate. Shinji let out yet another sigh and rubbed his eyes, more out of habit than anything. Shuffling back out, the boy scooped up a few dozen sheets of used paper and smashed it all together in hand. A few moments later he had an unmarked, if slightly dingy ream of fresh paper to draw on.

Just before he reached the desk however, the intercom crackled, and Ritsuko-sensei's voice drawled. "Specialist to surgery one, specialist to surgery one. Specialist, please report to surgery one, thank you."

Shinji glanced up at the speaker and the corners of his mouth pull back. At least, he thought, he was still _somewhat_ useful.

* * *

><p>Saneda Ayumi had doubts about her continued survival.<p>

It was a beautiful day in Hakone. On that beautiful day, Ayumi found herself pale, shocked and sweating, and all but dragged into the unexpected expedition. Given no time to protest, Misato had offered her the full run of Rei's closet. Suddenly swamped in clothes, Ayumi thought maybe it was closer to being kidnapped.

Getting dressed herself, Misato called it 'top-down' weather, lamenting her lack of an actual convertible while she pulled on a snug black tanktop. In the rush to the parking lot, the older woman and Asuka had dueled for 'shotgun', but the reference was lost on her. Misato laughed and claimed the passenger seat while Asuka took the rear left side, giving her uncovered eye free reign over the car interior.

After having fully ushered the teenagers into her sporty blue car, Misato had leaned over her seat and tilted her sunglasses down, fixing each girl with a look. Her smiling mandate was that on a day like this, the windows were to be _rolled down. _Ayanami meanwhile had slid easily into the driver's seat, hanging her now ever-present drip bag from the rear view mirror.

The highway was nearly empty, and the sun was still out and shining bright even as the afternoon wore on. Between the gaps in the hills, the girls could see the northern lake shore past the city towers. There, the six solar collection towers tracked the sun's movement across the sky inches at a time. The wind was hot and wild, tugging at their hair constantly. Ayumi considered it suffering, having to push her bangs out of her eyes _again_. Meanwhile, the others looked nothing short of _gorgeous_, and more importantly, their hair _behaved_, falling in waves around their respective shoulders.

Despite everything, some small part of her wondered if they'd be willing to share the secret...

Asuka and Misato started to bicker lightly, knocking Ayumi's one stable thought off track. The pair started slow and picked up speed while their barbs growing more and more elaborate. Locked out of that conversation, Ayumi looked across car interior, eyes shifting between the bag of medicine and the driver. "A-Are you sure you should be driving with one of those...?

Rei did not take her eyes from the road. "Legally, no."

Paling slightly, Ayumi leaned back in her seat and tried not to look nonplussed. A throaty, one-note laugh dragged Ayumi's attention back to Asuka. Cradling her chin in one hand and staring out the window, the redhead had somehow managed to fold one thigh over the other despite the cramped back seat, and her anklet-bound calf bounced lightly.

Looking out at nothing in particular, Asuka smirked. "What she's _not_ telling you, is that Rei is the best driver here."

Fussing in her seat, Misato put on the most childish, indignant pout Ayumi had ever seen. It was so... weird, to see someone _that_ uninhibited. Strangeness aside, none of Shinji's... co-workers were truly unfriendly towards her, and never had been. Even Soryhu-san treated her fairly, and she had a _deserved_ reputation back at school. But friendly or not, each of them was so... forceful, in their own unique ways.

Misato's brow fell, and Ayumi could almost see the glare form between them. One blue eye lazily rolled back as Asuka sighed, reaching for the Major with an extended arm, physically handing her the concession.

"She just has an aggressive attitude behind the wheel." For all her effort at being gracious, Asuka was still smirking.

Before the older woman could respond, Rei took her own opportunity, navigating a turn without missing a beat. "Perhaps the Major could be considered an emotional driver."

After shooting Rei a wide-eyed look of approval, Asuka smiled airily, closing her eyes and facing into the sun. She blithely ignored Misato's grumbling. "The type you find in warzones, I imagine."

Ayumi wondered then if her skin could pass for white stone. After Asuka's last crack, the ribbing began in earnest. The pilots played easily off each other, going on at length about Misato's apparent lack of skill behind the wheel. Meanwhile the older woman seethed testily, but even then Misato had not lost that playful tone.

Now that she thought about it however, the bond between the three couldn't be more obvious. Heckling aside, Ayumi couldn't help but be reminded old team-building exercises in school. The similarity was far too clear. This was a trust-fall, and if Shinji trusted them for all their unusualness, they must have all had their own merits. She had come to see Shinji, but where would she really be if she knew so little about where he came from?

The dark-haired woman twisted then, staring through her sunglasses even as they caught the light. "My car has never done more than a million yen in damages." A shadow passed over the car, and the lenses went clear, long enough for the three teens to see the impish gleam in her eye. "And speaking of damages, who here is paying for this impromptu little shopping spree?"

Silence.

Nodding decisively, Misato folded her arms over her chest and grinned. "That's what I thought."

Settling into her seat and her borrowed clothes, Ayumi quietly supposed this would be a rewarding experience, somehow.

* * *

><p>The device hummed pleasantly, filling its central chamber with warm, golden light. It looked quite similar to an MRI machine, but it wasn't. It had the same general shape, complete with a cushion for the subject to rest on. Inside the aperture, the subject would be scanned with the expected array of low hums, motorized whirrs and digital bleeps, much like the original model and then some. It had similar warning labels, and even some new ones, while the monitors behind the observation wall worked as well as anyone could expect, overflowing with an amazing array of personal data.<p>

And despite all appearances, the massive piece of equipment did _absolutely nothing._

Waiting along with the other nurses and doctors, Shinji glanced down at the patient's chart, before looking up at the patient himself. On the other side of the converted radio-imaging lab, a young man not much older than himself tried to ease his way around consoles with a pair of plastic crutches. The man had lost a leg during the last city-wide Angel attack.

Behind his nurse's mask, Shinji felt his jaw clench. Months ago, his father had said _no_, denied him the freedom to treat the whole city. The young man and his crutches had spent almost a year re-learning how to walk because of that decision.

There had been a _reason_, of course. There were always reasons, like something named SEELE. The knuckles in his right hand popped, and Shinji slowly uncurled his fist. As for what SEELE _was_, Shinji had very little clue. Regardless, that restriction had inspired one of Shinji's first policy decisions shortly after he settled in as division head: anyone injured in battle would get free treatment.

Of course, there were compromises. One being the disguise.

Dressed as a scrub nurse, being the tallest person in the room was the only thing that made Shinji stand out. Getting close to his sixteenth birthday, his face didn't look particularly childish, but neither did it look very adult either. The surgical mask was enough though. Most of the time patients never remembered nurses, unless they were pretty, chatty or otherwise notable. The of subterfuge was far too familiar to him, and it didn't take Shinji long to conjure up those old habits. A small slouch just sightly, and burying his head in a blank slip of paper or a notepad was enough to downplay his looming physique and render him nearly invisible.

Akagi Ritsuko breezed in then, wearing her ever present lab coat and utterly at ease. The bottle-blonde woman rattled off orders, sending her white-suited minions scurrying all over the medical suite. The first time they'd tried the regeneration ploy, she'd spent most of the time staring at Shinji in his disguise, praying that none of them would screw up. Now though after a month of similar procedures, it had become achingly routine.

She took the patient aside then, and plucked the chart from Shinji's hands without a word. The pilot let the lecture wash over him, having heard it more than a dozen times before. Sit in the (fake) regeneration device, wait for the general anesthetic to take effect. Wave over the walking NERV miracle machine... Ritsuko held up her hand, counting down the seconds before administering a reflex test.

When the patient's leg refused to move, she nodded. "Alright, he's out. Ikari-kun, you're up."

Shinji held back the sigh and pulled the surgical mask off. It had gotten uncomfortably clingy while he waited. Dragging the man out of the mockup, the rest of the nurses suddenly deferred to him. A quick look and a few touches here and there told Shinji everything he needed to know. Severed and tied off arteries, extensive muscle trauma... Paramedics had managed to save the man's knee and some of his tibia. Certainly made things easier for him.

Normally he would have just touched the unconscious man and set his body to rightness, but for the ploy to work, there were yet more compromises. Shinji held his hand out for a scalpel. More tools and procedures followed as the boy cut away the scar tissue, revealing muscle and bone. Once everything was prepared, he pressed his hand against the faintly bleeding stump, and called forth his power.

The nurses and other doctors crowded around him then, eager to watch the rapid miracle. Bone forged of solid light began to grow out of the revealed stump, shining almost like polished metal before fading to more natural tones. Ritsuko hovered nearby, armed with a soul-camera and trying her best to loom over his shoulder. She wasn't very successful. The muscle and flesh formed shortly after, leaving a whole, healthy, if somewhat pale limb in its place.

Another surgeon offered to step in, but Shinji gently shook his head, no. The last step was awkward, counter-intuitive and possibly immoral, but it was also _necessary_. Shinji felt a muscle in his jaw throb in response. If anyone was going to do it, it was going to be him, with the least amount of lasting damage. Someone else might get it wrong.

Picking up a fresh scalpel, Shinji leaned over the healed leg and carefully made new incisions, gently excising bits of tissue. Slowly but surely, he ringed the man's calf with shallow cuts. Another brief surge of power saw them healed instantly, leaving the patient with a tiny ring of surgical scars. One of the nurses stepped in with a specialized tattoo needle, inscribing the procedure code with infrared ink. It was future-proofing, they said, for when the regular doctors could regenerate limbs on their own.

Shinji looked at the fake medical device, still humming in that perfectly convincing way. Then he thought back to his own inoperable prototypes. No, probably not any time soon.

* * *

><p>The streets of Tokyo-3 were wide, overwhelmingly so. Most of them served as fire lanes and kill zones for a forty meter tall combat cyborg. Today was not one of those days, and with the thought of Angel attack rapidly becoming a distant memory, the the people went about their afternoon errands almost lazily. The sidewalks were packed with people, surging out of buildings and tram stations, and food stalls and carts spread out along every avenue.<p>

The sun was shining, the breeze was gentle but cool even on the dense city streets, and Katsuragi Misato could feel the hot pavement through her sandals. It was Spring in Tokyo-3, and _life was good_.

Ambling along that sidewalk, Misato and her three teenage charges were cutting through the rush hour foot traffic, and making good headway for the mall. The older woman watched Asuka take the lead, smirking. Between her red hair, the bright-yellow sundress and the eyepatch, the German girl drew in attention with every stride. She was also _picky_, preening and piercing by turns depending on who's eye she caught.

Even with Asuka leading the way, there were more than enough audience to go around. Sliding around a food cart, Misato tossed the cook a quick smile even as she kept an eye on Ayumi and Rei. Another lucky soul caught the edge of her grin and stumbled into that same cart, blinded by charm. Misato's grin spread ever wider, especially after a second starstruck fellow joined the pile.

Lacing her fingers together and reaching for the sky, Misato stretched as she walked, and let her cutoffs and tank top do the heavy lifting. Her eyes drifted closed at maximum extension... And another muted collision reached her ears.

_Heh, still got it._

Ahead, Asuka marched up to the crosswalk and bullied her way to the front of the crowd. Those people nearby made what room they could, allowing Misato and the others to sneak in alongside her.

The girl looked up at Misato with one baleful blue eye, fanning herself with one hand. "It's hoo-oot..."

Dropping out of her stretch next to the pilot, Misato let her hand fall on the teen's head. "Spring at this latitude will sneak up on you, if you're not careful."

"...stupid unfair native adaptation..." Asuka bristled, shaking her head free of the offending hand and visibly willing her hair to fall back into place.

She whirled then, hair and skirt rippling along with her extended arm. Incredulous, overplayed and utterly _teen-age_, Asuka finished her spin away from Misato to fix Rei with a pointing finger. "And how is she pulling it of?! I know for a fact she wouldn't count!"

From where Misato stood, she could only see the edges of Rei's almost imperceptible answering grin. Muffling her own smirk behind one hand, Misato couldn't help but mentally translate that look as Rei's equivalent of absolute, insufferable smugness. As did Asuka, apparently, gnashing her teeth alongside overblown shaking shoulders.

Looking between the pair, Misato had to admit that sometimes, some people had a spotlight set aside just for them. The world seemed to smile on Asuka when she got going on one of her tirades after all. Of course, she wasn't _wrong_ either.

Since the girls had gotten out of the car, Rei had ditched her IV drip after increasing her dosage during the drive into the city. Between that and the sun, the blue-haired girl had not looked better. She'd probably never be anything but aggressively pale, but at that moment, Rei looked _whole_.

"She's almost reflective!"

Trust Asuka to demonstrate friendship in her unique way. Misato shook her head with a wry grin and sigh, taking the lead when the walk signal came on. The mall was just ahead, but then something caught her eye. A plan formed instantly, tumbling into place as if it'd always been there.

Coy and mirthful, the older woman spun on one heel and began to walk backwards down the street. "Looks like we all need a cool-down before our day _really_ kicks off."

Asuka, Rei and Ayumi looked over Misato's shoulders, then back at the alleged adult. Just off the curb ahead of the mall entrance was a snack stand. Misato's smile grew even wider. "Shaved Ice, anyone? My treat?"

* * *

><p>It had taken him a while, but Shinji finally remembered what it was like to be <em>tired<em>.

More accurately, he had found a new kind of exhaustion, one that settled into his body and soaked through his skin and bones. The boy stretched as he walked back to his production floor. One of his tendons creaked obligingly, but there was no draining sense of relief. Instead he felt that constant warmth of his own internal reserves. That power held on to him, held him up despite the strain.

Slumping, Shinji muddled along listlessly, or at least listlessly for someone of his resilience. Everyone else in the corridor probably saw a tall, healthy pilot. And that corridor was _packed_. Technicians in their orange jackets milled about alongside white-coated scientists and engineers, with a few of the officer corp milled about in their tan uniforms.

Puffing out his cheeks, the boy willed the tiniest sliver of power to the fore, and called on the exact position of the sun in the sky. In other words, it was eighteen-hundred hours. Shift change. Shinji's stomach growled, loud enough that a handful of men and women near him stopped chatting and glanced over. A bit of red crept up the back of the pilot's neck, but pushed it aside. He smiled, waving it off with as best he could.

Threading through the crowd, Shinji willed himself not to sigh, and tried twice as hard not to yawn. The hallway split perpendicular and he turned on one foot, heading north. However, someone behind called his name. Turning again, Shinji saw the three primary bridge officers weave between their co-workers, and before he knew it, found himself absorbed into their little group.

Of the three, Shinji knew Maya the best, mostly because she worked closely with Ritsuko during their time in the Proving Grounds. The lieutenant kept up proper poise at all times, even with end of shift aches visibly weighing her down. He hadn't much chance to hang around Shigeru and Hyuuga-san though. Not that he had time _now_ either. As he thought about that, none of the adults seemed to realized it...

"Ah, Shinji-kun," Hyuuga-san stepped up first with a light wave, smiling faintly. He nodded to the others before continuing. "We were just heading out to dinner. Would you like to join us?"

Shinji only half-heard the invitation, if he was being honest with himself. Instead he tried not to look openly scrutinizing, wondering if he could correct Hyuuga's vision problems. Shigeru had also taken to wearing his hair cut short, since the scar from the last battle had left a wicked bald spot. Shinji started to shake his head, both to cast off the distractions and make an excuse... Or he would have, if not for his stomach deciding to growl again.

The trio blinked audibly and his blush returned. Shinji ran a hand along the back of his neck, letting out a weak, two-note laugh. Food would've been a distraction. Food lead to cafeterias, and cafeterias lead to him taking over the kitchen for hours at a time. Those were hours he could spend doing much more important things...

Letting his hand fall, Shinji bowed as far as height and politeness would allow. "Sorry, I can't right now. Thank you though."

Maya, Hyuuga and Shigeru all looked at each other in turn one after the other, letting their eyes do the talking. "Maybe next time." They said, and wished Shinji a good evening. But then down the hall, Maya spoke, just out of earshot for most people. "... Did he even go home last night?" "Did he go home this _week_?"

* * *

><p>Wincing, Shinji rolled his tireless shoulders once more and shuffled off towards the lab, finally allowing himself the small luxury of a sigh. The hunger pangs did finally drive him to find food- a vending machine a few dozen yards away from his workplace. A pair of energy bars did a passable job at quieting his stomach, but they still had the taste and consistency of tree bark. He was half-finished with a third bar when he reached the lab.<p>

Shinji looked out over the chamber full of dividers, scattered supplies and dozens of prototypes, chewing around another papery mouthful. He sighed again and swallowed. If he was going to start work again, he'd need to clean up first.

Each of the cubical wall sections weighed less than fifty kilograms, even fully assembled, and hardly worth mentioning otherwise. Once those were stacked and out of the way, Shinji pulled out a broom and swept up the discard thumb tacks and lost papers. Normally he'd have left something like that for the cleaning staff... If he had planned on going home. At that moment though Shinji decided he'd rather not find his shoes full of spikes sometime later, even if they couldn't break skin.

The loose plans, bits of metal, plastic and other odds and ends were a bit more challenging. The liquid gold fire wrapped down his arms and made short work of the debris, rendering them down into basic components or ingots of raw material. Sometimes he had to juggle the plastics with one hand while he hunted for an appropriate chemical to break them down. Then his stomach decided to complain _again_, forcing the boy to head back out for more snacks.

On the third trip, he decided to just pick the vending machine up and carry it back.

After the seventh bar, Shinji could taste every sign of poor production, as if he were watching it being made and reading the ingredients. He had to forcibly resist the nagging urge to devise his own recipe on the spot. Stepping back from his efforts and swallowing the last mouthful, Shinji looked over his now ordered lab and the stacks of reclaimed materials, waiting for a new round of experiments.

Just when he was about to sit down though, someone poked their head through the door. Through the light of his corona, Shinij saw one of the night shift bridge crew. "Ah, Ikari-kun-"

The poor girl had to shield her eyes from the glare with a clipboard. "We were hoping you could help us with some MAGI maintenance, Akagi-Sensei and Lieutenant Ibuki have already..."

Shinji just looked over at the woman, then back at his work. He let his head fall forward into his desk with a loud, resonant thump. "...I'll be right there."

* * *

><p>On a hot day , shaved ice stands and cafes had long waits, no matter the circumstances. Asuka had marched ahead and gotten in line first, declaring in no uncertain terms that <em>she <em>would not dawdle while ordering, unlike _some _people she could have named. Then the redhead's eyes cut between Rei and Misato, and the older woman wondered if _she_ would have acted like that, if not for her bad years.

But with Asuka already charging away, that left Misato and the remaining girls to lag behind. Draping her arms around the shoulders of both Rei and Ayumi, Misato flashed each of them a bright smile in turn. Rei tried her best, but her smiles still weren't quite up to par. She was still far better than those first few weeks after she moved in.

Ayumi on the other hand... Misato wasn't entirely sure _what_ was going on with her. Livid wasn't right, because the girl didn't look angry, more exasperated. Ayumi's eyes darted from Asuka to Rei then back towards Misato's own, caught between a shaky little laugh and a little sob. That was _unacceptable_. Before either teen knew it, they were neatly folded up in a half-bear hug.

Misato looked down at the girls with crinkled eyes, mushed against her cotton-clad chest. Rei weathered the storm just like she always did, but Ayumi let out the most _adorable_ sounding 'glerk' that Misato had ever heard. Rumpled and more than a little red in the face, Misato felt the brunette's jaw work soundlessly. Then Ayumi's one free eye focused, and Misato followed her gaze back down the street toward Asuka.

The girl then managed to mumble past the obvious obstruction. "Ah... Ka-Misato-san... I think Sorhyu-san is ordering for us."

Misato blinked once and looked again. "She most certainly is not!" Show of support momentarily forgotten, Misato relaxed her grips and slipped between them, confident Rei and Ayumi would catch up as she marched towards the vendor.

A mere bump of the hip dislodged the pushy pilot from her place at the head of the line, as Misato drew a hand through her hair for effect. "Remember who's the commanding officer of this operation!"

Even knocked out of place, Asuka huffed pleasantly, like she was pleased with the attention. The redhead cradled a cup full of shaved and flavored ice hung in one hand. The little wooden scoop-spoon bounced loftily in the other. "Took you long enough."

"Yeah, yeah..." Misato grumbled, sliding neatly into line and giving the man behind the counter teasing little grin while Ayumi and Rei queued up behind her. Watching out the corner of her eye, Misato was glad to see the new girl getting her bearings back.

From her place in the line, Ayumi suddenly pipped up, drawing a slow sidelong look from the blue-haired pilot. She glanced at the menu, then back at the green and yellow cup of ice and syrup in Asuka's hand. "Sorhyu-san, ah, what flavor did you pick?"

From where Misato was standing, she wasn't entirely sure which confused Asuka more; the question, or having been asked by the second-quietest person on the whole trip.

"...I'm not exactly sure." Frowning, Asuka pressed a button on her prosthetic and gave the treat a closer look. "...Stupid Kanji. Green Tea with lemon, seriously?"

After being served, Misato was perfectly happy to lean back against the stall with her elbows on the counter, just in line with the fans they used to keep the ice from melting. Rei joined her a beat later. Off to the side, Misato heard the cashier's adam's apple bounce up and down. The added purr was not wholly necessary, but decidedly fun.

Asuka meanwhile stood out in the sun, sticking her spoon in the confection and trying to slay the foul beast that offended her. She held it out, leaning as far away from her own hand as she could. "Gross..."

Ayumi wove in then, growing more and more sure by the moment. Grinning, Misato took another bite, suddenly _very_ interested as to where things were going. Shinji's girlfriend held an eager hand out, beaming. "I'll take it!"

The pilot blinked, plainly skeptical, while Misato and Rei watched from the shade. Asuka's voice had gone toneless and uncertain. "...Sure, take it."

Ayumi was gamely trying to hold back an even wider smile as she plucked the cup out of Asuka's hand. Digging in, she added "Green tea grows on you, you have to develop a refined taste to really enjoy it."

Asuka let out a derisive snort. "Please. Refined taste?" Tapping one sandaled foot, she huffed and crossed her arms. "They don't even have decent _chocolate_."

Rei broke in then, speaking for the first time since they got out of the car. "I have chocolate ice-cream, back at the apartment. Ikari-kun makes it."

Asuka blinked, first incredulous, then dumbstruck. Her jaw flapped up and down, and Misato could just _see_ the annoyance warring with base jealousy for dominance over Asuka's train of though. Ayumi herself was outright speculative and licking her lips with a smile.

The internal conflict didn't last long. Fixing Rei with a pointer finger, Asuka gaped. "You've been holding out on me!"

Misato chose that moment to saunter back into play, though she was sure the cashier and more than a few customers hated to see her go... and enjoyed watching her leave. The extra roll of her hips probably wasn't wholly necessary either. She came to a stop next to Rei and grinned. "And she has learned the lessons well."

Asuka wilted, moaning archly. "_What _lesson?!"

Humming softly, Misato just offered the girl a kindly if painfully inscrutable smile. Asuka stared, first at her commanding officer, then at her fellow pilot and lastly the new hanger-on. The almost tangible cloud of exasperation building up around her head and shoulders made Misato's heart swell up in a way that she could only describe as 'big-sisterly'. Though Misato had to admit, she was mostly guessing about that.

The German girl just slumped in place, sighing. "Oh look. The mall's right there. Let's go."

Ginning, Misato laughed and toasted the girl with her own treat. "Soon! But after we're done."

Rei moved over to join Asuka, holding an extra cup of red-covered ice. She pressed it into Asuka's hands, nodding once. "Strawberry."

Tossing the girl a grateful look, Asuka sighed and dug in.

* * *

><p>The four of them lazily made their way to the mall entrance, through the lingering crowds and mid-spring shoppers. The sun started to crawl toward the horizon, and the blue sky was slowly tinting pleasant orange. At the same time, the previously welcome wind was starting to turn a bit cold. Asuka in her yellow sundress had the best defense against the chill.<p>

Still, Misato couldn't help but feel pleased when goosebumps prickled up her sides. The old scar had left an awkward, sometimes painful gap... Shaking her head, Misato tossed the cup and spoon away along with her thoughts. No more scar and a few less worries. Looking over at the girls, Misato noticed Rei and Ayumi shivering faintly, but probably more due to the last few bites than anything.

Focusing more on Ayumi, Misato's lips quirked to one side. The borrowed clothes were just a _bit_ too small for her... that had potential. Smirking softly, Misato waltzed over and poked the girl in the side. "You know, when we're done here, we can get anything we buy tailored."

Ayumi squeaked and whirled, blinking owlishly. "I-Isn't that kind of expensive? And high end?"

Off to the right, Asuka's expression turned murderous. "She's talking about the golden boy. He can... already... stuff."

Misato waved the other girl off. "Nevermind Asuka. Listen, Ayumi-chan. If you're interested..." She leaned in and wrapped her arms around Ayumi's middle, leading her off to the side. Smiling, Misato whispered, and the girl went incandescent. "T-That's-"

Whatever it was, Ayumi couldn't say past the laughter. Misato considered that mission-accomplished and unceremoniously dragged the rest of her charges into the mall.

* * *

><p>As it turned out, an extended detour into mindless labor was just the thing he needed to make some progress.<p>

Shinji sighed and massaged his eyes. The action was purely reflex by that point, because like general exhaustion, he hadn't felt eyestrain or anything similar for _months_. Even so, the familiar little ritual made him feel better, slightly . The MAGI maintenance had been monotonous, almost painful with its emphasis on procedure. He'd also _tried_ to protest, pointing out he was not an actual _expert._

Then he reminded himself that he could call expertise out of thin air. Or at least most of the time. At that moment, Shinji felt burdened... and somehow empty, near the end of his reserves. Now that he thought about it, school had probably been one of the best things for him- a solid eight or so hours where he was not focusing power through the lens of his soul.

The drain had forced him to work in fits and starts as well. Assume a stance, execute the technique, wait until he'd recovered enough to try again. A few days ago, Shinji had eyed his own coronal display with loathing. It by definition was _wasted energy_.

But right now, after several hours of frustrating, disengaging maintenance, Shinji had come back to his impromptu Geofront workshop and made progress. The advanced MRI was left alone for now, though he was sure it still mocked him, somehow.

His progress, his _success_ was about the size of a flattened pack of cigarettes, or one of those newer clamshell design cell-phones. He thought about counting back the weeks and previous iterations, but Shinji decided he just plain didn't care. A pair of admittedly temporary straps dangled from the skinward side, complete with foam padding. The batteries were taken off the shelf so to speak, he hadn't needed to really worry about them yet. The more important part was the actual pump design itself; the high-efficiency motors that drove the peristaltic motion.

Shinji held the device up to the light and smiled. It was the first useful prototype of Rei's infusion pump. Oh there was still work to be done, improvements to be made, like eliminating the drip bag, reducing the form factor even more.

Then Shinji squinted, glancing at the dangling tube and adapter-shunt hanging off the far end. "...Someone needs to implant the intake port."

* * *

><p>The mall had been packed, full of shifting throngs of shoppers and employees. It had air conditioning, on a scale that managed to beat the mid-spring evening heat far better than the shaved ice. Ayumi switched her two bags to one hand and wiped an arm over her brow, huffing softly. Cool air or not, she'd worked up a faint sweat, and Misato-san said they weren't even <em>halfway done<em>.

Before, Sorhyu-san had set the bar for dynamic, aggressive personalities in Tokyo-3 Municipal. The foreign pilot had swept in like a natural disaster, completely destroying what little stability remained. As for the older woman, Ayumi found her... forceful. Forceful was a good word, better than _domineering_ or _unrelenting_. She was more of a persistent presence, blindingly cheerful and completely at ease with herself.

That forcefulness was also what started the whole mall expedition. As a student, Ayumi knew the weekend rush, that time where outside of chores, she didn't have to do _anything_. Misato personified that feeling. Ayanami had mentioned _Major_ as well, and Suzuhara and Aida both had gone on at length about Misato and her job. Ayumi had blinked and her mind spun out for a bit, trying to reconcile the woman as a minor idol, and being a primary defender of humanity. Then Misato made no less than three more blatant offers to 'help' her with Shinji.

That was when Ayumi stopped trying, instead deciding to just go with it.

Between Asuka and Misato though, the four of them blasted through the mall and departments, laughing and bickering by turns. Splurging or not, Misato's free funds could only go so far, leaving them all with one or two bags each. Despite that, Misato made a point of ducking into an electronics store, coming back out with a pair of pagers. She handed one to Ayumi with a knowing wink.

"It might help you with Shinji." As her jaw loosened in confusion, the only explanation Ayumi got was Misato's hand forming a gun, aimed directly at her heart. "Communication."

Bang.

* * *

><p>After the first round of browsing, the girls slowed down to what Ayumi decided was a 'meander'. They moved lightly, weaving between the evening crowds. Asuka had decided to show off at one point, pulling her eyepatch off and tying it around the back of her head. With both eyes closed, Asuka then proceeded to hold a conversation while walking backwards, firing off quips and only stumbling once or twice.<p>

Still, going for nearly two hours with a pair of bags had an effect. Ayumi puffed up her cheeks and let out a gusty sigh, smiling. Sorhyu-san and Misato-san matched it with one of their own, though it was still kind of eerie watching the redhead 'see' with her eyes closed.

Glancing over at the blue haired girl, Ayumi blinked, first curious than concerned. "Ayanami-san, are you alright? Your nose is bleeding."

Cocking her head to one side, a bit of red dripped down over Rei's lips, and her tongue flicked out on reflex. Her face scrunched up, sour and puckered, and Ayumi winced in sympathy, imagining the salty metallic taste herself. Misato's face clouded, moving over but stopping just short. Setting her own bags down, Rei reached into a pocket for what looked like a pen.

She twisted one end and a hypodermic needle shot out the one side. "I'm becoming somewhat unstable."

Ayumi hummed softly, confused, even as Rei jammed the needle into the meaty part of her thigh. Looking back at Misato and Asuka, Ayumi felt her lips pull back and pursed, hoping they might explain. Instead she saw them both share the same stormy, unreadable expressions, focused totally on Rei.

Asuka and Misato spoke as one, almost syllable for syllable. "The family-thing?" "The goopy thing?"

Then they looked at each other. "_What _goopy thing?" "What_ family_ thing?!"

* * *

><p>Something seemed to choke out the mirth and good feelings, leaving Ayumi with an even more intense sense of awkward confusion and impending doom. She watched the pilot and Major stare at each other, sneaking sidelong glances at the blue-haired girl and herself. Ayumi's mind spun into gear, suddenly locked out of an unspoken conversation. Asuka meanwhile simmered, barely able to hold back.<p>

The five or so seconds stretched out far longer than they had any right to, until Misato-san broke the stalemate and turned. Ayumi felt herself pinned to the spot by that smile. It was a fixed look, sort of like what Ayumi's parents had when she'd asked about sex for the first time. On Misato though it wasn't an embarrassed, overly tight grin, it was something else... something Ayumi couldn't quite place.

It was also the first time she realized Misato _sounded_ like an adult, even past the almost-to-earnest smile. "Listen, Ayumi-chan, Rei-chan; you two stay here. Asuka and I need to have a quick discussion. Over there."

She pointed to an alcove leading to the restrooms. Rei simply nodded, while Ayumi wondered if she should have saluted or not. The older brunette took Asuka by the upper arm and tugged, maybe a little harder than she intended, nearly pulling the younger girl off her feet. Asuka squawked, but jerked her arm away and kept walking.

While all that was happening, Rei had found a bench to sit on, keeping her shopping bags between her calves. She still had the hypodermic needle as well, out and sharp. She twisted the end again and the business end sank back into the pen, and she stuffed itto the bottom of her bag. Ayumi still saw the biohazard symbol.

Sitting down herself, Ayumi started to think, _really think_. She'd known of Ayanami Rei, seen her in every school in Tokyo-3, from primary to junior high. Ayumi had been one class ahead the whole time, of course, but it had gotten to the point that Rei was the 'quiet but wierd girl'. Then it changed again; Rei stopped being weird, or more her strangeness was accepted as the norm.

All of that came to one single conclusive thought: _I don't know anything about this girl._

Ayumi glanced sidelong, suddenly painfully aware of the silence, even with the gradually fading mall noise around them. She groped for a topic, flailing mentally.

"So... uh..." She bit her lip, trying to hazard something, anything. "What kind of extracurriculars do you have?"

Ayanami didn't look up from her knees, but she spoke clearly. "I never felt like pursuing any."

Wilting, Ayumi sank into her shoulders. Her hair spilled over the sides of her face in a limp curtain. "Oh."

Now Rei turned, blinking once and cocking her head to the side. "Ah. Perhaps that is an unusual sentiment."

Ayumi squirmed in her seat, suddenly feeling an adrenaline surge followed by mortification. She waved her arms and hands, blanching. "Oh no, no! Lots of people don't do them, I was just wondering!"

"It is alright. I don't do many other things people normally do." Rei did not blink, and barely emoted even as she spoke. "I apologize if this is discomforting."

"No, no it's alright." The awkwardness was starting to fade, and Ayumi felt a tiny grin work its way across her lips. "You just... you just got to _be_."

* * *

><p>Framed between two decorative trees, the restroom hallway was empty and reasonably private. The mall-goers were slowing down to a thin trickle due to the dinner rush, heading for home or the food courts. Since they were out of the main foot path, hardly anyone paid Misato and Asuka any attention.<p>

The pair faced each other, and Asuka had moved her patch back where it belonged and stared at Misato, arms folded over her chest and foot tapping expectantly. "Well?"

Misato shrugged, and felt her brows furrow. She really did _not_ want to deal with another worry. "Well what?"

"Well, we're either talking about the same thing with different names, or we're talking about two different things." Asuka cocked her head to one side and corners of her mouth pulled back, hard. "So I ask again; _what_ 'family' thing?"

Her own lips drawing to one side, Misato's teeth ground lightly. Normally she would have tried to laugh it off, but Asuka... Asuka was too smart for a deflection. Misato tried anyway. "It's private. I mean, I was teasing Rei and I didn't realize I was getting into bad taste, so she corrected me."

"But you obviously know. She told you _something_, and she's told _me_ something. Her AT field's on the fritz, right? Akagi confirmed that back when we were stuck in the MAGI."

The conversation was moving into _extremely_ dangerous ground... and the chances of Asuka being patient were tiny at best. Misato licked her lips and nodded. Knowing that and knowing whatever 'goopy' meant in relation was something else. She tried to tell that to Asuka, but the other girl cut her off mid-syllable."Yes, but-"

"Well, Rei told me _how_ she has an expressive AT field. Did she tell you that, or something else?" The redhead looked up at Misato with one icy blue eye, utterly still.

Misato pulled out the warning tone, setting her stance and frowning mightily. And felt like a heel for trying. Still, her voice held steady, even as she drew out the name. "Asuka..."

The girl tossed her hands up and rolled her eyes. Asuka let her arms and head drop suddenly drained, and Misato could _hear_ the pleading tone in the girl's voice, like she was hoping for something... or maybe dreading. "Just.. Just tell me something, Misato. Tell me if you know how fucked up Rei is."

Swallowing thickly, Misato thought back. She wondered simultaneously why it was even relevant even as . "Well... She used to live in a shitty apartment. And I had to explain games like tag..."

"This is more than having a crappy home-life!" Asuka's eye somehow turned even colder, almost arctic. "Rei never wanted to become an astronaut. She never wanted to discover a new theory or study dolphins or win the Olympics. She's never wanted to write her name in history. Rei's never had monsters in her closet, or bloody-handed killers in campfire stories. Instead they gave her Angels, and told her to slaughter them indiscriminately."

Now the heat came back, and Asuka's eye _burned_. "I'm pretty sure back when I was still _learning my letters_, she was sitting in an entry plug."

It was long past time to try acting natural. Instead, Misato waved Asuka along and on one heel, heading into the hallway. "Follow me."

Asuka stamped one foot, incredulous, huffy and piqued. Still she followed a beat later, voice rising. "Misa-"

"_Do it._" Misato dropped her own voice low, dragging out as much whispered urgency as she could. She kept her arm down but waved her hand at her hip, in that universal 'cut it out' slash. "Section two courtesy policy; they don't follow us into bathrooms _immediately_, but they're coming." _Along with the directional mics_.

Asuka's throat worked, and the muscles along her neck stood out tight and straining. She nodded stiffly and started to march, sweeping ahead. Misato let out the last breath she'd held. The restroom itself didn't have a main door, but the stalls were private and isolated. Misato's eyes snapped to all corners, sizing up the windows and dimensions. The empty handicap accessible cubicle was their best choice, and the older woman hustled the teenager inside.

Misato shut the stall door behind her, while Asuka let out a breathy sigh. When they were situated, Misato exhaled softly. "We have maybe five minutes, so just listen for a second. I have an arrangement with the Commander."

Asuka's face scrunched up, mashing together revulsion, horror and scandal.

Misato blanched, She slashed her hands through the air, suddenly frantic. "No! Nothing like that. I mean our apartments aren't watched as close as they could be. As long as I send in reports. I have to give him _something_, Especially if I want..." She hesitated at that, tripping over the thought as though suddenly weighing the consequences of what she was saying.

But Misato pushed on anyway, with more conviction this time. "If I really want to act against him!"

"D-Do you?" Asuka sucked down a big lungful of air, then visibly regretted it. Misato's own nose crinkled at the chemical smell.

"He's in the business of killing Angels, and that's why I'm here..." Misato trailed away, looking off to the side. Stupid complications... She leaned against the stall wall and turned back to Asuka, offering the girl a wan smile. "...but sometimes I want to punch his face in too."

Seconds ticked by while the pair digested everything. Misato watched as Asuka fidgeted, shifting in place and running her hands up and down her folded arms. Something had been eating at the girl, that much Misato knew, but if she were completely honest, the Major sometimes had _no idea_ what was going on in Asuka's head.

Neither of them had time to figure it out either. Hugging herself, Misato tried not to sigh. "So... You first, Asuka."

The girl jumped, almost as if she'd been bit. "...Right. Rei's a..." Misato could almost see the wheels in Asuka's head turning, and her jaw worked, trying to find the right words. "Manufactured human? NERV, GERHIN or... or somebody who worked on the Evangelions. I don't know, but they grew her or something."

When she was finished, Asuka sagged against the far wall, visibly spent. Misato frowned deeply, pressing her lips down into a tight, thin line. To most people that would've been tremendous revelation, but then Misato realized it sounded like something out of a soap opera. "Hold on a sec, how does that work?"

"Evangelions are _cyborgs_, Misato." Asuka let out a quiet huff. "Someone needed an _organic _half to finish the job."

After digesting that for a moment, Misato blinked, and the words just slipped out. "Wait, wait. Doctor Ikari was part of an Eva?"

Asuka was about to ask, already starting to mouth the question, but Misato cut her off with an apologetic wince. They'd already wasted enough time as it was. "Sorry. I mean, Rei told _me _she was a clone of Shinji's mother, Ikari Yui."

Something else started to gnaw at her though, mostly because of how Asuka said it. "What did you mean by 'goopy thing'?"

"Rei's trying to make her human soul do things it can't, and it rips holes that let her identity leak out." Asuka's tone shifted from 'participating in an interrogation' to 'college lecture'. She spread her hands out then brought them together, including a 'squish' sound. "When your identity leaks, you sort of lose macroscale stability. In Rei's case, she goes gooey."

Paling slightly, Misato decided to let that go for the moment. Instead she focused back on her pilot. Some things were starting to click into place, not just about Rei, but Asuka as well. She must've been holding on to that for _weeks_, if not longer. Misato though couldn't quite pin everything down, not without Asuka filling in the blanks. "Why didn't you tell me this before? I care about Rei's well-being too."

Just shy of snarling, Asuka caught herself and the last second and took a quick breath. She counted the why off on two fingers. "First of all Rei is my friend and no one but her gets to pass judgement on her, and secondly you're not a pilot and probably wouldn't understand."

Then Misato had a word for it; Asuka knew _loyalty_. It was basic, but unmistakable, and almost identical to the kind of dedication Misato shared with anyone under fire. She thought back to that briefing, and suddenly Asuka's attitude_ made total sense_. Realizing that, Misato couldn't hold the secrecy against her. Misato tried to smile as an olive branch.

Asuka met the attempt with more determination, and stared at her hard. "Rei's been hurt deeper than either of us, so she's given them enough."

Wilting, the older woman reeled internally. Asuka was talking about Rei as if she were a mistreated veteran... And Misato was painfully reminded that fourteen and fifteen-year-olds were _not supposed to be veterans_. But if Asuka was going to be made of iron, so was she.

She took a quick calming breath, and tossed the girl a wry smirk. "I've been in combat myself, Asuka, with bullets flying and everything. This is all about what Rei needs, huh?"

Asuka clenched her hands over and over, sighing. "Yeah."

Misato smiled then, soft and warm, and she got a better response. She looked up at Asuka, hopeful and only slightly cautious. "So... what do you want to do?"

Apparently minding the time, Asuka didn't answer directly. Instead she balled up her fist and punched her other palm. The promise of pain was crystal clear. To that she added "My friend's out there with her soul full of holes. What do you think I want to do?"

Misato nodded gently. "Well, we can't do that now. In the meantime, we can stick by Rei."

Asuka looked up, blinking once. "We?"

"Yeah, We. Us, You and I." Misato hopped away from the stall wall and held her hand out to Asuka. "You think you can handle that?"

The teenager's head bobbed in agreement, using Misato's hand to stand upright and throw her shoulders back. Asuka answered back with her own decisive nod. Misato's eyes crinkled shut as her smile grew even wider. With a quick tug, she whipped the girl forward and had her wrapped up in a hug before she knew it.

"Mmmph!"

* * *

><p>"Oi, 'Yumi. Pass me the... noodle-stuff."<p>

Ayumi blinked, snapped back into the moment by Asuka barging into her train of thought. The buffet Misato found was full of people of all ages. Teenagers filled tables and welcomed their friends and peers. Tired but happy shoppers waited in lines to order all over, carrying bags and chatting animatedly with their boyfriends or girlfriends, wives and husbands. Men and women getting off work and heading for late dinners filtered in wearing summer suits with loosened ties.

Asuka managed to loom from across the table, poised in her yellow sundress with three massive plates of food arrayed before her. Ayumi stared right back and the perfect phrase appeared in her mind. It was as if the stars had aligned just for this one moment.

The opportunity was simply too good to pass up. _"Jawohl mein Führer, Heil Asuka."_

Thunderous, deafening silence followed. Rei simply blinked once, while Asuka and Misato both stared openly. The moment dragged out longer and longer, until it hit that point where nerve failed. Misato was the first to break, the stunned look giving way to a _howl_ of laughter. Ayumi smiled faintly, hunching in on herself only a little as people turned to see what the fuss was about.

"I-I'm not sure which was _worse!"_ Misato blurted, still laughing. "The attempt or the _ac-c-cent!"_

Asuka folded her arms over her chest and glared through the laughter with one dark blue eye. _"Gott ist in seinem Himmel."_

Wilting, Ayumi blanched and kicked herself for completely exhausting her total knowledge of the German language. As Asuka stared her down, Ayumi found herself suddenly wondering if the rumors about the eye patch were true, and that it _could_ steal the souls of those who displeased Sorhyu. She didn't think it so, but it had become painfully clear that Asuka would _try_.

Ayumi passed the plate of noodles without a word.

An apology was forming when one side of Asuka's mouth quirked up, shifting full on into a sly smirk. She took the plate and dished up, even as Misato reached out to muss the redhead's hair. Ayumi let out a sigh and grinned, awash in the shrieks and silly giggles, surrounded by three people she was rapidly beginning to call _friends_. Even Ayamani was smiling into her drink, sipping daintily while the others carried on.

Ayumi had to admit, her own friends and family where no where near as energetic. Dinner at home had always been quiet, with lots of habits and little rituals. Familiar ones, _family_ ones, of course, but routine just the same. Here though Asuka and Misato were teasing and prodding each other non-stop. Food was picked from unguarded plates and apologies to their owners were mumbled through whatever morsel they happened to steal.

Outside of the tabletop battlefield sat Ayumi, and she judged her target well and boldly, reaching slow and unnoticed to a particularly overlooked bottle. But as she triumphantly lifted it to her lips, Misato broke away from hassling Asuka and spun on her with almost preternatural speed. Gone was the beer from Ayumi's hand, and already drained in an instant. The older woman howled before slamming the bottle down on the table.

Waggling one finger, Misato grinned, winking mischievously. "Urp - better not get too wound up young lady, it's a school night!"

Rei and Asuka stopped to stare for a moment, before _they_ burst out laughing, flicking wadded up napkins and chopstick wrappers across the table. Misato raised her hands, warding off the assault and winging back what she could. "N-No fair! I'm inebriated!"

Picking at her plate, Ayumi mused while smiling faintly. Four hours ago, the most demanding thing on Ayumi's mind had been her ironically tepid relationship with one of the most turbulent boys in Toyko-3. She was worried about him, worried for herself, and worried for all the messes and good times that came along. But if the Ayumi of now had answered that door four hours ago instead of Misato and told her younger self; 'you'll be having dinner with your boyfriend's live-in harem,' she'd have laughed and cried and run all the way home.

Only during the past handful of hours had she realized how narrow that view had been. Shinji wasn't just her boyfriend, he was a person with his own friends... his own weirdly adoptive family. The 'harem' that had lurked in the back of her mind now seemed more preoccupied with inducting _her _than they had been with Shinji's daily life.

Looking up from her plate, Ayumi thought back to her own family. Her grandmother had once said something like "Food tastes as good as the company you keep." The actual phrase had sounded awfully formulaic when Ayumi had first heard popped a bit of stir-fry into her mouth and hummed, smiling through the flavor while Misato and Asuka comically gawked at another of Rei's deadpan responses.

"Of course its natural! German heritage! Misato, you've poisoned her against me!"

Ayumi had to admit, her grandma was more right than she knew.

* * *

><p>Shinji yawned, stretched, and settled into the next round of testing.<p>

The MRI prototypes sat off to the side, vindictively ignored for the foreseeable future. Stacks of papers had been filled with calculations and formula, and Shinji had proven fairly conclusively that he was _terrible_ at anything less than design excellence. Five or more iterations had left him with nothing but black box technology, testbeds perhaps for future techniques, but still nothing _practical_.

Rei's infusion pump lay finished on one side of his work table. Finished, if one forgot the six dozen or so steps that had _nothing_ to do with creating it, and everything to do with _approving_ _it_. Also setting aside the admittedly simple procedure to implant the port, complete with a hornet's nest of ethical quandaries that he saw no need to disturb just yet.

Shinji sighed and pushed both those projects out of his mind. Instead he turned forward toward his work table, left with basic experimentation.

Over the past four weeks during his various attempts at engineering, he had devised a new technique. It was similar to the expressed power that let him shape materials with his bare hands. Perhaps an outgrowth of it, he wasn't entirely sure. In any event, Shinji had decided _not_ to tell Ritsuko that he could violate conservation of mass... at least yet. He'd promised himself that he would. Eventually, when Ritsuko stopped getting that strange, vaguely berserk look in her eye at his already-established powers.

The boy shook his head and focused back on the task at hand. The surface was perfect, with no flaw or chip to be seen at any angle. The finely pebbled calcium carbonate had a consistent resistance to crushing and impact forces, which was to say hardly any at all. He set the target down on the steel table, waiting for the oblong thing to stop wobbling. The buffed out remnants of previous experiments dotted the table as well- splayed hand prints made in industrial steel.

Shinji raised his hand, almost resigned to the foregone conclusion. His arm whipped down and slammed into the surface with a sharp, ringing bang, and the steel tabletop warped up and cradled the sides of his fingers. The egg shell under his palm had shattered completely, the same egg shell he'd taken with his packed lunch almost a month ago.

He pulled his hand away and tapped it against the table, dumping the hundreds of shell fragments into the basin left by his palm. He reached out for his notebook and started to take notes, even as he started to count each cracked piece. The notebook was starting to get full too... Shinji shook his head and looked back at the remains, pulling out his inner reserve once more.

The process itself was calming in a way, almost relaxing. He pulled at jagged edges, picking out each one and it's neighbor perfectly each time, like the most difficult jigsaw puzzle. Two pieces became one under his fingertips, and so on and so forth. A familiar curve began to appear, until he had less mess and more shell, until finally the shell was whole and dry.

The very same egg, shattered. Then repaired as if new, and shattered over and over again.

Now reassembled, Shinji held the empty shell up to the light. Not a single crack or deformation, just like the last few dozen tests. He cocked his head to one side, then the other. Break the shell, put it back together, a routine within his other routines. His stomach churned suddenly, and Shinji willed it to quiet down. He had to admit, a good hand-made meal would've been great right then, but the vending machine he'd taken still had plenty in stock. No reason to divert any more than he already had.

Staring at the egg, Shinji couldn't help but see _potential_. There was a sense-that-was-not, an intangible sort of feeling. It was similar to any other technique he had developed, finding insight into some deeper understanding. Feeling a wave of inspiration take hold, Shinji rocked forward in his chair. He drew forth the scraps of power he still had in reserve, _focused_, and saw room to invest a part of _himself _into _something else_.

The power flowed in a new pattern, remembered just as easily as any hand to hand technique. His notepad waited nearby, with several hundred hours of recorded data already filling its pages. Holding the shell above the table, Shinji squinted, suddenly intent. After a long moment of study, his fingers moved, and the egg fell.

It hit the table with a muted, hollow _click_, and seemed to stop there for a moment, almost poised for something. Then it bounced, seven times in all before falling off the table entirely, tumbling past Shinji and his chair. He clamped down on the urge to chase after it, instead pushing himself to finish writing out the results.

The egg had come to a stop some ten feet away, meandering along the floor until it ran out of energy and came to a halt. Shinji eyed its ending point and glanced back at the table, mentally diagramming one of the possible wobbling paths. Curiosity satisfied, he picked the shell back up and sat back down, ready for the second test. The shell almost seemed to tingle under his fingertips, humming and familiar... it felt distantly like he was touching his own arm... or holding his own arm. He looked the egg over for any flaw and imperfection and found none.

After checking his notes one last time, Shinji leaned back in the chair, thinking. He turned the empty egg over in his hand. There was no obvious change, other than an egg shell staying intact despite repeated impacts and a relatively long drop. Practical experience in the kitchen had given him a good baseline. Though unlike any other project, the egg had been the first time he couldn't _see_ what he was doing.

There weren't any support struts or chemical additives... He just made the shell stronger. Put a part of himself into it and made it stronger. _Am I creating some sort of honeycombing structure with the shell? Or is there something else going on_...

He frowned then, again staring at the miraculously undamaged egg. Some part of him questioned the wisdom of the experiment, of _continuing_ the experiment. That part of him already knew the answer, had _always_ known the answer. It was a nagging little voice in the back of his head, gleeful or resigned by turns. A perfect probability of something happening was the same as saying absolutely nothing else could happen.

Dropping the egg again on the table, Shinji bounced it, rolled it around under his fingers, even dribbled it a few times like an oblong rigid basketball. He paused, stopping the shell in a cage of his fingers. His whole body tensed in an instant, and rings of dust bloomed beneath his shoes as he braced. From his thighs through his core and into his arm then out his hand, Shinji brought his open palm down on the egg once more. The metal frame let out an awful, echoing shriek..

His work area had bowed around his arm, and the box-tube legs sank into floor. His free hand shot up and caught Rei's pump before it smashed against the far wall. Tapping his other hand clean of egg shell, Shinji waited, breathing slow and steady. An hour passed, and he rebuilt the shell from its remnant flakes. Another hour, and he repaired the table..

Reaching out for a bit of scrap paper and a pen, Shinji exhaled and started to take notes. "...Experiment One: Resistance... negligible."

_Anything_ could be futile, even success.

* * *

><p>Shinji heard it before anything else. Then he <em>felt it<em>, through the soles of his boots, a muted _thoom-thoom-thoom_ of approaching footsteps. The trees in the distance shifted, just slightly out of sync. At the opposite end of the stage, Ritsuko was bent over a laptop and thanking the gathered audience for attending the demonstration. Or more accurately, the first part. Shinji flexed his gloved fingers, curling into fists and relaxing.

The footsteps were getting closer; cups of water and the distant Geofront lake rippled from impact tremors.

More than a dozen pairs of eyeballs swiveled as Misato sauntered on stage, and Shinji willed himself to _not_ follow along. It was har... a challenge. The Major scooped up a microphone in one hand and straightened her beret with the other. Select representatives from the JSSDF, Tokyo-3's own local news and worldwide. Lastly were the first of many UN representatives, enforcing _monthly_ inspections_._

She turned smartly on one booted heel and faced the crowd, smiling broadly. "We owe a lot to our Specialist here, the volunteer for our Human Enhancement Project. Increased strength, speed and stamina are just the beginning." She waved at the obstacle course and labeled weights. "NERV in the business of Unnatural Warfare, ladies and gentlemen! So now, more than ever, we're dedicated to putting all the right boots on the ground, where we need them, _when _we need them."

Blinking behind the helmet, Shinji had to admit, Misato was a pretty good actress. She had asked him before the demonstration, if he was alright with what they were doing. She waved her hand at her forehead, their personal little signal. NERV, using his Exaltation. He shrugged, saying "If it helps, I can do it."

At that moment he felt a little less than okay about it, and was glad the helmet fully covered his face.

Misato made a point of holding one hand over her beret, while turning to a camera. "Asuka?"

A familiar young girl's voice rang out from the stage sound system. "Already en route."

Still keeping a firm grip on her beret, Misato again smiled at the generals, scientists and cameras. "Well, we covered the basics, but now we'd like to show you a little bit more about what our Specialist can do."

Out from behind a distant low hill, Evangelion Unit-02 marched into view.

A part of Shinji's mind had to actively rebel at the sight of the Evangelion. It wasn't the first time he'd seen one up close or moving of course. He'd been there when Asuka made landfall in Japan in her machine after all. That still didn't make it any easier to reconcile.

Even acknowledging it somehow maintained a passive region of altered physics, the sheer size of the things were terrifying. Shinji himself had finally settled at six feet tall, and become somewhat used to towering over nearly everyone in his class or country. He could stack twenty people just as tall as he was and still not reach the top of an Eva's head. The wind resistance at that height would have been staggering, enough to strain a building, let alone a several hundred ton biped.

More unsettling was the sound delay, each motion occurring a half-second or two before the sound reached his ears. There was no jerking pistons or grinding gears, but instead massive tendons as thick as his own arm or leg, and strange muscles under flexible armor. Shinji watched as Asuka guided her machine towards them, and was again struck by how _natural_ the Eva moved, and how quickly.

Each footstep was _fast_, not in the sense of stomping. Every step hit the ground with the force of a cannon, and the reason for her roundabout path became clear. The quick pace would have reduced any mundane roadway to rubble in minutes.

The Evangelion moved like a person, on a massive scale.

He wasn't the only one feeling uneasy. Even closer now, Shinji started to crane his neck up and up and up. Glancing sidelong, the scientists and UN team were starting to squirm. The Tokyo-3 locals though were more awed, but he couldn't say for sure. The only one who smiled at Asuka's approach was Misato.

Holding her beret down became clear when the Evangelion neared the stage. For a normal person, a footstep or swung arm kicked up dust. At the Evangelions' size, 'dust' was dirt and leaves, or even small bushes and poorly anchored trees. Ritsuko had packed her laptop up and held it tight against her chest, trusting her glasses against the building grit. Carefully picking her path, Asuka still left an obvious but narrow trail in her wake.

It said a lot too, that Shinji _knew_ he couldn't match that feat.

Stopping just short of the stage, the Evangelion and Asuka stood with a hand on each hip, and the girl's voice echoed from the speaker. "Evangelion Unit-02 reporting!"

Misato pumped her fist and cheered. "Nicely done Asuka-chan!" The Major spun back to the audience once the unnatural wind had died down. The gusts kept going past the bleachers, shaking the parked television vans and trees behind them.

Her expression went hard for a moment, fixing the crowd with a look. "Identity is the core of everything we do here at NERV. It's our AT field technology, our Evangelions, and now human enhancement. With an unassailable sense of self, our Specialist can surpass human limits!"

A scattered few managed to bring their hands together, just barely applauding. The rest were still struck numb, wild-eyed and reeling. Asuka- the Evangelion- had stopped less than a few meters away from the stage edge. Off to the side, Shinji was feeling less than sanguine about the sales pitch. _Sure that sounds great... If I could actually do anything like it_.

Nothing for it now though. He rolled his shoulders and rocked his neck from one side to the other, curling and uncurling his fingers. The purple-haired woman turned back to him with a quick nod. It was time. The stage started to rumble as great steel and concrete panels rose out of the ground. They linked up at the edges, forming an armored bunker around the division heads and their guests.

Glancing back up at the looming Evangelion, Shinji let his path offstage take him alongside the nearest bunker wall. He reached out and brushed his fingertips along the reinforced surface and _willed_ his power into it.

Just in case.

Cameras tracked his every move as he hopped off the platform and made his way out to the rest of the testing area. They piped their feeds through to the interior of the bunker, where everyone was expecting... something. He had to resist the urge to hunch over, or rub the back of his neck. Even with the mask and suit, stage fright was a very real thing. Especially considering he might end up on national television that night, or even world-wide evening news.

Not that rubbing or pulling at his collar would've helped would've helped, the suit clung every inch of him from neck to toe, and didn't breath worth a damn.

The red Evangelion slowly peeled away and head for its own starting point. The earth and trees shook as she passed, staying well clear of the Central Dogma outbuildings and access roads. They both knew the plan. Picking his way through the Geofront forests, the boy reached a cleared section about as wide as a regular city block. Looking up at the retracted buildings of Tokyo-3, he _had _to say _regular_, because the fortress-city blocks blocks were about _two hundred meters across._

It was as though everything _else_ in Tokyo-3 was trying to make up for him being huge.

On hidden loudspeaker, Misato's voice rang out, lively and winsome. "Ladies and gentlemen. To the left we have Evangelion Unit-02, our first production model. Piloted by Sorhyu Asuka Langley , the Second Child. To the right we have our prototype enhanced human. Code name: 'Headlamp'.

She waited a beat, and Shinji could _hear_ her smile."We just call him the Specialist."

Separated by about half a mile, Shinji and Unit-02 faced off, waiting for the signal to go. The radio in his ear crackled, and Asuka's voice broke through. "You ready, Golden Boy?"

The first response he bit off, as asking her not to call him that... did not work. Resigned, Shinji felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. He dropped his chin to touch the transmit button, sighing softly. "I'm ready, Sorhyu-san."

He was _fairly certain_ the bloodthirsty laughter was deliberate, as was her continued transmitting.

Misato overrode the pilot chatter as she acted the master of ceremonies. " Identity, when reinforced, can do amazing things. Pilot Sorhyu and Professor Akagi both can speak to that." She paused again, letting that little fact sink into her audience. A new surge of adrenaline dumped into Shinji's bloodstream. "The Specialist will now defend himself against four-fifty kilogram impacts, that's about a thousand pounds for the rest of you."

Ritsuko had leaned in to add. "Our Specialist may be able to block bullets, but this was a safer live demonstration."

Across the distance, Asuka and her Evangelion twisted and stretched, before leaning down to pick something up just behind the trees. She hefted the it, tossing it up and down in that massive hand, once, twice, three times.

"Hey, 'Specialist'," The redhead all but crooned, this time through the Eva's own speaker system for all to hear. "You know I spent some time in Boston, right? The whole team survived Impact, if you can believe that."

"I hear baseball's still pretty popular in Japan too..." She held the piece of 'vital testing equipment' between cybernetic thumb and forefinger. "I don't need to say it do I?"

With that, Asuka and Unit-02 wound up and threw a _boulder _at Shinji.

* * *

><p>The bunker was quiet, save for breathing, and the faint whine of electronics. Those present inched forward in their seats, as close to the monitors as they could manage.<p>

On the screens and outside above the distant tree line, an angled of dust and grit shot into the air. Shrapnel arced out and pelted the shielded cameras, even as the cloud drifted in. Every man and woman in the bunker watched on scree and camera, tracking the boulder's easy arc through the air. The red Evangelion had perfect form- tossing the comparatively small stone underhand. It landed right where the pilot wanted it.

In the split-second of contact, the generals, television crews and scientists saw the Specialist raise his arms.

Feeling her hand curl tight around the microphone, it was safe to say Misato was _somewhat_ worried.

Ritsuko had pulled her laptop open, striking a handful of keys. Behind her, the crowd was starting to get antsy. Low questions with regard to NERV's sanity, how could a man defend against a boulder, if they really _did_ kill someone for a test. Reflected text and graphics scrolled down her glasses before she looked up at Misato and nodded, letting the other woman see her eyes. She reached out and tilted her hand, thumbs up.

Misato's smile broke out in earnest, and the tension in her spine let out. Spinning back to the monitors, she tried to squint through the dust, but there was nothing for it. "Asuka?"

The girl's voice crackled out over speaker. "Yeah, yeah. Gimmie a sec."

Other screens were clear, showing the wider test area and the Evangelion itself. Asuka eased out of her post-throw follow-through and stood upright, before raising one immense arm high above her head. "Hey Headlamp! _Heads up!"_

Asuka brought hand arm down, and a surging rush of wind built up under her palm. It cut through her test area, stripping leaves from trees and uprooting bushes. The gust cut through the dirty cloud at the opposite end, whipping around whatever remained standing. For less than a second, three shapes were outlined by the compressed plume.

The Specialist stood firm and low with one arm outstretched into the rocks' former path, his fingers folded into a simple hand spear. Two jagged halves of boulder had landed just behind him, one on each side.

* * *

><p>Letting out a long, slow breath, Shinji shook his hands, more out of habit than anything else. As far as tests went and demonstrations went, this one was so the most... interesting. To Asuka and her Evangelion, the boulder was more like a pebble. Looking down at the half that careened off to his left, Shinji couldn't help but note it reached his knee.<p>

Behind the mask, he felt his lips pull to one side, idly calculating the throw's final velocity and kinetic... No, not the time for it. He shook his head to clear the distraction, and Misato's voice came through his headset radio, quiet and concerned. "Specialist, how're you doing?"

Glancing at his hands and thinking over his answer, Shinji was pleased to note his gloves where intact save for some ragged abrasions. He chinned the call button, but winced when he heard his own distorted voice. Electronic scrambling twisted his speech as to be unrecognizable.

"I'm fine M-Major." He caught himself on the first sound, had to maintain decorum. It was _weird_ referring to Misato by rank. "I am ready for another."

Misato switched over to the broadcast loudspeakers, a complete one-eighty to her previous tone. She all but caroled. "Well you heard him Asuka, he's ready for round two!"

* * *

><p>Completely submerged in LCL, Asuka let out a single bubble of not-quite- air. The liquid may have been oxygenated, but her lungs still needed to shove out the carbon dioxide. Such an amazing use of her talents, throwing <em>rocks<em>. Asuka sighed again, but a little smirk worked its way across her lips regardless. It wasn't _all_ bad, at least. Punching bags existed to take abuse, after all.

Still, it took a _lot _of guts to stand in front of an Evangelion, especially with her at the controls, and _let_ her pelt them bits of landscaping. Asuka's fingers flicked out to touch the handful of keys on the butterfly control sticks, tabbing through program modes and interfaces. Her perspective jumped, and she zoomed in on Shinji. The suit helped, it forced him to stand up taller, and the nearly faceless mask was almost _eerie, _how it could just stare right through someone.

Granted she did the same thing with her prosthetic, so she wasn't above sharing that particular wealth.

A jerk of thought and will pulled her Evangelion upright once more, twisting smartly to pick up another test projectile. She felt the wind rush around the neck and shoulders of her combat machine, and gooseflesh built up under her plugsuit. Aside from sync tests and the disciplinary examinations, it was the first time she'd been back in the pilot seat, and it felt_ good_.

Even so, there hadn't been a lot of time for her to experiment, finding that elusive sense of Synchronization, but she tried anyway. The Evangelion itself _couldn't_ hurt her, after all. Not willingly at least. She wanted to be welcomed, so she made a point of acting _welcoming_. Every test, Asuka entered with a faint smile and kind thought for her machine.

The smile she wore right that second though was not the kind one. Instead she was positively _leering_, almost gleeful in the near privacy of the entry plug. No Misato or Akagi to watch her face like a hawk. Just her, and outright _approval_ to _throw stones_ at one of the biggest, if harmless thorns in her side since landfall.

Her name was Sorhyu Asuka Langley, and she was sitting in her Evangelion. _Life was good_.

After a few moments of hunting through the pile, she found the _perfect_ rock. Turning back, she asked if he was ready, and Shinji said yes. With a quick wind-up, the rock crossed the half-mile, trailing broken flakes and dust.

And this time, Shinji caught it; stopping all thousand pounds of it with one open palm and a deceptively loud crack.

"Was that his arm?" Asuka leaned forward in her seat, squinting. "If that was his arm, It's not my fault!"

* * *

><p>The smaller half of the test area had seen better days. Shinji pulled himself out of the latest impact trench, huffing faintly. Nine throws. He had caught, blocked, cleaved in half or otherwise stopped nine boulders about as tall as a man's torso. Tall as <em>his<em> torso. He glanced sidelong at the furrows and craters, dug in by his heels and off-angle deflections. Most of them were a good ten yards long and thigh deep.

His suit had seen better days too. He slapped the dust away as best the could, but it didn't do much more than get caught in all the rends and abraded material. A spectacular crack wound its way up the side of his mask too, cutting right through the blue visor.

But for all that, he was still more or less good to go.

Misato's voice came in over the radio, almost purring. "Specialist oh Specialist- We're at the end of our test schedule. Why don't we send everyone home with something a bit more spectacular, hmm? Make it sporty!"

Wincing, Shinji resisted the urge to scratch his head. Maybe not all _that_ good to go. "Ah... Major, I'm not really sure if..."

"Come on golden boy, you could at least _act _like you're having fun." Past the trees, Unit-02 was _juggling_, tossing and catching comparatively marble-sized rocks with barely any effort. Asuka scooped up all three rocks in one move, fanning then between her Evangelions' fingers, and Shinji could _hear_ the delight. "I know I am!"

The massive red machine held the rocks up to eye level, before glancing past its fingers. "Sporty, huh? Major Katsuragi, I've got this."

From every move and tilt of her head, Shinji almost imagined Asuka herself standing across the test area. The idea of a forty meter tall transfer student was not putting him at ease, at all. He winced again, and _really_ wished he had found time to apologize properly to the girl. Misato and Asuka conferred in low tones over the radio and his hearing wasn't going to do much about electronic noise.

Misato came back a few seconds later, confident but diplomatic. "Asuka's got a good idea, Specialist. We'll go with hers in case you don't have a better one."

Shinji looked back at the pile of previous tests, the shattered rocks and impact trenches. Asuka had not _once_ broken his trust today, a little more wasn't going to hurt. He raised his arm high and gave the cameras a thumbs up, and Misato gave Asuka the go-ahead.

That was when Asuka flicked the first rock like a bug off her palm. The thick cybernetic tendon drove the tip of the finger forward, and the rock hurtled downrange. It screamed through the air fast and straight with no arc what so ever, and Shinji barely had time to drop his raised arm before it hit. Time seemed to slow as an all new high of adrenaline flooded his bloodstream.

The rock slammed into the ground just ahead of him, ripping the hard packed soil to shreds and setting the rock to shatter. A distant part of him couldn't help but note the accuracy too. Another underdeveloped instinct took hold, and Shinji channeled his power just so. The first wave, a handful of shards sliced into his suit, into his stomach and thighs, but they stopped hard against his flesh, leaving shallow bloody pits.

He ignored the pain and his legs pumped. Dashing forward into the sharp cloud sole first, he _stepped_.

One fragment, two fragments, three and more. With chunks the size of playing cards, the spray of shrapnel was no harder to walk on than the ground he'd just left behind. Someone on the radio, Ritsuko maybe, was shouting about high-speed recording. Running up almost vertical, the boy reached the top of the cloud just in time to see rock number two hurtling on a direct line into his chest.

No ground beneath him save for slowly falling bits of gravel. And more importantly, _no leverage_. All of that and more ran through his mind in an instant, leaving Shinji with only one thing left to do. He walked onto the second rock. Scrambling around hand over hand, he got around to the back side, and Shinji saw Asuka through Unit-02, just having finished lowering her hands.

With just a fraction of a second left before he hit the tree line, Shinji coiled what muscle he could and sprang forward, tumbling through the dirt while the rock hurtled onward. It slammed into the trees, shattering wood, bark and rock for dozens of yards.

Sitting just to the side of one of the earlier trenches, Shinji twisted his head over his shoulder and let out a long, slow breath. Misato's voice over the loudspeakers declared the test concluded.

* * *

><p>Tokyo-3 faced the sun every morning.<p>

Superstructures and skyscrapers stretched out for the sky as men, women and children went to work or school. The solar collection dishes at lake shore turned into the light on clockwork, and each actuated mirror rippled. At end of April, the middle of the world warmed, and Japan sat in the center of sixteen year equator. Great plumes of wet steam built up into puffy columns alongside main roads and city storm drains, leading into Lake Ashi.

Somewhere deep in downtown, Lieutenant Ibuki Maya yawned and walked to work in step with countless others. Aoba Shigeru and Hyuga Motoko caught the same train into headquarters. Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki did not go to NERV, but instead drove to school, for his first class of the day.

In Misato's apartment, the Major greeted the day with a beer, while the smell of coffee filled the expanded kitchen. Asuka hiked herself up onto the black marble counter and waited, kicking her heels while the espresso machine hummed and purred.

Akagi Ritsuko, Ikari Gendo, and Ikari Shinji never left the Geofront, each hunched over their respective desks in pursuit of the next planning phase. Among them, only Gendo was smiling.

* * *

><p>Mornings in Central Dogma were usually quiet. Better to say mornings often lacked <em>human<em> noise. The main bridge operators were often on assignment elsewhere in the complex, leaving Ritsuko alone on the second level. It wasn't any of her labs, but it was peaceful, and problem-solving proved easier. The MAGI supercomputers below tended to fill the chamber with a soft, warm hum. It was a familiar sound, one that reminded Ritsuko of... different times. Difficult to say if they were better, or worse.

Hunched over her desk, she eyed the hand-drawn array, contemplating each particular element in turn. It was one of the anomalies Shinji developed, a particular ritual or behavior that had no perceived effect. It's existence implied things, amazing, wonderful things. It was yet more evidence that whatever the Exaltation was, it came from _somewhere else_. Of course, just thinking that sort of grandiose statement made her almost snort. Ritsuko kept her arm steady; she didn't want to try drawing _another_ array any time soon.

Chewing on the last bit of worthwhile cigarette, Ritsuko thought back on one of the particularly vexing mysteries. Most of Shinji's Exaltation still made _no sense_. And what little they _did_ understand made the strangest kind of sense she'd ever encountered. 'Impossible' stopped having any meaning to her more than a year ago, at least where the Exaltation was concerned. Incredible or unbelievable were usually more appropriate. As far as the lingering problem was concerned, it was _frustrating_.

Shinji had explained on several occasions that he was 'Chosen', that he had seen an image of a third-century roman deity, granting him unfathomable powers. Ritsuko had hoped for a comfortable explanation, a delusion brought on by synchronization, similar to how normal dreaming worked. The logic was simple as well. Shinji could have only imagined something he was familiar with prior, a history book, a film he'd watched as a child, anything that would have engrained itself on his memory.

Unfortunately, all investigation pointed to one simple fact: Shinji had never _heard_ of The Unconquered Sun in his whole life. Moreover, the historic deity didn't even have four arms. There was no reason for the blatant symbolism. His previous home didn't even have a television set. In a convenient universe, he would have had the decency to imagine _Amaterasu_, at least her showing up would have made some sort of sense.

The bottle-blonde sighed and shoved that out of her mind. She was conducting an _experiment_. With magnifying glasses, a thin horse-hair brush and a look of fierce concentration, Akagi Ritsuko bent the recognized laws of physics to her will.

"-want to flank them. I mean that's what the street arrangement is for; cover behind the fortress buildings and overlapping fields of fire with long kill zones."

"That's a terrible idea! You saw it with the last Angel, the positron one. The buildings in this city can't take that kind of damage, so cover's only good for blocking line of sight, which hey, didn't stop that angel either! Never mind that an Evangelion is _twelve stories tall_."

Ritsuko felt her teeth click together, and she looked down at the paper beneath her arms. A long jittering line smeared off the page, ruined. She turned and started to count to ten. Kicking fitfully, the chair spun Ritsuko around to Misato and Asuka as they entered. The extra coffee that Misato dropped on her desk was the main reason Ritsuko decided not to protest their arrival.

Aside from that however, the pair outright ignored the scientist, instead focused on their debate. Asuka ran through what sounded like a well-rehearsed list of problems about Tokyo-3's defensive arrangement. Meanwhile, Ritsuko sat back in her seat and wondered if all teenage girls sounded so screechy, or if it wast just the Second.

True or not, Asuka's critiques were simply irrelevant at the moment. They didn't have any meaningful leeway. No budget or raw material to spare. Misato shrugged though, arms folded and hands tucked against her elbows. "Theoretically we're going to have a blank check, assuming we can gear up enough product to sell, or create something people feel confident enough to invest in."

Asuka huffed, stamping one foot and rounding on the other woman. "Then what are we going to do? We don't have new weapons, or armor, or _anything_ to bring to a fight!"

"Deal with Kenya most likely."

The pilot and Major turned, and Ritsuko savored a slithery little gleeful feeling before squashing it. "Kenya is the leading nation in biotech research. They're second in line for cybernetics after any NERV research."

"And...?" Patient, Sorhyu Asuka Langley was not.

Not that Ritsuko cared much. She lit a new cigarette and waved at the redhead, more importantly, her prosthetic. "They're chomping at the bit for synchronization interface. Where you see a control system, they see the Holy Grail that solves half the messy problems with medical cybernetics, transmitting nervous and sensory information."

Tapping that same foot, Asuka folded her arms and stared the scientist down. "Which would be great, if it worked for anyone but pilots."

"Hence us not releasing it until we've solved that little hurdle." The patch helped, but as far as Ritsuko was concerned, Asuka was twenty years too young to pull off a proper imperial scowl.

Smiling past her fingers, Misato laughed lightly. "As great as it is to watch you two snipe at each other. Rits, do you have anything that could save my job and the world?"

The scientist shook her head, but rolled across the control room floor towards Maya's empty station. "Not specifically, no, but there is something interesting I can show you." She tapped a few keys, and in response, the big board holographic display shifted to a top-down map of the fortress city. "Before all this budget crisis, we finished installing all the updated ground-level pattern sensors."

Hitting one button, the screen shifted to false-color, and a few tiny smears of blue dotted the map. Some were focused around the high school, the train lines, and after a few moments of placing the landmarks, Misato's own apartment. "We didn't start seeing these until Rei over-expressed her AT field."

Asuka's jaw and throat worked, grimacing. "That's bits of her soul leaking out."

"Correct." Misato's face had gone ashen. Ritsuko hit a few more keys and wiped the display. "It's being managed, she's not getting worse, but she isn't getting better either."

Drumming her fingers against her arm, Misato scowled. "So far I'm not seeing a miracle, Rits."

A new command brought up another pattern analysis, and Ritsuko snorted. "I'm a scientist, I don't deal in miracles when I can help it. Anyway, this is what I wanted to show you."

The map of Tokyo-3 changed. Building graphics fell away, leaving the the road and building retraction grids. Massive swaths of green covered the city, while more dots were clustered around any number of places throughout. There was no place untouched by the green dots, though some concentrations were clearly higher than others. A handful of massive events, almost like impact craters dotted the city as well. Again, Misato's own apartment, along with the junior high campus.

There was one other, which Ritsuko didn't expect Asuka to understand the significance of. It was an almost random looking spot in the center of the city. Katsuragi knew it as the first Angel Battle. Ritsuko called it Green Event Zero.

Looking at the new map, Misato was the first to catch on. "That's Shinji's pattern colors, right?"

Ritsuko nodded, taking a drag on her cigarette. "It's not really a blood-entity pattern, but we were able to adapt the interception system to it." She brought up another overlay, this one of meandering lines spread across the city. "Section Two first noticed this. Pilot Ikari apparently wanders around late at night for an hour or two, almost aimlessly."

Misato blinked and watched the map a little more intently. She hummed. "I thought Shinji's pattern-green stuff only happened when he actively did magic."

"When he uses 'the ability.' But yes, that's correct as far as we know." Eyes sliding across her desk, the scientist tried to find an ashtray that still had room. Typical. "He's also walked pretty much everywhere he can within the city and the Geofront, which is why the anomalies bother me."

Asuka meanwhile frowned at the curling paths throughout the city. "Like a goddamn _snail_..." Then she perked up and glanced back at Ritsuko. "Anomalies?"

"Places we know he's never been but are seeing pattern data. Secure areas and such. Nothing approaching the density of his frequent paths though." Ritsuko pointed at a stretch of main avenue. "He likes that particular street, for example, and the density is very high."

"But that doesn't explain all the other random looking clusters." Asuka sighed and raised a dismissive hand. "Yeah, yeah, anomalies. Just saying."

Misato cocked her head to one side. She squinted at the map, and Ritsuko _watched_ the gears in that brain of hers spin into action. The scientist let her eyes follow along with Misato's, taking in the map once more. The dark-haired woman's face scrunched up contemplatively. "Doesn't that look like something to either of you?"

Great care had been taken to tap off the building ash. Asuka shot the operations director a screwy look, while Ritsuko did her part in their act and offered the prompt. "Hm?"

First pointing at the map, Misato then framed it with her fingers, tilting and turning to get a better angle on it. She squinted again, and her lips quirked up to one side. "Rits... Leave the pattern stuff but take away the map."

When that was done, Misato looked at it once more, while Asuka sidled up next to her. The redhead blinked once. "It looks like a heat map. You know, traffic patterns, flow density?"

Ritsuko found it was her turn to be bemused. She tilted her head like Misato and tried to see what she saw. Shinji's habitual paths covered half the high-density zones, but none of that explained how regular and grid-like it was. "Huh. Well, for all we know whatever Shinji does behaves like neutrinos, and doesn't interact with hardly anything."

Both the pilot and Major shared a look, visibly confused. Misato shrugged, giving Asuka a wry grin. Behind her glasses, Ritsuko rolled her eyes. It wasn't like Katsuragi was unfamiliar with her moods. She looked back up at the screen, frowning. "I'll have to assign some fieldwork... one of Shinji's friends, with the glasses."

Just out of sight, Asuka groaned, and Misato's little grin shifted into a smirk. "Aida? Uuugghh..."

Elsewhere in the complex, someone put in a system time request for the MAGI. It caused the ambient rumble beneath their feet to pick up, and Asuka hunted around for the source while Misato started to pace. She nibbled her thumb and stared up at the screen, hunching deeper into her red jacket. "Are we seeing this anywhere else? Like outside the city?"

Ritsuko shook her head. That had been one of the things the Commanders had _omitted_ during the handover of the intercept satellites. "No, we only were able to update the local sensors, the ones on buildings and the intercept stations atop the hills."

Striding over to Hyuuga's console, Misato sat down and started tapping keys herself. Ritsuko felt one of her eyebrows arch high, wondering where this was going. The map changed again, widening out and including topographical data; the hills and lake shore surrounding Tokyo-3. More green dots filled the display, scattered thinly the further one got out of the city.

At the same time, they remained the most dense around roads, and little clusters dotted the outlying fields. A few more commands switched the screen to blue pattern tracking, including Rei's contamination, and the previous three Angel attacks. Misato frowned minutely. "Do we still have that fake angel data?"

"Yes, but it won't help..." Sliding back over to her own station, Ritsuko brought it up and sent it over to Misato's borrowed monitor. Intuitive logic had always been Katsuragi's strength.

"I think it will. I think _that_-" Misato pointed at the map. "Is our ace in the hole. We know the Angels better than anyone else in the world, and it's time to remind everyone of that fact."

Ritsuko found herself staring right alongside Asuka. Every so often Misato got into _moods_... "I'm not sure where you're going with this, Katsuragi. The fakes never crossed into Japan's detection range, so we have nothing to compare to."

The dark-haired woman just gave Ritsuko an insufferable little shrug. "Oh that's easy enough to fix. We're going to go find one."

Asuka slumped against the console next to Misato and groaned. "...Do you naturally talk like a movie trailer, or did you have to practice?"

Misato just reached over and ruffled Asuka's hair. "Quiet you."

* * *

><p>Something had lit a fire under NERV. The past week had been wall to wall demonstrations, however many limb regenerations they could fit in, and a dozen tasks all and sundry that competed for his attention. Whatever it was sent people running around the cavernous halls, driving memos and orders between every lab and office.<p>

A petty part of Shinji was okay with that, as long as it _stayed out there_.

The test routines hadn't beenall bad, at least not at first. It had felt good to get out of Central Dogma, breath fresher air and see the trees and still-amazing Geofront interior. Doing something simple and physical had done wonders for his stress too, and the thick winding bands of tension in his neck had loosened, just a little. Shinji felt his lips pull back tightly, and he took a deep, calming breath. After a week of heel-toe demonstrations, the novelty had worn off.

At that moment, the radiology lab was quiet, abandoned. Hardly anyone bothered to use the various scanners and machines as long as he was in the Geofront, considering how infrequently people got injured outside of combat. Things like _cancer_ still proved to be a problem, as he didn't understand the... philosophy, well enough to apply his magic. He had however figured out how to apply one of his techniques to chemotherapy, but it wasn't exactly practical in the long run, or intuitive. Neither was it important right then.

As it stood, he had the appropriate devices set up, and had rigged a remote control out of some odds and ends he'd found lying around. The fluoroscopy assembly was interesting, and it suited his purposes as he leaned back onto the table. It was a little awkward to install the pump with just one hand, but he had to get the procedure down with no shortcuts. Technically, any vein would have worked, but he picked one on the inner upper arm for the best port location.

Shinji swabbed the patch of skin, leaving it clean and disinfected. A few more preparation steps and he'd be ready for the scalpel. That was when a flash of red crossed through the door.

* * *

><p>Sorhyu Asuka Langley stalked through the halls of NERV, through six dozen switchbacks, wrong turns, and false hopes. If that weren't enough, Misato had the <em>gall<em> to declare her an errand-girl! The woman, director-and-division-head of combat operations had _minions_ to do that! There were a lot of things Asuka considered herself, and _minion_ was not one.

In short, there just _had_ to be a better use of her time.

At the moment, giving whoever she ran into next the snarl of a lifetime seemed to top that list rather nicely. The intern she found possibly lost a few years of his life. Still, she had directions to radiology, it was a fair trade if you had asked her.

A few hallways later, she rounded one more corner and spotted the sign that marked her destination. She sighed once more, and Asuka wondered, _yet again_, why she _had_ to be the one to go find the golden as- "what the fuck are you doing?"

Stopped hard in the doorway, Asuka's question came out flat and expectant, and the eye behind her patch started to throb. Shinji had wrapped himself up in some medical scanning table, with a tray of surgical tools to one side and a patchwork remote in one hand.

Then he drove a scalpel into his arm.

By reflex, Asuka's hands shot up to clamp over her good eye. She wasn't _that_ squeamish, but she still didn't want to see someone mutilate themselves, for science or otherwise. But somehow, despite her fingers, she saw anyway. It wasn't until the thin trail of blood ran down his arm and he'd put the scalpel down that she remembered the _fucking eyepatch._

He didn't even have the decency to _stop_ before answering her, either. "Testing the infusion pump for Rei."

With the first incision made, Shinji dropped the scalpel into the waiting tray and ignored the blood dripping down his forearm. Grabbing something else, his hand did not so much blur as move with an incredible economy of motion. It was _almost_ too fast to see. He threaded a complicated bit of surgical metal and plastic into a vein in his arm.

The frustration from earlier guttered out in the face of the boy's self-mutilation, and just as quickly surged back. He _dared_ disrupt her righteous anger with blood and guts! Hand raised and already taking a breath, Shinji stopped her cold _again_, leaving her to just sputter. A smear of liquid bandages and a funny hand sign sealed the wound.

Asuka stared, her jaw eased shut, and her voice went flat once more."...That's gross. _You're_ gross." She gathered her wits back in an instant, fixing the boy with a sour look. "...How?"

.Shinji apparently hadn't understood her, because his answer proved _completely_ unhelpful. "Fluoroscopy . The pump's already loaded with a contrast agent."

Curiosity wasn't the right word, and neither was confusion. Still, Asuka found herself leaning in a bit closer. Shinji had wiped the blood away, mumbling something about 'heals faster, heals the same...' Flexing and shrugging his left arm, they both watched the implanted port. Apparently satisfied, Shinji hit a button on one side of the device, and a small light came on. The pump itself didn't make noise, at all, and was about the size of a half-flattened cigarette package, or the tape player she'd seen the boy with. A slow steady stream of... something oozed up the tube and into his veins.

Still toneless, Asuka stared at the device, and the Third. She wasn't going to settle for a mere question. "...Why."

"Because," his answer started in that same, matter-of-fact way that _continued_ to set her nerves on edge. "I'm not going to be the one to actually perform the procedure. I have to teach another surgeon."

Thumbing the patchwork remote, the motorized table started to tilt back, and the scanner started to move. He glanced sidelong at her, actually _looking at her_ for the first time that day. "You should get behind the lead screen, this is an X-ray after all."

"Right..." Asuka stalked behind the screen, and the earlier anger just bled away, spent. She trailed off, shaking her head. One last thing nagged at her though. "Are you sure you should be doing that?"

Shinji just shrugged, keeping one eye on a monitor. "I haven't been wrong yet."

To that, Asuka could think of a _thousand_ things to say... and not pick _one._ Her tongue jumped in her mouth, and she _almost_ cut him down with the most sublime wit. The actual answer was a long, suffering silence. And then the moment was gone.

Her shoulders sagged. "...Whatever. Misato's asked all the pilots to come down for a briefing."

* * *

><p>Despite having longer strides, Shinji was the last to arrive. Asuka had taken off ahead of him, charging off through the geofront corridors towards Misato's post. Then it turned out that something had called the Major away, forcing the pilots to hunt through the maze of passages for another fifteen minutes. They finally caught up with both her and Rei in the middle of a massive, cavernous space within Central Dogma, marching along the wall-mounted walkway.<p>

Even as he rounded the last corner, Shinji could still hear Asuka from a twenty yards away. "...aught him being gross..."

One of Misato's eyebrows arched high as she snapped her cellphone shut. She glanced between Asuka and Shinji as he approached. "...What, did you catch him without a shirt on or something? Walk into the showers?"

Asuka only made a nauseated sound, huffing faintly. Before Shinji could answer, Misato cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Nevermind, not important right now." She turned on one heel and pushed off, urging the pilots to follow. "I have to meet with the commanders soon, but you all deserve to know this first."

The chamber was designed as an access tunnel for Evangelion equipment, or the combat machines themselves. Being able to serve as a hallway between base regions was a secondary benefit. Over the railing and down below, gargantuan rail tracks for deployment and maintenance vehicles covered the floor.

A gust of cold industrial air surged through the space, tugging at their hair and clothes as they walked. Asuka and Rei both shivered. Gooseflesh ran up their arms, and they shared a brief look with the same uncomfortable frown. The First's simple sundress wasn't well suited for the Geofront corridors, and neither was Asuka's school uniform. The endless summer of Tokyo-3 made sudden chills rather uncommon, but both girls already had their fill of them for a lifetime.

Behind then, Shinji thumped along in a t-shirt and thin pants, barely feeling the cold. He did his best to look as inconspicuous as possible.

With one hand holding her beret down, Misato kept moving straight ahead and striding forward, trusting the pilots to keep up. "For the past ten months or so, there have been 'angel' attacks outside of Japan's borders. Ritsuko is almost certain they're fakes. Some way to discredit NERV."

Passing through the far exit and into a narrower, human-scale hallway, the transition to an enclosed space made their ears pop with pressure change. Shinji's long legs ate up the distance between him and Misato. Meanwhile the girls started to walk faster, and Asuka huffed again. "Misato! Hold up would you!?"

At the end of that latest hall, Misato reached out for a nearby console and called the next elevator. "Fake or not, I know what we're going to do about them." Turning smartly, she gave each of her pilots a quick, sharp smile. "We're going hunting!"

The reactions were... mixed. Shinji stared openly, caught between smiling into Misato's admittedly bloodthirsty good cheer, or dumbstruck. His eyes tracked up and started shifting left to right, like he was reading notes left on the inside of his skull. Rei meanwhile nodded once, setting her IV stand down with a muted, metallic ping. Orders were a source of comfort, most of the time.

Asuka however, Asuka raised her hands and started drumming her fingertips together, purring wordlessly. She licked her lips and looked Misato in the eye. "What's our timeframe?"

Behind the dark-haired woman, the elevator pinged and the doors slid open, framing her in dry white light. "Two months. Less if we can help it."

Sticking one arm through the door, Misato held the elevator and waved her pilots in. For once, Asuka and Shinji were on the same page, sharing the same thoughts and reactions. Their expressions shifted between calculating and incredulous, though Asuka's was tinged more with cheerful bloody-mindedness. Rei stood along the far wall of the elevator, calmly and obliviously occupying the gulf between the pair, her IV held like a spear carried at rest.

Misato leaned next to the console and took a short breath. Above her, the floor ticker spun upwards, clicking faintly. "Things are going to start changing around here. As of today Asuka is in charge of pilot training. She said it herself; we don't have the time or money for new equipment or more Evangelions, so we have to work with what we're given. Shinji."

The boy stiffened, his head snapping to face Misato's tone. "I don't know what you can do to help us, but I have to ask you to pull double duty, as both pilot and Solar. anything you can do, we'll be grateful."

Shinij's jaw worked, and across from him Asuka's uncovered eye cut to her right, leering faintly. Misato didn't need to say anything, she just waited. The boy held that look for a long, suffering moment, before his shoulders slumped. "Understood, Misato-san."

When the elevator reached its destination and the doors slid open, the operations-director turned to her pilots gave them all decisive nod. She stopped halfway through, backpedaling briefly. Dropping the officer mask in one smile, Misato reached into her pocket and pulled out a pager and a folded index card. A pair of phone numbers had been scrawled across it.

"This might help you talk with your girlfriend more often." She handed them both to Shinji with a wink. "It seems to me she's not getting enough sloppy make-outs."

Nonplussed, poleaxed and otherwise completely mortified, Shinji's face filled up crimson. His throat bulged, making a fair attempt at swallowing his tongue. After turning faintly green, Asuka stepped into the nearest corner with a low groan, grumbling under her breath. Glancing between the other pilots, Rei remained silently supportive, offering the boy a tiny smile, even if he probably couldn't see it.

Misato's own grin spread even wider, pleased and lilting. "... With that kind of look, no wonder~"

Then the door closed, and Misato was gone. Asuka huffed yet again marched over to the console and picked another floor. When the elevator started moving again, she spun on one foot and planted a hand on each hip. "So, what kind of pilot training have you two had?"

Shinji and Rei glanced at each other, sharing the exact same helpless look.

* * *

><p>The commander's voice echoed across the thirty feet from his desk to Misato's ears. "Your request for an A-17 combat order has been denied."<p>

Misato bit her tongue, just hard enough to remind herself not to argue, much. "Sir-"

Gendo cut her off without even moving. "Major, I do not need to remind you that we are not in a position to allow unnecessary expenditures. Deploying an Evangelion afield reduces our combat potential by thirty-three percent."

The bare statement of fact rebounded around the painfully bare office, and Misato winced inwardly. She refused to show it on her face however. The mask of a dedicated professional soldier stayed firmly in place. It was true though; one third of NERV's combat potential was sunk into the Second Child and her Evangelion, and even _suggesting_ it be sent out into the field... Well, by conventional reasoning it was preposterous.

Misato however had made her career on being outrageous. "I understand that, sir, and have accounted for it."

Behind the interlaced fingers, Gendo gave her a short nod. _Point for Katsuragi..._ She sucked in a short breath and gathered her arguments. "Commander, as it stands now we're treading water. Test deployments into the Geofront, we can absorb those costs. We recycle everything down here, after all."

"Major, It is not a matter of cost, but of supply. You know our reserves were depleted after the Fifth Angel." Gendo's head tilted forward, and his glasses caught the light. Misato worried the inside of her cheek. _Point for the Commander..._

Still, she pushed on ahead, laying out her plan from memory. She waved her arm and the holographic display lit up, splitting the room in half with a map of the world. "I am aware of the risks, sir. Our Evangelion support network still exists, it's just been mothballed."

"And how would you access those resources, Major?" Gendo raised his index finger, and a handful of red dots appeared around display. "Beijing? Vladivostok, Berlin, Nevada and Massachusetts? The vast majority of the UN charter nations are displeased with NERV as it is."

Now Misato let a bit of her smile out, lip curling wryly. "With due respect, sir, you are not the only one with friends in high places."

After that declaration, the pair stared each down for several long minutes. Misato felt a muscle in the back of her thigh strain and shake, but she willed herself to stay still. The Commander remained as impassive as ever, expression safely hidden behind those orange lenses. A distant rumble echoed outside, shaking the windows and floor. Several hundred meters away, a handful of armory buildings sank into the Geofront for maintenance and repair.

Then the standoff ended, and Gendo leaned back in his chair, letting his palms lay flat on the desk. "Be that as it may, Major Katsuragi, I will not authorize the A-17 order."

The dark-haired woman took a step forward, incredulous at first and then imploring. "Sir, you know as well as I do that the best defense is a good offense-"

And Gendo cut her off with a dark look. "Which we cannot afford to mount at this time. That will be all Major Katsuragi." He waited until she had swallowed her final reply.

"Dismissed."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Stuff.


	33. Tension

Anesthesia had never stopped being an interesting experience. Rei had however begun to understand why people might have disliked it. There was a bodiless sensation, and a period of several days where lucidity was a state best described as 'infrequent'. Granted it was arguably unnecessary, but no one wanted to risk a localized procedure either.

Her dreams had been pleasant, at least, with no real nightmares. A secondary mixture of drugs had also suppressed her ability to unfold an AT field, largely as a safety measure. The potential hazards were too great if she manifested it without her complete attention.

Now though, Rei sat up in a hospital bed, and turned her attention to the new part of her body. A thin oval of soft plastic and surgical titanium had been set into the skin of her arm, and anchored firmly. The skin around the edges were still slightly red, but another minor scar or two was of little concern. Next to her bed sat the infusion pump itself, pre-loaded with a bag of stabilizing agent, tubing and the straps to hold it all together. She'd been briefed on how to put it on before being put under. Short tube to arm intake, long tube to medicine supply pouch, and a simple half-shoulder harness.

The mirrors outside on the city surface rotated, and the angle of the sun changed in the Geofront to match. Flooded with sunlight, the recovery room jumped a handful of degrees, and a flash of red caught Rei's eye. On the other side of her bed, Soryhu Asuka Langley snoozed in one of the straight-backed infirmary chairs.

Rei considered reaching over, but thought better of it. Touching was... complicated. Instead she spoke softly. "Sorhyu-san."

No reaction. Rei cocked her head to one side, and realized her hair had been left untied. Shaking it over her shoulders, she tried again, louder. "Sorhyu-san."

The Second Child mumbled faintly, and her head lolled to one side. Rei assessed the situation, and following Misato's all too frequent example, deemed a pillow as sufficient for the task. "Sorhyu-san."

Asuka's uncovered eye snapped open, just in time for the cushion to strike just to the right of her nose. She sputtered, squawked and windmilled, flailing her arms and legs while the chair tilted back. _That_ had been a miscalculation, and Rei was already starting to move. Asuka reached out with one foot though, almost effortlessly hooking her toe on the edge of the bed frame, stopping the chair cold.

"Rei." She blinked once, and the chair rocked forward, landing with a muted thump. The pillow sat forgotten in her lap. Then Asuka cringed, gnashing her teeth and reaching up. "Auugh motherff-"

The First watched as Asuka pulled the prosthetic away, leaving her bare-faced save for a deep set of red lines pressed into her eye socket. "I hate falling asleep with this thing!"

Sitting back on her calves and knees, Rei felt her eyebrows rise and meet in the middle. "Sorhyu-san. Are you alright?"

The other girl just waved her off, stuffing the eyepiece into her uniform pocket. "Fine... Fine. How're you? Doctors said you wouldn't be up for a few more hours."

Reaching back over her shoulder, Rei pulled her hair forward and frowned at the ends. It had grown out six inches, much longer than even what Asuka herself wore.

"A regeneration reaction, apparently. I metabolized some of the drugs too quickly." She glanced at her fingernails; they had grown out quite a bit as well, but not badly. Her stomach rumbled. "Not only the drugs, apparently."

Asuka's lip curled, but not unkindly. "That regeneration stuff is kinda gross, I'm sorry. We'll get some food in a bit, I promise." She looked at the black plastic box cuddled against Rei's arm. "That the gizmo? Does it work?"

Rei just shrugged. "I haven't turned it on." She reached over and pressed the button, and a cheery, two-note electronic chirp rang out. There weren't any mechanical sounds though, no humming motors. However it worked, Shinji had made it whisper-quiet.

Leaning forward, Asuka squinted at the bag and tightly controlled series of tubes wrapped around Rei's arm. Her eyes cut up to look at Rei, uncertain. "How do you know it's working?"

Another shrug was all Rei could offer. "Unfortunately I do not. The drug-AT-field interaction is complicated."

The redhead folded her arms over her chest and huffed, lower lip sticking out. "Well that just sucks." She turned and glanced sidelong, and Rei blinked once in response. "You think you'll be ready for pilot training? We're starting next week."

"I believe so. According to Ikari-kun the intake port is self-sealing." Rei reached for the table and found the heavy hair clip she preferred. It took her a few moments, but her hair was tied back and her bangs once more framed her face. Before, she would have had to take the old IV drip out to do anything with her arms above her head. "If necessary, the stabilizing agent can be added to the normal LCL supply."

"Good!" Asuka rocked forward on her heels and stood up, smacking one fist into an open palm. "I'm not going to let anyone mess with an Evangelion pilot, not even the Commander."

* * *

><p>For two straight weeks into June, the fortress city Tokyo-3 worked day and night.<p>

Throughout the city, there were talks that NERV would hold more evacuation drills, twice a month or even weekly. Whole blocks vanished for hours at a time, and traffic redirected under computer control as roads disappeared into mile-deep chasms, framed by armored steel teeth and elevated plates. Children raced from street-corner to corner, watching fifteen story buildings drop underground in seconds.

Armory buildings throughout the city raised and lowered on massive gears and powerful machines. Around the clock small armies of men and women streamed out of construction yards and machine shops, while heavy machinery and equipment rumbled along everything from main boulevards to narrower side streets. They dived into the hardened gaps leading down, through more than a kilometer of earth, armor and machinery. Inside they clung to buildings hanging from the Geofront roof, maintaining the bolts and clamps that held aloft tens of hundreds of thousands of tons.

Elsewhere, extended buildings bristled with gear and material. Construction had been built into the logistical spine of the city itself, nearly every structure could double as a construction platform for its neighbors. Cranes rose up on reinforced tracks set into the sides of an office building, along with pre-fabricated panels and interior superstructure sections. Other buildings housed gargantuan conveyers, cycling belts of ammunition with individual rounds the size of small cars. Windows nearby and litter in the streets jumped when one of those ammo feeds ran full speed.

And honeycombed through it all, nestled in secured sections and marked street surfaces, were the Evangelion deployment rails. For the moment repurposed as cargo elevators, the electromagnetic launch catapults hurtled raw materials to the surface and drew back what could be re-used. NERV could not afford to waste anything.

At all hours of the day, sections of the city rose and fell in undulating waves of steel, glass and concrete. Controlled by MAGI timing, Evangelion support devices and fortress buildings retracted and extended at set schedule. Deep inside the Geofront, the mostly unseen (Combat) Operation staff watched maps and graphics change from green to red and back.

Major Katsuragi had pushed for increased readiness and a full check of their defenses. Her reasoning had been simple; the pilots shouldn't be the only ones undergoing drills, after all.

Spread out along her section of the main control room, Misato stared at the banks of monitors and holographic displays. The consoles and were stacked with reports in neatly bound folders, fighting for space with cups of cold-filtered, super-charged Ikari coffee. Below, operators and officers clung to their stations. Misato glanced at the nearest clock. Working at two-thirty in the morning... she let her head roll forward and groaned.

Behind and off to her side, Hyuga Motoko winced. "Are you all right, Major?"

"I'm fine Hyuga-kun, just been on my feet all day for the past week." Misato sighed and looked over her shoulder, tossing her subordinate the patented _that's so sweet of you_ smile. Hyuga all but melted where he stood. She turned back to the planning table and arched her stomach forward and hips back, drawing out a long series of cracks from her spine.

After taking in a slow breath, Misato let it out and glanced at her friend and fellow division leader. "Well Ritsuko, where are we at?"

A stainless-steel lighter snapped closed, and the end of a cigarette burned bright red. "_I_ am questioning your sanity. 'We_'_ are only thirty-six hours behind schedule."

The scientist took a long drag and held it while tabbing through displays. Technically, handling a console wasn't Ritsuko's job, but Misato was still grateful. The blonde could get the computers to do things faster than she ever could. The main holographic projection flipped to armory building status, and progress was good there. Evangelion repairs and maintenance were next, and that was still on track. It helped that the corporate demonstrations were so low impact. As long as the Evas were kept refrigerated between deployments, they only needed monthly check ups.

Ritsuko let the lungful of smoke out, humming softly. "The changes to our procedure seem to be working, Katsuragi. You and the Second had some good ideas."

"Her name is Asuka, Rits, it's not that hard to remember." Misato crossed her arms over her chest and fixed her friend with a stormy look. A blithe wave was her only answer. Misato let the topic drop and faced the armory map. "We've already seen three Angels completely outpace our weaponry. I might have to draw up plans to retrofit, or just strip out all the conventional arms."

Lieutenant Hyuga glanced back at the map, and Misato watched him do the mental math. "A complete teardown? Where would that leave the city, our defenses?"

Misato stretched again and let out a light, dismissive breath. "Evas or bust, I suppose. When it comes down to it, they are our only effective weapon save for the positron technology."

At that mention, Ritsuko's face puckered up like she'd been sucking on a lemon. Misato figured nobody liked being reminded of a failing, but as far as she knew, it wasn't really Ritsuko's fault either. Neither of them were weapons designers or engineers, even if Ritsuko's division was for research and development. In the meantime they had to explore other options. The prototype rifle she had borrowed from the JSSDF performed admirably, and since then NERV had finished its own lower power version.

On that note, Misato leaned over and hit a button, connecting their meeting across headquarters. "Shinji-kun, do you have anything interesting to share?"

The speaker crackled softly, and there was a sound of something hissing under pressure. His voice was high and a little bit frantic. "N-Not really!? I did some interesting things with material sciences yesterd-day but I haven't gotten checked in after it cured. P-Positrons sound promising!" Misato wasn't certain, but she thought she heard him mumble too. "...if I knew anything _about_ a positron cannon..."

The two division heads and junior officer leaned into the intercom, sharing the same look. Misato worried her lips and hit the call button again. "Shinji, is everything alright?"

His voice came back stronger when prodded. "J-Just fine! I had a small accident with liquid nitrogen!"

Distantly, Misato noticed Ritsuko giving her a look, before glancing at Hyuga and then the speaker. She threaded her hand beneath Misato's fingers and pressed the button one more time. "Define 'small', Ikari-kun."

"...I still have al-_most _of the skin on both my arms."

Ritsuko rolled back in her chair to her terminal and started typing, puffing away at her cigarette all the while. With her report composed, she hit the enter key and sent the update to the Operation Director's station. Misato turned, and her brow started to twitch madly, spasming up and down.

The new report read: "Forty hours behind schedule."

* * *

><p>Sorhyu Asuka Langley paced in front of the projector screen with her arms folded behind her back, dressed in her school uniform and scowling. Behind her a schedule dominated the modular wall. Morning exercises and drills, followed by blocks of time set aside for simulators and live Evangelion deployment. An entire sub-facility of Central Dogma had been given over to her use, dusted and cleaned out for new work.<p>

Shinji recognized it as his Proving Grounds. Some of the equipment hadn't been moved in months. He wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that.

Now the three pilots stood in the cavernous hangar, surrounded by adjustable walls and repurposed exercise equipment. Treadmills on one side, weights on another, along with every kind of bar and bench one would need for physical fitness. Shinji glanced to his left and his fellow pilot. Rei stood normally, no longer needing a clumsy IV stand and drip. A bag of her undefined medicine hung under her shoulder, kept well out of the way.

"Alright!" Asuka lashed out with one heel, hitting the floor with an echoing _crack_. "Today is the first day of the Evangelion Combat Training Program! I went through it! I helped _make it_, and now I'm going to go through it again with you two until it sticks! So..."

She trailed off, licking her lips and starting to smile. It shifted to a wild toothy grin, and her one exposed eye _burned._ "...welcome to _hell."_

It had never occurred to him before, but at that moment, Shinji could say with absolute certainty that there were four words he could truth loathe.

* * *

><p>"Again! From the top!"<p>

He stripped out of his plugsuit and pulled on his normal pants and shirt, jogging back to the starting area. Rei and _Sorhyu_ lagged behind, but only slightly. The Second child had waited two weeks, apparently for Rei's surgery to settle. She had also _planned_ for those two weeks, turning every asset and effort towards making a pilot's life _miserable_. Weaving through the Proving Ground doors, he sighed, not exhausted but _frustrated_. Shinji felt his fists curl tight and slowly unfold, but he willed himself to calm.

Asuka raised her hand and looked at the stopwatch. "Unacceptable! We have failed this readiness drill by fifteen seconds!" She clicked the watch to clear it and hissed. "Take your marks- The Angels won't wait for us to get prettied up!"

One by one the three pilots took their positions, like runners before a track event. Rei was still flushed and breathing hard from the last drill, unconditioned and out of shape. An operator in the observation chamber moved on Asuka's command, and the start-bell rang out. Shinji cleared the Proving Grounds door first, making up for speed what he lacked in grace and coordination.

The pilots cut through the hallways and raced for the pilot elevators, racing against the clock ticking down in Asuka's hand. Shinji had to pace himself, or risk needing to run along walls to bleed off unneeded momentum. His cornering was garbage. Making the last turn by the tips of his fingers, he spun into the express elevator, smashing the scramble key and holding the door open for the girls. Asuka charged around next, all but dragging Rei behind her.

When the girls tumbled in, the doors slammed closed and barely missed clipping Asuka's hair. She and Rei toppled into the opposite wall even as they caught their breath, and Asuka stared at the watch. Her reasoning had been simple. Dead time like this had to be included in the drills, otherwise there was no point in improving deployment speed in the areas they _could_ control.

The elevator hurtled upward, running along tracks designed more for modern trains, and moving just as fast. Asuka and Rei bent at the knees, soaking up the acceleration while Shinji stood tall in the face of the mounting weight. The car stopped with a jerk and the doors snapped open. Ahead of them three doors split apart into changing rooms, where NERV 'runway' crews had reset their plugsuits and A10 clips. Asuka had already accounted for wearing hers all the time.

Shinji pushed into the third door while the girls vanished behind their doors marked 'First' and 'Second'. He pulled off his clothes, the act now almost routine even after a handful of attempts. A few shirt buttons snapped off, but in the grand scheme, a ruined shirt was worth saving mankind. His updated plugsuit waited for him.

Just as he was shoving one leg into the suit, Asuka's voice echoed through the thin wall. He hurried. Bursting out of the locker room, Shinji's long strides ate up the distance. Across the bridge and gantry to his waiting Evangelion, their 'finish line. Rei was making her way towards hers, winded but stable. Asuka waited at her own machine, tapping her foot.

When Rei reached her Evangelion and looked across the cages, Asuka sighed and clicked the stopwatch. So far six attempts had left Shinji able to read the Second's expression well enough. "Fourteen _point six_ seconds."

The redhead spun on one heel and snarled over her shoulder. _"Again! From the top!"_

* * *

><p>Shinji looked up at the clock and glared at the digital readout. Four uninterrupted hours to himself.<p>

Before the training program, he had whole _days_, left alone to his own devices. At least then he'd been making _progress_, current stumbling blocks notwithstanding. Between the nightmares, memories and increasing demands on his time, Shinji was finding more than enough reasons to still skip sleeping. Safe for the moment in his little Geofront prototype lab, he chewed through another power bar and settled down for more experimentation.

His jaw stopped mid-motion and Shinji went over that last thought once more... right, he wasn't going to experiment. Or advance much. The rest of NERV had _assignments_ for him. In addition to any regenerations and the like. At least Ritsuko had begun to schedule those in blocks, taking another slice out of his day. Since this new plan started, his time was becoming increasingly scheduled and organized by people who had _nothing _but the time to schedule and organize him. And not one of them paid any mind to his _responsibilities_.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and sighed. A dozen or more rolling whiteboard stands littered the area, covered in sticky notes and scribbled diagrams. Somewhere in that mess was a clean-ish printout, something Ritsuko had called 'topics of interest'.

Shinji had insisted on paper simply because it lasted longer in the face of his corona.

Letting out another long, drawn out breath, Shinji started to go over the list out loud. "Materials technology, positron technology, power generation..." All physical sciences, and _not_ his specialty. He glared at the MRI prototype still sitting in its storage crate. "Evangelion repair and recovery, pilot enhancement..."

Ritsuko probably knew more about cybernetics and... he groped for the word, post-human, transhuman? That was it, _transhuman_ technology. Scowling faintly, he settled down at his desk and put pencil to paper, just to see what would come out. Then the intercom buzzed, and Shinji looked up at the clock once more.

His four hours were up.

* * *

><p>She had expected the port to itch more. Most of her previous experience with intravenous therapy had included hydro-cortisone creams. Rei glanced at the inside of her left arm. The infusion pump was just barely visible past the end of her uniform sleeve, and the IV bag hung close to her body, held neatly against her side. Misato-san had said the harness looked like a medical under-arm holster.<p>

Rei looked up at the blue sky and smiled softly. She could raise her arms over her head, run or even dance, if she knew how. Granted at that moment she was _sore_. Joy aside, every step towards school came with a small hitch or stutter. Aches from injury were easily understood, but the burning pains in her arms and legs were new and distracting. Her right bicep had also bruised impressively. During training, Asuka-san had been supportive. She was not gentle.

Ahead, a pair of Tokyo-3 security officers waited at the gate leading onto the school property. When the increased security had been first put in place, the students often clustered around the entrances and caused massive human traffic jams. Since then, experience with the system had improved speed and efficiency. Passing the retractable bollards, Rei stepped through the cordon and made her way to class.

Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki sat at his desk at the front end of the classroom, still reading a newspaper as more students started to filter in. Rei caught the small glance and nod and matched it with one of her own. As she made her way to her seat, Rei took note of every person she passed by. Nearly a year ago she wouldn't have tried, or even have formed the thought. Now though she could put a face to every name, some of them she knew from back before she turned ten years old.

Finally at her desk, Rei could say with certainty that the mornings were best for window-watching. The sunlight cut through the morning mist and on a good day, students on that side of the classroom could see past the hills surrounding Hakone, all the way to the horizon.

"Ayanami!" A school bag dropped into the seat in front of her, and Suzuhara Toji sat on the desktop itself, cheerful and grinning like a thug. "It's been a while!"

He didn't wait for her to answer, and Rei made a mental note of 'grin changes to scowl of confusion'. Toji touched a finger to his brow and huffed. "Listen, I got to know. Why oh why did you come back to school when we have just _two weeks left?_"

Rei blinked and cocked her head to one side, glad that her _neck_ wasn't sore. She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded bit of paper, one she knew he'd recognize. Asuka was more of an influence than anyone realized. "Because I can do this."

The perfect score on her make-up exam spoke volumes.

* * *

><p>Lunch proceeded as expected, with students jockeying for position in the lunch line or opening their own boxed meals. Rei chewed slowly, for the moment alone at her preferred table. Slowly but surely, Suzuhara, Aida, and Horaki joined her. After the attack, the school had started to call them 'the pilot's clique'. There was a psychological precedent, or sociological. Rei wasn't entirely sure of the exact term. Across the lunchroom, Ayumi-san sat with her own circle of friends, toying fitfully with the pager Misato had bought her.<p>

A tiny frown tugged at the corner of her lips, and Rei started thinking. Toji and Kensuke were talking around everyone nearby, with Aida flirting with any number of girls who walked by. The attack had been a social windfall for some... Between that and Hikari running herd on the two boys, the main topic of conversation was Shinji.

His absence was self-evident, but her company had so many ways of expressing it. Toji sat on the edge of the table and scowled. "Ikari just dropped off the face of damn earth! I can get not going to school, but just up and vanishing?"

Kensuke sprawled forward and sighed, finally finished with his ever-increasing engagements with his opposite gender. He let out a sigh and sputtered. "I dunno about him, but Akagi-Sensei has me out almost every night tracking stuff. At least she pays me..." He rolled his head to one side and his neck popped. "Makes my dates easier. My dads' more willing to loan me more if I can pay it back."

"I heard he tested out." Rei watched Hikari lace her fingers together, then unlace them, fidgeting. "Graduated early. I'm not sure if he's even going to the next grades."

Extended isolation, manic focus... Rei's jaw slowly stopped moving while she thought. She glanced down at the lunch, and pulled the chop sticks out of her mouth as well. Shinji had made everything, from the box to the utensils to the food itself, even with all the demands on his time. He had even remodeled the parking garage back home into a full machine shop, just for her and Misato. A flash of red caught her eye, and Rei glanced up to see Asuka walk by, more shuffle. The Second was probably almost as sore as she was.

Turning back to the meal, Rei contemplated it, tried to trace the sensations and feelings its existence inspired. Slowly she worked her way through the definition, until it came clear to her as _offering_. Shinji gave often and freely. She looked at her arm and the black plastic and rubber wrapped around it. He'd done a lot for her, for everyone. Most of it unasked. She knew she put a disproportionate value on _orders_, but Shinji had shown her the value of acting without.

Realizing that, Rei settled back in her seat and set her meal down, staring off into space. Now she had to figure out what to do with that new understanding. Her eyes angled up to her three... friends, then cut to Asuka sitting alone at a distant table, then Ayumi, talking amongst her own peers. A single year separated them, and it was still something of a social void. Rei shook her head, not the time to observe such things. Perhaps she should ask someone, looking at all her likely sources in turn, or Misato, when she saw her next.

Folding her left hand into a fist, she thought about that for a moment. Her friends were _busy_, or ill-equipped to help. Asuka's frustration with the Third was publicly known, almost legendary in the Geofront. Involving anyone else was unnecessary. The conclusion was simple, and a directive formed easily in her mind.

Shinji needed _reciprocation_.

* * *

><p>Buried in what used to be Ritsuko's Proving Ground observation room, Asuka sat in Ritsuko's former chair. Dressed in her plugsuit, the girl shivered faintly, staring at a few dozen piles of reports spread across Ritsuko's former desk. Fitness, drill times, her impact on the budget, and bunch of other pointless minutiae. She picked up one page and scowled at it, wishing her patch actually <em>could<em> shoot lasers. So many problems could be solved with eye lasers.

The facilities were technically still part of that special research division, but their manpower and material budgets had dried up. Misato had placed a double-handful of engineers and maintenance crewmen under Asuka's direct command in order to construct the training courses, and sadly little else. Asuka had to be the one to cook up actual plans and training schedule.

Misato had fortunately decided _not_ to micromanage, trusting Asuka enough to submit requests for simulation programming and schedule time in the Evangelions. That was in addition to any corporate product demonstrations they were _still_ doing. Stupid Shinji didn't sleep and he wasn't even _tired_.

Fingers tugging at her cheeks, Asuka pressed both hands into her face and dragged down. She groaned past her palms. "This is a complete disaster..."

A pair of strange hands sank into her hair before clamping around where her neck became shoulders. For a moment every part of Asuka _screamed_ at the sudden violation of her personal space. That scream died before it even made it to her throat when the strange fingers _squeezed_. A week's worth of tension and eye strain started to drain out, and Asuka felt her head droop forward.

Katsuragi Misato dug her fingers into the knots in Asuka's shoulders, and the redhead could _hear_ the older woman smile. "Hard at work or hardly working?"

The first sound Asuka made, she couldn't really call it _human_. Content though, she could definitely call it that. After a long moment of just enjoying herself, Asuka licked her lips and found her voice. "I'm stuck. This is impossible."

Misato kept kneading, and Asuka was not going to complain about that one bit. "It can't be that bad, you're using the procedures I cooked up in Berlin, right?"

Asuka's head rolled left, then right, and she grumbled. "More or less. The drills are fine. Ikari's familiarity with plug controls is way better now than it was before. Rei just needs more physical conditioning..."

"So," Misato bore down hard for a moment, and something popped deep inside Asuka's neck. She felt the left half of her body just _melt, _and almost missed the rest of Misato's question. "What's the problem?"

The redhead _really_ wanted to jerk away dramatically and jump out of her chair, facing Misato down with damning criticism. However, the older woman was _still_ a genius with those hands so Asuka stayed right where she was. "Stupid Golden Boy _doesn't get it_."

"Get what, Asuka-chan?" Misato's hands pulled away, but she stepped forward and draped her arms around Asuka's shoulders in a strange back-to-front standing-to-seated hug. Asuka felt as well as heard the Major's voice behind her. "The only person who's psychic here is you, and only with your Evangelion. What's Shinji-kun not getting?"

Scowling, Asuka tilted her head up. "Misato, your breasts are crushing my head." She didn't wait for the other woman to respond, though Misato did manage to get a laugh out before Asuka continued. "The whole point of these exercises is that we work together. We run as a team, we win and lose as a team. I can't just _explain that_ though, otherwise it misses the point!

Laughing harder, Misato curled forward and hugged Asuka's head even more. "Well Asuka, your definition of 'team' tends to be 'everyone do what I say'."

The scowl etched itself even firmer into Asuka's face, and she yet again wished for eye-lasers. Or eye-tasers, those would have been fine too. She willed herself not to pout when she echoed "And?"

Pulling back, Misato brushed some of Asuka's bangs out of the way and looked down at her uncovered eye. "And, making that the default state of affairs is a bit of a hard sell, wouldn't you say?"

Facing forward and setting her shoulders, Asuka huffed. "I'd say don't try to fix what works!"

"Asuka..." Misato hummed lightly. She leaned forward again and draped her arms around Asuka's shoulders once more, but this time pressed her cheek against Asuka's bare right side.

The redhead squirmed but couldn't pull away. "I know, I know, it doesn't really work that way. Just, I need to get us all working together, in pairs and threes."

Finally pulling away completely, Misato stepped around to crouch down in front of Asuka, flashing the teenager one of her million-watt smiles. "I think you just need to give Shinji a chance to meet you half way, alright?

Glaring sidelong, Asuka knew she was the picture of a petulant teenager, but for once she just couldn't muster up the willingness to care. "...Fine."

* * *

><p>At the end of the last run, Shinji started to count his breathing. Two, Three, back to normal respiration. He glanced back at Asuka and Rei, clad in plugsuits and huffing and puffing. Another week of drills had Rei's condition back up to something resembling decent, with neither he or Asuka having to help her partway through the course. He leaned against the nearest wall in his own blue and white suit, trying his level best not to tower over the girls. It wasn't working.<p>

Not that Asuka noticed, or to be fair, even cared. She clicked the stopwatch in hand, scowling at it but flashing a smile at Rei and himself. "We shaved two seconds off that run, but we can do better! _Again!"_

Shinji sighed but knew better now than to argue. He'd tried that before and it had ended _so_ well. Instead he just rolled his neck side to side and ambled off for the changing room. He dragged a hand down the front of his face and sighed, just out of earshot.

"There _has_ to be a better way to do this..."

* * *

><p>Inside the Proving Grounds hangar, Asuka had sectioned the space up with cubicle wall dividers, desks, projectors and exercise equipment, and a table among other things. On any day when typical school could be skipped, it was, and instead the pilots spent half the day together under Asuka's ever watchful blue eye. Five hours in the morning and then five in the evening, arranged like the old fighter air combat schools before Second Impact. Or at least that was what Asuka <em>claimed<em>. Misato had been present in the observation room when Asuka had explained, and Shinji swore he saw the dark-haired woman press a hand to her mouth and stifle a laugh. It had been _very_ suspicious.

Granted, Shinji had to admit his mind was focused elsewhere. Between drills and exercises, NERV cafeteria staff brought in sandwiches, and while they were by far superior to the nutrient bars he'd been living on, Shinji still suffered eating them.

"This sucks." Asuka was in full theatrics today. Leaning back in her chair with her plugsuited feet on the table, and indicating the large, empty room and likely the greater NERV complex around them. "Do either of you ever feel ignored?"

Rei glanced at Shinji and he glanced right back, though he had to look down for it to work. They turned back to Asuka and answered one right after the other. "It has been a consistent state of affairs." "All the time."

The boy watched Asuka's reaction, the way her eye opened wide and her jaw went slack but didn't drop open. "And that doesn't bother you?"

Rei just cocked her head to one side. "Why should it?"

Asuka turned to Shinji, and he felt like he should have started smouldering. He squirmed slightly, but managed to look her in the eye regardless. "I like the quiet."

The redhead bit into her sandwich and glared over the top slice of bread, chewing fitfully. She stared at them for a long moment, more at Shinji than Rei, looking far older than she had any right to. "I don't get either of you."

That brought Shinji up short. It was such a strange statement, and part of him almost asked her a question right back. _What's there to get?_ He kept his mouth shut though. It also wasn't fair to Rei either, at least she had mystery to help keep her interesting.

It seemed Asuka had the same thought, because she shot Rei a quick apologetic look. "Right, I know why _you_ act the way you do, but I don't get you Ikari, not one bit."

Shinji felt his brow slant down, and he set his jaw, mulling over a response. He apparently took too long however, because Asuka had already worked herself into a rant. Distantly, Shinji wondered where she got the energy for it, her metabolism must have been _incredible_.

"This is such a crazy situation, you know that right?" Shinji watched as she took another bite out of her sandwich, fixing him with an unreadable look. "Ikari, you have honest to god-and-science _magic powers_. And you're just sitting here, taking everything that's thrown at you."

_That was because you arranged this training schedu-_ the rest of his thought cut off when Asuka continued. "I mean, have either of you looked at Misato lately? Do you have any idea how rare she is? It's utterly unfair, that's what."

However rare Misato was, Asuka didn't feel like elaborating, tangenting harshly into a critique of the 'stodgy, backward, inconsiderate and plain _stupid_ world of academic peer review'. Her words, as Shinji realized he really had no idea what Asuka was talking about. Even so he listened, almost despite himself, and the words washed over him all the same. Rei's eyes slid from one pilot to the other, following the unbalanced conversation without much comment. She'd long since finished her vegetarian plate.

Asuka had refocused too, after mentioning her first and only published scientific work. Come to think of it, Rei had said something about that as well, back before they fought the positron weapon Angel. Something about Asuka then, and possibly both their mothers? He wasn't sure anymore. "-and _nobody_ in the damn world understands it. Except for me, Fuyutsuki-sensei and Akagi! Seriously, I discovered the AT-field equations we use to _fight the goddamn angels_. Nobody realizes this!"

She turned back to Shinji, and he felt his spine lock up, bracing for something he couldn't quite understand.

"And now we come back to you. Magic powers by yet-to-be-understood random event. Fine, I'll buy it. Eventually you're given a _division_. And then I watch you do pretty much nothing with it." She paused, looking off to one side and presenting her patch. "At least you don't have my problem, they call you for the shit you're good at. Everyone just tells me to go back to school. Not even university. They say go back to _high school_."

She folded her arms over her chest and huffed. "My credentials may as well not exist."

Now Shinji scowled, but only slightly. It wasn't like he _asked _for all the responsibility. He just could bear it. For some reason though, he couldn't let what she said go completely unanswered. Shinji waved the remaining half of his sandwich in one hand, and the chair creaked under his weight. "Yeah well, I wish they didn't call me so often. Structural engineering and weapon design aren't my fields!"

Asuka reared up in her seat, all wide-eyed sarcasm. She clasped her hands together, palm to palm and knuckle to knuckle, swaying coyly."Oh you have fields now? What fields would you prefer better, rice and wheat? Grind those dumb muscles together and bake some fresh fucking bread for the war effort, maybe?

"Medicine is my field!" Shinji groped for more of his interests, most of them were from classical education, or the humanities. Distinctly lacking in hard sciences. "Nutrition, Surgery!"

Her voice took on a warning tone. "Golden Boy, you're going to have to stop thinking like a noncombata-" She stopped suddenly and blinked once, all the more pointedly due to the one uncovered eye. Gears audibly clicked in her head as her scowling incredulity crumbled into mocking laughter. "Nutrition? Out of everything else you could have said, you think NERV is missing a _good nutritionist?"_

A long time ago Shinji realized he didn't do very well with people laughing at him. It ended more in shame than anger, like he missed something vital, something that let him laugh along instead of just be laughed at. Worse still when it was a _pretty_ laugh. Asuka had wrapped both arms around her middle and almost threatened to roll off out of her chair, and her lunch dangled precariously in one hand.

He found himself looking over at Rei, and Shinji saw the girl hold a hand over her mouth. Great. Even _Rei_ was smiling, and Asuka continued to laugh.

Exasperated, vexed, perturbed, not one of them quite fit what he was feeling right then. Shinij's fingertips dug into the sandwich, hard enough that a bit of mixed sauce threatened to drip out one side. There was something _about _that girl, something with her tone or laugh or the way she stared right through him. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and set his teeth on edge. Shinji was self-aware enough to know his own preferred pattern, of being patient with whatever someone wanted and doing it, then moving back to more important things.

Asuka it seemed, had an incredible talent for exhausting his patience.

She kept laughing too, finding something endlessly amusing about the way he tried to glare through her head. He tossed his sandwich on the plate slapped his hands into the table, shooting upright. "You, you're completely _insufferable_."

The red-head didn't miss a beat, one eye shining and laughing to tears. "And you're a complete breakfast!"

Rei spoke for the first time since the argument started. "A delicious breakfast."

Silence followed, and Asuka's laughter died in her throat. The silent teens both stared at the blue haired girl, and Rei blinked once, twice, she caught on. "I did not intend for that to be a double entendre."

Asuka groaned, slumping back in her chair and looking to the roof. "God, you're at it again. That just makes it _worse_."

The trio fell silent once more, apart from the last bit of giggling Asuka hadn't finished working through. Shinji had stuck his hands under his arms, not trusting them out in the open. A quick glance down reminded him that his lunch had found its way to the floor, and he held back the sigh. If he had _known_ that, he would've ordered more of course. Thinking about it, he should have just ordered two platters anyway, he was still hungry...

Plastic scraping on fake wood made a faint, whispering sound, and Shinji looked up. A tray had been pushed across the table, with a red plugsuited hand on one edge. The other half of Asuka's sandwich waited, untouched. As far as peace offerings went in the history of mankind, there were worse attempts.

* * *

><p>LCL made it impossible to sweat, but Shinji still couldn't stop the nagging feeling of it dripping into his eye. The urge to rub was almost impossible to ignore. He sat heavily in the plug, idly flicking fingers at the keys lining the control sticks. More than a year ago he'd been <em>breaking<em> those controls, on accident no less. Thanks to Asuka, Shinji now knew over a hundred different commands, most of which the redhead admitted were niche at best, or useless at worse. She was pushing for updated software and a number of other improvements, but all of those ran into the same wall; budget and manpower.

Misato's voice came in over the Evangelion communication system, warm and friendly, piped directly into his audio-visual centers. "We're going through approach seven again, Shinji-kun. Asuka advances to intercept the target in close combat while you and Rei support at range. Standard tactical advance."

Shinji was no Kensuke and never would be, but even he couldn't keep some of the smile out of his voice. "Roger that, Misato-san."

In the virtual Tokyo-3, Unit-01 raised a gatling gun scaled for Evangelion proportions.

* * *

><p>Another day another drill. Rei leaned against the elevator wall and caught her breath, while Asuka did the same, bent over with her hands on her knees. The sound was barely drowned out by the whine of cables and the clicking floor counter. Shinji snuck a look sidelong at either girl, dressed in plainclothes on the way to the last leg of their suit-up routine.<p>

Analysis complete, Shinji nodded once, mostly to himself. Whatever Rei had loaded into the pump for her condition was working, but Shinji still saw the same stunted, hybrid tree impression under diagnosis, and curious case of an eroding soul. Asuka for her part was the picture of health, short of the damaged optic nerve. Her hair had spilled over her shoulders, swaying softly.

Both examinations taken together were no more than ten seconds. Halfway through building a mental medical history for both girls, Shinji stopped and thought about what he was doing. Neither of the girls were patients of his, not technically anyway. He immediately felt a wash of embarrassment and shame come over him, feeling very deeply like he had taken liberties, or stepped over some kind of unseen line purely out of habit.

Thoughts briefly warred with each other about ethics and clumsy apologies before the final jerk of the elevator brought him up short.

The the doors slid open on under hydraulic power, and pilots rushed out. By that point they had begun to match timing and skills to the situation. Asuka was always out the door fastest, far more agile than Shinji was, while Rei was best out second. Any time Shinji lost waiting for the girls to clear the door, he made up for in the open chamber before the changing rooms.

Three weeks training had smoothed out most of his rough edges, on top of prior experience as a pilot. The first day on the drills he'd been clumsy, unused to pressing urgency. Shouldering past the curtain, Shinji completed the three necessary lunging steps to reach the locker and his waiting plugsuit. Thinking back, Shinji remembered his first battle being plain clothes. He hadn't understood the big deal until Asuka had mentioned that a plugsuit made it easier to synchronize. In the aftermath of... everything past that battle, it seemed like everyone forgot to mention it.

His shirt came off easily, as if he hadn't been wearing it. No ripped off buttons this time. The belt had frustrated him too initially, forcing him to slow down, gauge how hard he had to pull on the steel loops and leather. Pushing for speed had made him clumsy, put a hurdle in his way. Pulling into his plugsuit, Shinji thumbed the autofit control and stood. Obstacles, limitations... They never seemed to last very long.

* * *

><p>Laptops for every student had been an unfathomable notion for Fuyutsuki, some twenty years ago. In the mid-nineties the internet was just starting to penetrate into the civilian market. Academia as the second adopter had already left its mark on the developing technology. Standing at the front of class 2-A, Fuyutsuki told his students such, that the only reasons they <em>had<em> them were two fold.

Holding one of the school-issued devices, the grey-haired teacher _dropped it on the floor_. "This device" he began "is intended to outlive you."

As one, the class leaned forward in their desks, suddenly interested in the fate of the compact computer. The screen was still lit and the default desktop interface hadn't crackled into errors. The tough plastic hadn't even been scratched.

"The other reason is simple," The teacher held up five fingers, and another on his other hand for a total of six digits. "In the year two-thousand, there were over six billion people living on this planet." Four slowly curled away. "Now there are two billion. I'm sure you've been _told_ this, but none of you understand it."

Fuyutsuki walked back around to his rightful place behind the desk, but did not sit down. He looked at each student in turn, and the lines of his face gave the impression of rough cut granite.

"That is our fault as teachers." He began to count out loud. The teenagers, their eyes cut from side to side, glancing sidelong at their friends and neighbors, wondering just what was going on. Their teacher finished when he hit eighteen.

"Twelve of you died in impact." He pointed to the side wall, repaired a bit more than five months ago after Suzuhara Toji had gotten into a pitched gun battle with an invading terrorist. The students took the hint, lining up in single file, and the teacher nodded slightly. "Four out of every six people died. If not in the actual impact events, then the tidal waves, earthquakes, gravitational disturbances, and so on."

The old man smiled then, waving for the students to sit down. "So what does this have to do with laptop computers? Someone other than Aida-kun please, I would rather ask him something challenging later."

A bit of laughter rippled out from the students, and Kensuke sketched out a theatrical bow in his seat while Toji leaned over and knuckled the boy's head. Horaki Hikari raised her arm, tentatively. She wavered to start, but grew more sure as the man nodded. "Decreased population...? ...Then a different burden on resources, Fuyutsuki-sensei."

"Correct." Turning back to the chalkboard, Fuyutsuki started writing two dates. September 13, 2000, and then February 14, 2001. "What most people who lived through impact neglect, through no fault of their own, is that the post-impact wars and civil collapse lasted _five months_."

Fuyutsuki smiled then, and wrinkles crunched together at the corner of his eyes. "That's a bit less than a school semester, for most of you, but in terms of politics and warfare, it was a subjective eternity. The fact is however, that life went on. Mankind picked up the pieces, and we moved forward until those," he pointed at the laptop still on the floor. "can be put in the hands of every student attending class in Tokyo-3, and most other developed nations."

The old man snapped around. "Suzuhara!"

Toji froze, one hand tracing the thin scar on his cheek. "S-Sir!"

Leaning over with one hand on his desk, Fuyutsuki fixed the boy with a level stare. "Give me a brief overview of the world, shortly after Second Impact."

Put on the spot, Toji squirmed and sweat. Bookwork and facts had never been his strong suit and everyone knew it, though it wasn't an unkind observation either. He swallowed loudly and licked his lips. "A-Ah.. Uhm. Following Impact there was this huge change in... Pretty much everything. Compasses stopped working for almost two years?"

On that last question he looked around the class, and Hikari caught his eye, nodding once. Toji dipped his head in response and charged forward, more confident this time. "Climate changes everywhere forced people to find new places and ways to grow crops, and protect feed animals. Impact and the tidal waves hardly killed anyone really, compared to starvation."

More students nodded, turning their desks to the impromptu lecture. Fuyutsuki had claimed an empty seat, sitting on the desktop. A little bit of momentum went a long way, and Toji plowed ahead. "A bunch of think tanks got established back then, modifying crops and figuring out new techniques'n stuff..." He trailed off, wincing at the inaccuracy.

Fuyutsuki was about to open his mouth when another student broke in. A brown-haired boy looked at Toji, more past him. "Weren't all those set up by set up by someone all at once? The think tanks."

Something flashed in the classroom, scattering sunlight off of a pair of thick glasses. Everyone blinked and turned to Kensuke. "The United Nations."

* * *

><p>Spycraft had turned out to be a necessary job skill when working in NERV. Messages passed between trusted associates for example, or painstaking manipulation of the MAGI, creating a burst of unobserved data within the city's telecommunications system. Misato had only heard rumors of the latter. She idled in her office, twisting on her heels while the in-house switchboard connected to her an outside line. Specifics aside, it was all a form of signals intelligence, and fortunately something the Angels had not yet discovered.<p>

Elsewhere in the Geofront, the computers and automated systems hummed and clicked in response to her request. Misato twisted her fingers into the cord trailing from her desk phone to the handset cradled against her ear. There were only a handful of more difficult places to listen in than Tokyo-3. At the same time, there was no such thing as _privacy_. Nearly-perfect security had a cost after all. There were ways around it, however... Or one could just ignore the problem completely.

The waiting tone in her ear changed, and Misato all but flounced into the nearest chair, spinning idly. She smiled for the empty room and counted. One ring, two ring, thr- "_Hello?_"

* * *

><p>Across the planet, a thick-set man held a phone away from his ear. "<em>Matthew-kun~, genki-desu ka?"<em>

The green-suited man pinched the bridge of his nose with one free hand, and glanced down at one of the photos on his desk, taken almost eight years ago. "Katsuragi... Speak English, please. None of that formal Japanese crap for the tourists, okay?"

The woman on the other end laughed sweetly, all sugar and cheer. "_Hai-Hai_," She did finally switch to only slightly accented English. "Anything for you Colonel. Congratulations on your promotion, by the way."

It had been long enough that the soldier didn't check his own rank insignia. Instead he hunted around for a particular transcript from a few months ago, just to confirm. "And you as well, Katsuragi. Should I say Major now?" He laughed lightly, leaning back in his chair. "Still just UN rank though."

Misato's answering laugh was warm and throaty, all smiles across the Pacific. "Not all of us are cut out to chew coal and spit diamonds."

The razzing was familiar, and Matthew grinned into the mouthpiece, reminiscing. Still, he couldn't let it go unanswered. "It's 'shit diamonds', Katsuragi."

Not that Misato missed a beat, sweetly chiding. He could just see her finger wagging. "And I'm a lady, you should know better!"

The Colonel spun back in his chair and started rifling through his desk one-handed, switching grips as needed. Better stay on task, or the woman would talk his ear off all day. "So Katsuragi, why are you calling me at... What time is it for you anyway?"

"About three in the morning, give or take." There was the sound of cloth shuffling, and a long breathy sigh. "We're always on watch here."

As far as Matthew was concerned, no one had the right to be that perky at three AM. "'Bout four in the afternoon on my side of the Pacific. Sucks to be you." He reached into the bottom of one drawer, one he left untouched for several years.

An equally old folder came out, buried at the bottom of the stack. Unfolded and spread out across his desk, the soldier leafed through pages of an old, after-mission report. Blocks of black ink covered the pages, redactions, as his was just a copy. The originals had been sealed a long time ago. Even so, Matthew could still see the text in his head. Hard to forget that many 'Killed in Actions'...

"Listen, Colonel Bergentun," The woman's voice sobered, turned steel-hard. He was listening to Major Katsuragi now, and she had his complete attention. "Do you remember that thing we talked about a couple years ago, during the funding conference before the first Angel hit?"

He nodded by force of habit while answering. "We were arguing about the efficacy of the flypaper strategy, and your Fortress City..." The Colonel trailed off, not quite sure where the woman was going.

"Right, and _you _were pretty biased in favor of your Marines, if I remember correctly!" Misato let a bit of wry amusement leak through the professionalism, "But the point is, you argued that we need an _offensive strategy_. I have one, but I'm going to need your help."

"Katsuragi... That's one hell of a tall order." More rummaging produced another folder, and a rolodex of phone numbers and e-mail addresses. "I don't even have any official authority in those circles."

"I know." and Matthew heard papers shuffling on her end. "I've been calling around anyone I can think of for this. Vladivostok, the two bases in China..."

Matthew ran a hand through his hair and let out a low laugh. "You're not aiming low, that's for sure..." He eyed the rolodex again, and then the photo. "I have some ideas, but you have to realize what you're trying to do here. I mean we've sketched out our own plans for this. You want the _entire Pacific Fleet_."

Swearing under his breath, the officer slumped back in his chair. "Listen Katsuragi, I'll make some calls, and see what shakes loose."

"I owe you a case then! I'll be around in ten weeks to drop it off when we stop along California."

With that, Misato hung up, and Matthew stared at the phone for a good long while. He glanced back up at the photo for a third time that afternoon. Twelve people crowded around a beachside fire pit. On the shores of Brazil, the squad grilled food and toasted each other to having finished their training in service to the United Nations. A tiny twenty-two year old Japanese woman had climbed up on another man's shoulders, mugging for the camera with four bottles of beer locked between her fingers.

Half of those men and women had died less than a year later. Katsuragi had saved the rest. Matthew sighed and reached for the wheel of numbers and addresses. Best get started, he could hit a few of the west coast bases before it got too late.

* * *

><p>Two days later, Toji reaffirmed to himself one of the greatest things about June in Tokyo-3; Summer Uniforms.<p>

Standing at the free-throw line, the jock dribbled the basketball in one hand. The rubber hit the pavement at a steady rate, and he could tell by hearing that the ball had been recently inflated. The rest of his mind however was elsewhere. Girl-watching, his father had said, was a time-honored tradition of the high school experience. Toji caught the ball on the upward bounce and set up for a shot, not even looking at the basket. The tense, throw and release happened on autopilot, and the ball fell through the hoop just as he knew it would.

Nearby, a ring of concrete-bound landscaping served as both a bench and a desk, where Kensuke and Hikari sat, pecking away at their papers. Toji ambled forward to scoop the ball up as it bounced back, scowling. "I hate homework."

Kensuke didn't even bother looking up from his paper. "I don't think hardly anyone _likes_ homework." He hit a key and his laptop beeped obligingly. "Besides, Fuyutsuki-Sensei told us to do this college-style. That means we can collaborate."

Sitting down on the ball, Toji scowled harder and reached for his own laptop. "And what's that supposed to mean anyway?"

Hikari just sighed. "It's a fancy word for 'work together'. With our last teacher, this would be considered 'cheating'."

Toji mulled it over while his computer booted up. That _did_ sound a lot easier than slaving over the encyclopedias alone, or asking some adult. "So, paper on the UN huh?"

The other two teens nodded, opening a quick instant-messaging window and feeding the taller boy a list of page links. As far as Toji was concerned , the UN was a distant thing. It was something kids signed up for out of high school to pay for college, or to get away from their parents. The JSSDF was a dead-end, especially in Tokyo-3.

Pages and pages scrolled across his screen, and his eyes crossed at first, but having Hikari less than two feet away beat back any ideas of half-assing the project. "So where are we starting?"

"The Post-Impact Wars and Valentine's Day Treaty." Kensuke's glasses caught the afternoon light and went opaque for a split second, before clearing. "We're looking for details on what happened, historical accounts."

Toji let out a clicking chuff of air past his teeth. "Well you're the military geek, shouldn't you have all that done already?"

Kensuke just shrugged. "I don't think anyone wants a report drowning in that stuff. What we need I have covered though, don't worry."

Looking down at her screen, Hikari waved a hand. "It says here that before Second Impact had been confirmed as a meteorite, most nations had assumed someone had tried a nuclear first strike."

"Well that doesn't make any sense." Toji's face screwed up, eyebrows furrowing deeply. "Why'd everyone get pissed over what happened to Antarctica?"

Raising one hand and lowering another, Kensuke acted something like a scale, weighing the world's state of mind. "When Impact occurred, pretty much _everyone_ went a little crazy. Earthquake and tsunami alerts went crazy, ground vibration events, everything that says 'dropped a nuke' went off across the planet."

"...Well that sucks. What about the planet tilting?"

"The axial shift happened more slowly, it took a few years to stabilize. Nobody knows how Earth stayed in the same orbit, or the moon stayed where it was either." Kensuke shrugged again. "Astrophysics took a vacation back in two-thousand, hasn't come back since."

Toji nodded and turned back to his computer, skimming articles and finding a few that Hikari and Kensuke had missed. There were a lot of excerpts about living through those days, anecdotes and stories, but not a lot of historical pieces. Toji couldn't put a proper name to it, but he noticed the difference between a textbook's blurb and something else.

Another link lead him to the next big event in those early days. "So that nuclear scare is why someone dropped a bomb on Old Tokyo?"

Hikari's face clouded up faintly at the question. "And nobody knows who did it. The bombing pretty much started the whole five-month war."

More reading had Toji scowling even harder. "Where the hell does the UN even _fit_ into all of this?" He stabbed at keys, growling faintly. "I don't get how you can have entire book collections on a five month war!"

"It was a really important one, and we had all the tools to record as much of it as possible." Kensuke must have taken a little pity on him, or had worked ahead, because he tossed Toji some more links leading to the UN reformation post Impact.

Picking the first article, Toji started to read aloud. "'The Post-Impact Conflict was an umbrella term that referred to numerous brush-fire wars and battles between numerous nations. Some military historians insisted on calling it World War Three, but it lacked the same polarizing factors of the previous two planet-wide conflicts. Widespread environmental devastation was...'" He squinted at the word. "'Exacerbated by continued fighting, though fortunately there were no further nuclear exchanges.'"

The dark-haired teen looked up at his friends. "So they wrote all that just to say it could've been worse?"

Hikari bit her lip and nodded, while Kensuke actually answered. "A whole lot worse. The next bit's the important part. The UN back before the Valentine's Day Treaty didn't have an actual army. It had a 'peacekeeping force' made of of soldiers from member nations. All volunteers on rotation."

He pushed his glasses up on his nose with one finger before continuing. "During the impact wars, communications were down all over, since most of the satellites had been knocked out of position. Land lines still worked but early on there were a lot of problems."

"Basically, the UN sort of stepped outside it's authority and moved to pacify nations as best it could. The original Security Council back then got put on tribunal for their actions, because the United Nations was meant to _prevent war_, not fight them."

Toji scratched his head and winced, feeling a headache coming on. "That... I dunno what even to say to that." He paused for a moment, and his lip curled. "And what does all this have to do with think tanks?"

Hikari reached over and cuffed Toji upside the head, eyes flashing dangerously. "You're skipping ahead! If you had paid attention, it's because with all the climate changes and upsets to worldwide infrastructure."

She leaned over and started pointing at the relevant articles. Through the new United Nations, countries could contribute funding, men and material to projects and plans to repair and recover after the near apocalypse. City reconstruction, environmental reclamation, and rebuilding infrastructure. The aforementioned think tanks had mushroomed overnight, one of which eventually became the super-organization known as NERV.

When she was finished, Toji held his hands up in surrender. "Sheesh! Alright, fine, fine."

Having waited out the bickering, Kensuke picked up where he left off. "As for the UN taking direct action, nobody's sure if it was a good idea or not, even today. The UN basically conquered Europe first, and started pushing out all over Asia and Africa. All the governments that started the wars were pulled out, the leaders."

Hikari played with one of her pigtails, humming. "Wouldn't that have been terrible though? People were fighting in their own homes."

The glasses shined again, and Kensuke touched a hand to his temple. "That's why everyone thought it was a bad idea. The only reason the UN exists as it does today though, was because it worked. After the dust settled, the UN charters got revised. The biggest change was the advent of a unified, _impartial_ military force, not just as peacekeepers."

Kensuke went on to explain further. The UN could in theory deploy to any conflict in the world and intervene. Along the way, the United States Navy had split half of it's forces into the newly formed Pacific and Atlantic fleets, along with contributions from nearly every other ocean-navy still worthy of the name.

Toji scowled harder and folded his arms over his chest, leaving his laptop balanced on his thighs. "But that all happened after the treaties, right?"

Kensuke shrugged yet again, spreading his hands wide. "Right. Eventually the UN reclaimed and calmed down enough of the world to step back and let _their_ leaders take over. Like I said, the Security Council went on tribunal for doing this. _Diplomats_ were acting as heads of state. None of it made sense back then."

"And that's when the treaty happened?" Toji didn't wait for an answer, scrolling through his pile of articles for it instead. He came up with a copy of the treaty. "Signed February 14, 2001."

* * *

><p>"That is <em>not good enough!"<em>

Shinji was getting _incredibly_ tired of hearing that from outside his own head. On yet another day of training in the converted Proving Grounds, Asuka sauntered in wearing an olive green tank top and matching shorts, pulling her hair back into a single tail. Just the changed look was enough to send Shinji for a loop, but what came next outright floored him: Asuka had decided the three pilots needed _endurance conditioning_.

That was an hour ago, and Shinji had put up with it enough. After the five-kilometer run on treadmill, hundred sit-ups and then push-ups, he had reached his limit. There was something about that girl that just _drove him up a wall_. Shinji rolled smoothly to his feet and rounded on Asuka, fists clenching and uncurling. His eyebrows twitched madly and he took a deep breath.

"What is the _freaking point!?_ I'm not getting anything out of this! I have other things I could be doing!" He waved his arm at the door and vacant third station. "Rei got to leave early!" He regretted saying it as soon as it left his mouth.

Despite being almost two feet shorter than he was, Asuka shot upright and somehow managed to _loom_. Yanking a towel from a nearby chair, she whipped it around her neck. A faint sheen of sweat covered her arms and legs, and the neck of her tank was dark and sodden. She swiped a hand across her brow and wiped it off on the towel, before crossing her arms and stalking over to him.

Shinji took a step back when she stomped directly into his personal space. Asuka's arms unfolded in one easy move, poking him in the chest, hard. His eyes narrowed with each dull stab. Her finger buckled against the muscle there, and she snarled through the wince. "Rei got to go early because she _worked til she collapsed_. The only thing you're supposed to be doing right now is _push-ups_. You'll do them until I say stop, that's how training works!"

Seconds ticked by, and for a moment Shinji didn't even have a response to that. There was no apparent logic, nothing. She completely _baffled_ him. He looked down at her completely-serious face and _stared_. "But that doesn't make any _sense_! I don't _get _tired! I don't build muscle like regular people anymore!"

Shinji flicked a finger against his bicep, drawing out a solid, meaty sound. "Ritsuko-Sensei ran tests! My trainers built this up _last year_ and it hasn't gone anywhere!"

None of that seemed to matter to Asuka. She poked him again, with her knuckles that time. "Bull_shit! _You get tired, we just haven't figured out how! And if we can't, then you better _learn how."_

Asuka stood with hands on hips and scowled up through the front fringe of her hair. "And like I said, that is not good enough. For these hours of the day you are here under my authority. So, you are going to do the push ups, or I am going to _make you_. Your choice."

Eye-contact was never his strong suit. Instead Shinji kept his eyes locked on Asuka's patch. The prosthetic _was_ an eye for all intents and purposes, but it lacked an important something that _judged_. And as he stared into the black plastic, he realized he had _no idea_ what Asuka was thinking at that point, except maybe that his dithering was painfully obvious. If he had been thinking, Shinji would've called the process 'evaluating'. He tried to get his brain back into gear, to muster up a comeback or logical rebuttal or _something_. His pulse throbbed in the side of his neck, and he started to count the beats by force of habit. Asuka just glared back, utterly unflinching.

Tension bled out of Shinji's back and shoulders all at once, and he slumped back down to the mat. Something hot and undefinable squirmed in his gut while Asuka watched, tapping one foot. Legs and arms out like the instructors had said, he started doing push ups once more. Around the fifth repetition, there was movement in the corner of his eye. Asuka had taken position in the space next to him. Her first few full body presses were somewhat jerky, but she quickly matched his rhythm, rising and falling with smooth grace.

Shinji stared at the girl for a moment, not sure what to think. He must've made some kind of face, because she answered his question without asking. "I'm a pilot too, stupid." Every breath was carefully measured too. "I'm not going to let anyone fall behind, _especially_ myself!"

Minutes passed, and by some unspoken agreement the two remaining pilots switched exercises every hundred repetitions. Push ups gave way to sit-ups, then pull-ups, and then variations of those. All the while a steadily growing smear of moisture built up under wherever Asuka happened to be. By the forty minute mark, her hair was matted and dark with sweat, dripping freely. Shinji meanwhile wasn't even breathing hard, just as he had said before. Thinking about it, Shinji realized it was a lesson Asuka had to learn; everyone else at NERV already had.

Whatever frustration Asuka was causing slowly faded in favor of a creeping sense of concern. Sneaking another glance at the girl, Shinji held himself up at full extension, it was then that he realized she was _serious_. "Ah-Sorhyu-san... Are you sure you should...?"

Her breathing was steady, but deep and starting to go ragged at the ends. "Not... going to quit."

Silence followed, save for the sound of two teenagers breathing and the steady drip of sweat. Shinji chewed on the inside of his cheek, weighing his options and considering all the new information. A few long minutes later, both pilots completed the set of push ups and switched positions. Asuka's clothes were soaked through with sweat and clung everywhere, but there wasn't any way for him to enjoy the view, not with how hard she was pushing herself.

Asuka's face was dark purple from roots of her hair down to her chin. Shinji watched as veins stood out along every one of her limbs, and they bulged in time with her heartbeat. Shinji could have taken Asuka's pulse just from watching her neck. Twenty-five sit-ups in, and he decided he needed a new category for diagnosing people, _unsafe_, as opposed to 'unhealthy'.

By the sixty-eighth sit-up on the second set, Asuka's ironclad control over her breathing started to slip. Shinji bent at the middle and lifted his legs while Asuka did the same. Frowning, Shinji looked at the girl through the crook in his elbow. "Sorhyu-san... You... you really should stop now."

Sitting where she was, Shinji could only see the covered side of her face. Huffing and puffing, Asuka turned her head while finishing her seventy-first sit-up, and her uncovered eye all but glowed electric blue. "You're not... getting out of this so _easily_, Ikari."

Asuka had started to slow down after ninety minutes, each completed repetition taking just that much more effort than the previous. Moving on to chin-ups, Shinji gripped the bar and pulled himself up and down. More and more though he found himself less focusing on his exercises and more on the redhead's ragged breathing. If it hadn't been for that, she would've already been hyperventilating.

Beneath her, the foam and rubber mats had almost completely soaked through, and still Asuka kept working. Exhaustion, acute dehydration, muscle and possibly even skeletal damage... The clinical problems rattled around in Shinji's head, and it all came around to the fact that Asuka was _hurting herself_ trying to keep up. And for the life of him, Shinji could not understand _why._ He watched her, tried to read her and came up blank over and over again. She made _no sense_... and for the first time in nearly a year, Shinji realized he didn't just _know_ something. It was an unexpectedly novel feeling.

Fifteen minutes later Asuka finished her sit-ups and tried to stand. Between the slick mats and her own abused muscles, she barely made it upright. One misplaced foot slipped wildly and Asuka nearly dropped flat on her back, but despite everything, she caught herself at the last minute. Seething and furious, the girl slowly got to her feet and shuffled over to the chin-up bars. Still watching, Shinji's desire to intervene warred with the fact that he _knew_ Asuka hated to be helped. It was the one thing he _did_ know.

The trembling limbs and dark, almost purple complexion was enough to make him take a chance... but look on her face killed anything Shinji had intended to say.

Standing in front of the bar, Asuka scraped around for the talc bag and tossed it around, barely making the catch on each side. Her wet hands came away almost caked in the white powder, and no amount of clapping was going to shake it loose. As far as Shinji could tell, Asuka hadn't noticed. She leapt for the bar with both hands and _pulled_, and Shinji saw the muscles in her arms strain and shake.

It took her nearly a full minute to even complete a single chin-up, but she licked her lips and counted it off just the same. "O-One."

Shinji swallowed thickly, and tried not to think about how she had ninety-nine more to go. He was nearly halfway finished when she completed her tenth chin-up. By that point every bit of medical and anatomical knowledge was beating at the inside of his head, _demanding _for him to stop her. Asuka ignored him and kept working, straining every bit of her body to move inches at a time.

Her fingers gave out first. Shinji's near perfect eyesight and the sudden jolt of adrenaline let him see it all in perfect clarity. Just as Asuka had pulled her chin over the bar, her hands spasmed. Twisting her body with one last surge of strength, she jerked away from the bar and saved her chin and nose from a painful impact. Asuka fell, off balance and out of position with no time or control. Her legs gave out as soon as they hit the mat, and she landed hard on her rear, almost bouncing before flopping backwards, flat on her back.

Shinji dropped to the floor half-a-second after she did, kicking himself for letting her go on as long as she had. It was plain on her face that Asuka wanted to scream, but all that came out was a choked, sputtering cough. Even as Shinji rushed over to her, Asuka threw one arm over her face and rolled away as best she could. He stopped short and locked up, mentally scrambling for something, _anything_ he could do.

The girl snarled, more at herself than anything, and Shinji turned on reflex. The girl stretched experimentally, huffing and puffing. Slowly but surely, Asuka pulled one leg under her, then the other. She rose in fits and starts, limbs shaking all the while and completely drenched with sweat. After what seemed like an eternity to Shinji, she finally stood upright.

Asuka fixed him with a one-eyed look, still flushed and breathing hard. "I'm not _broken_, golden boy. ... Can't quit when it's _easy_." She jerked her chin at the pull-up bar, somehow smirking past the exhaustion. "Why do you always give up? Stop running away, dammit!"

The last bit she directed to his back, but Shinji stopped and looked over his shoulder. "I'm not running." He pointed at the shadowed observation chamber, and the phones within. "I'm calling the infirmary."

* * *

><p>Dressed in clean clothes and fresh out of the shower, Shinji pressed a towel into his face. Misato sat on a nearby console in the Proving Grounds observatory, offering him a wan little smile. Outside in the open gym, NERV nurses and orderlies helped Asuka onto a gurney. It had taken a bit of bargaining on his part, agreeing to continue the endurance course if Asuka let him call for help. Asuka had allowed it, suffering under the fussing of nurses and orderlies with all the grace and poise of an imperial princess. Which was to say, she grinned and bore it.<p>

Her condition wasn't _good_ by any means, but the girl was strong. Tough enough to back up her boasts at least.

The why though still eluded him. Moreover, Shinji hadn't ever met somone who could be so _driven_. Asuka's blatant demonstration was still fresh in his mind. His eyes cut over to Misato without thinking. He knew the older woman had her great cause. The recent move to go on the offensive against the Angels was all her idea after all. He may have not known the details, but he at least knew Misato's motivation. Asuka though...

Shinji sighed and ran through the previous two hours in his mind, coming to one inescapable conclusion. "I don't get her _either_."

The raven-haired woman shrugged, shoulders bunching up under her red NERV jacket. "Asuka isn't easy to get along with at the best of time." She winced, not that Shinji noticed. "Right, stating the obvious..." She trailed off, mumbling under her breath about who was going to take the blame for temporarily losing a third of their combat roster.

Still mulling everything over, Shinji fisted the towel up in his hands. A bit of his inner reserve could make him crush the cloth explosively, in blatant defiance of normal physics. At the same time, he could have invested a little more power and made the towel stronger. The odd, procedural thought seemed to calm him, just a little. Asuka however still vexed him.

It all came back to _why_. A handful of questions with no answers rattled around in his head, and more started tumbling out of his mouth. He barely remembered Misato was even there. "I.. I don't even know why I listen to her. She just _bothers _me. She drives me _crazy!_ Most days I barely see her and she can set me off just by _talking._"

He let the towel fall out of his hands and turned to Misato, finally seeing her. "How does that even _work?"_

The smile on Misato's face widened, shining bright in the dark room, and her eyes glittered faintly. "Well, some people have chemistry like that." The older woman stretched languidly and sighed. "Listen, I need to take care of some other stuff, including Asuka. You'll be fine for the rest of the night, right?"

Shinji just let out a distant nod. A crash and bang rang out just outside the hangar doors, and Asuka's all-to-distinct voice shook the walls. Misato's smile went slightly brittle, and she let out a weak laugh. "Of course, chemistry is sometimes _explosive_, so..."

* * *

><p>Now that she was more aware of herself, Rei had to conclude that she was an <em>excellent<em> swimmer. It had taken her a little time to get used to having longer hair, as much as Asuka if her estimates were correct. The infusion pump strapped to her arm had also required compensation, but every day Rei found herself getting stronger and more sure of herself.

Technique had also never been a problem, easily cutting through water with each stroke. The most interesting thing to adapt to however, was the intermittent urge to breath in while underwater. The various competition length pools inside Central Dogma were _not_ filled with oxygenated LCL, after all. Swimming in that fluid was a curious experience too, because she could've ignored the need to surface, but its relative density to her made buoyancy difficult to estimate.

Reaching the far end, Rei pressed one hand against the smooth tile edge and sighed. Physical activity had proved to be a good way to relax, though the extended training was exhausting. The simple repetition of swimming laps however were perfect for occupying her body, and freeing her mind. Asuka had decided to surround herself in conflict and competition, and the psychology was... difficult at times. Rei took a deep breath and twisted, re-orienting herself for another lap.

Once in her rhythm on the return journey, Rei's thoughts wandered again. There was something critical that everyone had been missing, something she herself couldn't put a word to. It was more a feeling, a sense she had to do something, similar to her resolution to reciprocate to Shinji. But unlike that feeling, this one was broader, encompassing a greater group or goal.

Rei found herself smiling into the splashes and forward motion. Her biology was beginning to normalize, and now so was her social understanding. If she were a _friend_, the girl reasoned, then it would be time to dispense advice.

* * *

><p>After a long hour of deliberation, Asuka had chosen a word to describe her current state: <em>Ow.<em>

The NERV infirmary had graciously allowed her to shower before further treatment. Unfortunately for her, the water had been _freezing_. Toweled off and wrapped in a thin hospital robe, Asuka sat in bed. On the table to her right was a tray, and upon it were bottles full of lukewarm water. They'd been shot through with electrolytes and a bunch of other stuff no one bothered to explain. She reached for her patch without thinking, only to remember that she'd forgotten it back in the training area. Stupid of her, she could have analyzed the water with it.

Pain aside though, Asuka had to admit she was feeling pretty good. She hadn't worked up that good of a sweat in _months_. She slowly rotated her wrist and cringed, perhaps allowing she'd pushed herself a little _too_ hard. All the reflex and range of motion tests had come back positive though. The doctors had called her _lucky_, no sprains or muscle tears.

She'd snorted at that, and huffed into the empty recovery room. "Not luck. I'm just that damn good."

"Can't it be both?"

Asuka turned to see Misato in the doorway. The quip had done little to take the edge off of Misato's flinty look. Waking in at full military bearing and not _quite_ scowling, the older woman made it abundantly clear with just her body language that Asuka was _in for it_. Stepping inside, Misato cradled a white box under one arm and frowned darkly. "Back in Berlin, You had the sense not to train yourself into the hospital."

The redhead sat up in the bed and just shrugged. Without her neural clips, her hair hung down further on her back than she was used to, and it almost tickled. "I knew what I was doing."

"Did you really?" Misato wondered aloud. "Because if you _were _the hotshot expert combat pilot you said you were, you'd probably know how _dangerous_ it is to take yourself out of active duty for however long. Especially when you've completely refused Shinji's help here in medical."

To the last point Asuka said nothing. Asuka looked up at the woman, glaring faintly. She couldn't see it, but she could feel when her damaged eye didn't focus the same as her other, staring fixed ahead. Her right to choose and refuse treatment was one of the few freedoms she had left.

As for the rest, Asuka stretched, lacing her fingers together and extending her arms high over her head. It _hurt_, but she had a point to prove. "A few days, maximum, and nothing that would affect my piloting."

Misato stepped up to the edge of the bed and shook her head, voice going low and tight. "No matter how well you planned it, this doesn't reflect well on either of us, alright?" She looked out the infirmary window at the darkened Geofront terrain. "I put a lot of trust in you to make this work Asuka. I want it to be worth it, but I'm just not seeing it yet. Can you help me out here?"

Asuka sighed and let her arms fall, and her eyes gleamed. "I had to get through Ikari's thick skull. And yeah, I had to put myself in a hospital to do it."

Misato's jaw dropped a few centimeters, and her eyes snapped open wide. "Why couldn't you have just _told him?"_

"Because he doesn't listen! Oh he nods along politely just fine, but he doesn't get the big picture worth a damn!" Asuka twisted where she sat and folded her arms over her chest, smouldering. "Out of sight out of mind, that's Ikari right there."

They both fell silent at that, and Asuka picked at the sleeves of her robe. The scratchy fabric was wearing on her nerves just as much as her skin. Hospitals always skimped on the things that really mattered, it seemed. Comfortable people healed better, it was a verifiable scientific fact. Misato dropped the inquisitorial commander facade and sat down on the bed, nudging Asuka's knees to the side with her thigh.

She moved the white box to her lap and started to pull away the top. "I had gotten this sort of as a preemptive success present." Asuka cocked her head to one side. She could only see one side of Misato's face, but the older woman was smiling, just a little. "We still don't have approval for the A-17 order, but when we move, you and Unit 02 are heading out into the Pacific with me."

Reaching into the box and past tissue paper, Misato moved to face Asuka. The smile however turned down into a tiny frown. "Considering the stunt you just pulled, I'm not sure if I should give it to you." She looked the girl over though, now smirking. "But I think you're in enough pain not to do it again any time soon."

Asuka only nodded at that. Pain was an _excellent _disincentive. Misato pulled out a black something from the box, and it unfolded into sleeves and simple straps. Even in the darkness, Asuka was able to recognize natural leather. The older woman pushed the jacket into Asuka's hands and gave her a dazzling smile. "It gets cold on ships at sea too, so it's practical."

Running her thumbs over the stiff material, Asuka let out a short snicker. She didn't look up, but she didn't try to hide the smile in her voice either. "You're not my mother."

"No, I'm not." Misato nodded, still smiling herself. She glanced at the watch on her wrist and blinked. She stood up in a rush and scooped up the box with one hand, and raked the other through her hair, suddenly frantic. "_Crap_. I'm running late for dinner off-base. You take it easy Asuka. If you screw up again, you might hurt yourself for real."

She stopped at the door and sobered, looking Asuka in the eye. "Or worse, fail to get out there and kill Angels. Keep it in mind alright?"

* * *

><p>A few hours later, Shinji found himself back in his Geofront workshop, pouring over half-finished schematics and project ideas. He fortunately didn't have to ask for much in the way of new materials, instead recycling most of his old prototypes. Efficiency however was pretty far from his mind. Sitting on one corner of his desk was Asuka's prosthetic. She'd forgotten it after being swamped by medics.<p>

Her last question weighed on him as well. His first thought had been something along the lines of wondering how she knew. Or where she got off on calling him a _quitter_. A bit of metal in his hand bent under his thumb, and he sighed. Taking a moment to smooth it out by hand, he frowned. Even when she was a whole facility away from him, Asuka somehow _still_ managed to get under his skin.

There was a knock on the wall behind him, and Shinji turned to see Rei standing in the doorway. She glanced around, eyes lingering on the mostly empty vending machine.

"Rei?" He took in her condition with a glance, purely out of habit, even as he asked the question. "You're alright?"

"It has been several hours. My breathing has long since normalized." She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment. "I'm alright. Somewhat sore."

Padding in on bare feet, Rei stepped into the workshop proper and started to poke around, and Shinji found himself following her from where he sat. Asuka's training _was_ having an effect on Rei at least. The blue-haired pilot was a bit more solid in places. He could even see the start of muscular definition along her back... and the hair-fine surgical scars that framed her spine and shoulder blades. A handful of theoretical procedures tumbled through his mind, none of them sounded very fun.

"Oh. That's good." He wilted then, only slightly. Conversation still wasn't his strong suit. Then another detail finally registered. "Rei... Why are you wearing a swimsuit?"

She was indeed wearing a one-piece swimsuit, along with a pair of sweatpants as well, both a little damp in places and smelling of chlorine. Her hair was also still wet and a bit tangled, though she had pulled it up into a rough version of her now-customary tail. Rei looked down at herself and tugged at the thin white fabric around her waist. "I had just finished swimming, and your door was open."

Now that he thought about it though, Rei in a swimsuit wasn't a particularly _novel _idea. It still added to the burden of thought he'd been accumulating for the past couple of hours. The small observations were at least easier to work through. "I hardly ever see you swim at school."

The girl just cocked her head to one side, letting her tied back hair drape over one shoulder. "You quit school."

Shinji winced and hunched over in his seat, nodding faintly. Absently, he reached out for Asuka's eye patch and started to play with it. "Yeah, I guess I did."

Rei played with one of his prototype, a scale model of a collapsing structure cable. More mechanical engineering and outside his preferred fields, he had to admit. Shinji watched, and red crawling embarrassment crept its way up the back of his neck while she explored. None of the test models and concepts were very good... or even understandable. A few dozen were pretty much black boxes, frustratingly difficult to explain. Especially when they _worked_.

Touching one of the cable actuators, the device collapsed into a tight ball like a steel muscle. Rei turned from that table and stood with perfect posture, at odds with her almost cushy outfit.

"Asuka-san explained something to me once, and I did not fully understand it." Her tone was still unfailingly quiet and even, which still managed to convey a sense of all-business. Shinji sighed inwardly but nodded for her to continue, thankful she had taken some unseen cue to relieve him of making small talk.

"She desires above all else to win, to prove her superiority in competition. She however does not require there be losers in a given contest, just that she wins the most."

Shinji found himself staring at the girl, and she had his complete and utter attention. Rei blinked once and continued. "Asuka-san wants to win, but she does not want us pilots to lose either."

Slumping in his chair, Shinji looked up at the girl. Rei's eyes had been unsettling at first, but for some reason he had no trouble meeting them now. "She said I quit too easily... but I don't get what that even means."

"I don't know either." Rei admitted, speaking even more softly.

"There is much I don't understand about you either, but I never felt the need to try. It was unnecessary." She looked panicked for a split-second, but only slightly. "I did not mean that offensively. I meant more that I understood you well enough to be at peace."

She looked down then, but from where Shinji sat, he could still see a tiny smile. "Perhaps I should try to understand more."

Shinji nodded once and sat up, and started making his way out the door. He still had Asuka's eye patch in hand. Maybe they all should try more.

* * *

><p>Dinner at eight PM was a calculated move on her part. Misato artfully dodged most of the evening crowd and her planning left the upscale bar and grill mostly empty. The moment she stepped through the door, her whole view went into soft focus. Hanging lights and wall scones were framed by paper screens, casting the restaurant in a soft warm glow. The Major smiled at the man at the front desk, giving him plenty of time to check her photo and commit her entrance to memory.<p>

A little extra money in the right hand made sure she had a table and grill reserved in the corner, perfect for her needs. The walls were dark hardwoods and the furniture thickly cushioned with real leather. The table surrounded a black grill and the chef bowed, knives in hand and at the ready. She paid the man a smile and wink; everyone who lived in Tokyo-3 was involved with NERV, one way or another. Misato sat down and peeled off her NERV jacket before tugging at the skirt of her iconic mini dress, smoothing out a few non-existent wrinkles. Thanks to Shinji's alterations, it fit her like a glove. Now all she had to do was sit back and wait for her date.

Her plan was going to eat up a third of her month's pay, but she was going to enjoy every _second_.

Her JSSDF contact shouldered his way in a few minutes later. A man in his early forties cut through the thin crowds with ease, stocky and broad shouldered. His face was lined, but only a little. The dark green uniform of the Japan Strategic Self Defense Force was nearly washed out black in the low light, but Misato could still pick out the bit of grey at the man's temples. Ribbons and service decorations hung from his jacket breast, including one marking him as a veteran of the Old Tokyo Event.

Misato stood and matched the man's bow with one of her own, then extended her hand for a quick shake. She followed it up with an honest, sparkling smile. "General Kirishima, thank you for coming."

"Major Katsuragi." The man pulled the simple officer's cap off and tucked it under one arm before taking her hand in his. Always a pleasure."

The dark-haired woman glanced at the chef and gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. The man took the hint and excused himself, busy with other matters and customers nearby. Misato couldn't help the giddy little grin either. A successful bit of tradecraft, if she did think so her self. A waiter swooped in, also paid in advance, carrying a tray and full _sake _set. The bottle hailed from one of the inland breweries that continued production during Impact, and Misato all but purred as she set the alcohol to warm.

Drawing her hands back, Misato's smile came back in earnest. "So General, how are you?"

The older man matched her grin with an easy, wizened one of his own. "Well as can be expected these days. Though I have to admit, most of my concerns are on the domestic front."

Misato had to admit she didn't often notice much in Japan that wasn't involved with NERV or the Angels. Civil disobedience or anything would be the last thing she needed right then. She hoped she managed to hide the wince. "Oh? I hadn't heard anything like that."

The General blinked once and laughed, taking a sip of water before waving her off. "No, nothing like that. It's just my daughter. She's in junior high now and suddenly Daddy's no longer her hero."

The dark-haired woman winced again, this time commiserating with her own wry grin. "_Oh_. I know how that goes. Trying to raise kids these days..." She trailed off with a wistful smile, staring past Kirishima's shoulder.

Kirishima gave her a sidelong glance, not unkindly. "I didn't know you had children, Major."

Misato let out a short, two-note laugh through her fingers. "Adopted, more or less." The distant look came back. "I admit I don't do a lot to raise them. They're all so independent these days."

Shoulders shaking, the General waved his arms and laughed even harder. "I know, I know! Sometimes I miss it when my little girl needed me to do everything for her. Now it's a full campaign just to get her to say hello in the mornings."

The rice wine had warmed enough to be served, and Misato poured for her guest with as much grace as she could muster. Best she make her first impressions before she got tipsy, after all. The chef returned a few moments later too, spreading out a sampling of meat, fish and veggies for cutting and grilling. The appetizers and alcohol made short work of the initial small talk, and through it all Misato's smile almost never wavered. There was a moment she stopped, chewed and sighed. Shinji's food was still better.

When dinner was finished, the two soldiers peeled out of the corner booth and headed for the bar. The sake followed them, but served straight from the bottle into waiting saucers. Sitting next to each other on bar stools, the pair joked and sputtered over rich alcohol. It would have been _far_ too crass to challenge the man to a drinking contest, but Misato wasn't above matching him shot for shot. No one beat her liver, except for maybe Shinji, and he cheated by sheer body weight.

Flushed, Misato grinned and laid her hand on Kirishima's shoulder. It wasn't like he was _married_, and a little flirting never hurt anyone. "Listen, General, I need a favor."

Kirishima smiled over the edge of his saucer, rocking his hand back and forth. "A favor, Katsuragi? It wouldn't have anything to do with this A-17 you're plotting, would it?"

"Caught." Misato had the decency to snicker. She threaded her other arm around his elbow and curled in close, meanwhile her eyes sparkled. She was also pleased to note that when he had a beautiful woman hanging on his arm, Kirishima sat up a little straighter on the bench. "I need JSSDF permission to deploy an Evangelion abroad."

The General downed his last saucer with one move before setting it down. He smiled right back at her, sober enough to take the attention as she meant it. "You still owe us for the positron cannon you stole-"

"Borrowed!"

A smart, playful glare forced Misato to close her mouth with a click and he continued, smirking. "_Stole_, because we still don't have it back. You still owe us for that, and will owe us for this."

Misato drummed her fingers on his shoulder and cuddled closer to the arm she'd claimed. He was leaving out a particular piece of important, need-to-know strategic information. "I _am _buying dinner."

Kirishima laughed out loud, reaching out with his free arm and to pat the hand on his shoulder. Then he reached for the bottle of _sake_ and tipped it into the nearest saucer, but only a few drips came out. The man grinned at Misato, eyes glinting with mirth. "Buy us another bottle and I'll see what I can do."

Misato raised her hand and singled the bartender, giggling. "Deal."

* * *

><p>For once Shinji was in a hurry to get somewhere other than back to his workshop. He knew the halls of the infirmary almost as good as every angle, wall and nail in Misato's apartment. He knew the staff habits and procedures, all of it coming down to a humming cloud of information in the back of his head. Knowing someone's schedule was a powerful tool, just like knowing which recovery rooms were filled first.<p>

The only open door and filled placard on the wall were the only signs he needed that Asuka was there. Shinji rolled the eye patch over between his fingers and took a deep breath.

Inside, the Second Child sat upright on the bed, and Shinji found himself at something of a loss. The girl was _beaming_ at the black leather jacket spread out over her lap, brushing the collar and shoulders with her thumbs. As he stepped in and gave it a look over, Shinji had to admit it was a really well made bit of leather-work, cut for motor sports if he wasn't mistaken. Catching himself halfway through the doorway, he stopped and rocked back on one heel. Stalled there, he raised one hand, unsure whether to knock on the door frame or clear is throat.

The squeak of his shoes solved the problem for him, and Asuka's head snapped up, squinting.

"I uh.. I have your patch." Shinji held up the prosthetic for a moment, cringing. Asuka blinked once, and her voice went surprisingly soft. "Oh, thanks."

A quick snap of his arm sent the patch tumbling through the air toward the bed. Asuka however twisted in bed, wincing even as she angled her good eye on the black plastic and trailing straps. She reached out with both hands and managed to hook the straps between her fingers, wincing past her teeth. Asuka fussed with it then, flipping tiny switches on the side until the power light glowed blue. A bit more fumbling and she had it properly wrapped around her head and hair.

"Oh I can _see_ again. This is great..." She slumped back on the bed and sighed. "Going to have to charge it tomorrow but thanks, Ikari."

Inwardly, Shinji kicked himself for forgetting her condition so readily, all of them. To Asuka though he just nodded, openly glad he hadn't done something to set her off. Aside from being just generally unpleasant, he didn't want to aggravate her condition further if he could help it.

"Are..." He hesitated. The boy swallowed once and licked his lips before trying again. "Are you alright?"

The girl huffed, scowling past her bangs and the black geometric shard of plastic over one eye socket. "I'm _fine_." She spread her arms wide, as far as the close quarters would allow. Impressively, Asuka only winced a little. "I'm _tired and sore_ but fine. You can do that mental x-ray trick right? Any broken bones, Mr. Kung-fu Wizard?"

Shinji sighed but did as she asked, taking in her condition in the span of two heartbeats. He shook his head, but one eyebrow quirked up when he mentioned the last point. "No, nothing like that, but only because you drink a lot of milk."

"Damn right I do." She sat up again and crossed her arms, scowling harder. "Take a seat Ikari, we've got some stuff to discuss here."

"Wh-what?"

Asuka's uncovered eye fixed him sharply. "I mean it. Sit down."

Brows furrowing hard, Shinji broke into a scowl of his own. He shifted where he stood, widening his stance while his fingers curled, indignant. "Hey! I came down because _you_ put yourself here!"

"_Gott _you are _thick_." Asuka rubbed her temples with both hands and sighed. "It's not about where anyone ended up, it's about _why_. Could you just listen to the message, not the messenger? I need you to pay attention here Ikari, _please_."

That brought Shinji up short, blinking rapidly. He tried to mull it over for a few seconds, but it just came back as opaque as before. "Attention? What- I don't even know what that _means."_

Asuka sighed again and braced herself before carefully swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. Bare feet flinched when they touched the floor. With one heave, the girl stood upright. She swayed but steadied herself, tilting her chin up to stare Shinji right in the eye. "Look, Ikari, I'll put it as clearly as I can." She reached out and poked him in the chest with her folded knuckles. "_You leave Rei and I behind_."

Blinking rapidly, Shinji found himself reeling, blurting out a handful of syllables. The ninety pound girl in front of him just kept staring him down, unwavering. Unconsciously he felt his shoulders loosen and slouch as he fumbled for a reply. Trying to show concern had unexpectedly become a visit to the principal's office. "What? N-No I don't! If anything I slow myself down for your sakes!"

"That's right!" The girl's expression shifted, softening as her scowl dissolved. Instead she closed her eye, brows arching contemplatively. Her tone was almost openly praising as she conceded the point. "You do try to match pace to Rei and I during the drills and exercises, but that's only the _first step_. You never stick with us, you never do more than you're asked, you just _go_ as soon as someone isn't holding you down!"

"But I'm _busy_!" Shinji spread his arms wide, as if to encompass the whole Geofront and the demands on his time. "I have things to do! There are a half-dozen projects I need to finish and problems to solve and a bunch of other things. Then I get pulled away for like, forty hours a week for pilot training?"

Asuka's voice started even but rose to cutting and intent, even as her hands slashed through the air with each point. "Because piloting is _important_! We're important! All of us, including you! I tried to say it earlier; we're a team and _we're at war!" _

Her head dropped down, forcing her to stare at their feet. She sucked in a deep breath and let it out, running a hand through her hair. "Look, It's like you're fighting that war on two fronts, and that _sucks_, but it's not an excuse for you to half-ass the part you don't like!"

She jabbed him again on that last word, but he didn't budge. Not that there was any room to do so, the recovery suite was far too small to stumble, pace, or do much of anything. Shinji's own bulk had trapped them both further. Not that it bothered him much; Shinji was angry again, twice in the same day. This time though, he at least felt _productively_ angry. And no need to scream or shout or break things either, he just wanted to stop _wondering_ and start _knowing_ again.

It was also his time to start demanding. Shinji reared up to full height, one hand on his chest and the other arm flung out for an answer. "But I thought you didn't even want me _around!_"

Asuka blinked owlishly, face going momentary slack. Her one eye looked right at him in askance. It was Asuka's default_ what are you, stupid?_ expression. "Of course I want you around! For training. But what I_ don't _want is a prima donna on our team. Haven't you heard of a _unified front_? To say nothing of the fact that we're _pilots_. All three of us!"

She poked him in the chest again, just like earlier in the Proving Grounds. At the end though she let her arms drop with a sigh. "I mean sure, you've done shit I don't like, and have pissed me off more than once. But Ikari, right now I just don't like your attitude!"

Shinji felt red creeping up the back of his neck, but for once he wasn't embarrassed. "What attitude!? I barely was around until you _forced me_."

Asuka fixed him with a fierce look, past scowling or glaring or any other mundane expression. Right then she was all business, her tone dead level even as she drove each point home. "Of course I have to force you! Like I said before, you quit. You flake out. You're always on the path of least resistance, and none of us can afford that right now! Have you buried yourself so far in cancer cures and leg splints that you've forgotten the giant space monsters lurking just outside these walls?"

The denial spilled out, too late for him to try and pull it back. "We... we haven't seen an Angel in months, though!" Even as he said it, Shinji winced, realizing she was right.

"So tell me then Golden Boy," Asuka crossed her arms over her chest, frowning darkly. "Why does my tumble from a chin-up bar _scare you more than that?"_

* * *

><p>The next day, well after sunset, Katsuragi Misato leaned back in her seat and stretched. Braced against the hand-made chair back, her spine let out a long series of satisfying cracks and pops. Fourteen hour shifts at work on the heels of a hangover were not for the weak. Rolling forward, Misato scooped up her first beer of the night and took stock.<p>

Spread out on the equally hand-built kitchen table were reports, documents and the steadily dwindling list of contacts available to her. She flipped through a small stack, idly conniving new ways to wheedle for more favors. Around the world, the UN military arm and its still-functioning connections to NERV were slowly activating. Tokyo-3 had separated itself from the United Nation's _funding_, but not its command and control structure.

A bead of sweat dripped down from her ribs over her stomach, and Misato smiled into the lip of her drink. Even with an air conditioner, nights in June were an excuse to dress down. And if she _had_ to work from home, comfort was paramount. A thin white tanktop and her favorite cutoffs suited that need perfectly. When Rei had ducked in after school, she had taken a cue from Misato's book and come out dressed almost the same, down to the hair style.

Right at that moment though, the only thing that might have made her evening better would be an attentive audience. There she was; a beautiful, single woman, and no one was around to appreciate it. Then the front door whispered open, and Shinji shuffled into the kitchen.

Misato blinked once, and a bit of condensation slid down the can. "You're home, Shinji-kun."

Shinji matched her befuddled look with one of his own, a little hunched over. "I'm home."

The question that followed was fairly obvious, Misato realized, but sometimes they needed to be asked. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him outside the Geofront, after all. "Why?"

"Nothing." Shinji ducked his head a bit lower and waved her off. "Just Asuka the other day. I-I needed some time to think. A place."

Misato nodded slowly but otherwise didn't push for an answer. No need to disturb the comfortably silent communication. With her legs folded up on the chair, Misato twisted in place to follow Shinji as he shuffled into the living room. She watched as he plucked the remote out from between the couch cushions and started flipping channels. Far be it from her to judge how someone else depressurized. Taking another swig of beer, she turned back to her work.

Vladivostok was slowly gathering all the supplies for an Evangelion deployment, and she circled the estimated date of delivery. There would have to be extra time built into the schedule for refitting the Pacific Fleet as well, but the A-17's built-in discretionary fund would cover that...

Behind her, Shinji kept cycling through television stations. She heard snippets of news programs, glurgy soap-operas and a half-dozen other bits of prime-time programming. The ancient stereo sound faded out while she worked, and the couch creaked. Maybe Shinji got up to look for a book; Misato couldn't remember the last time he wasn't going after some kind of intellectual pursuit. She took a sip and wondered if a gift for Shinji was a bad idea, there had to be a rare bookseller somewhere...

Glass and plastic shattered behind her, and the can of beer in Misato's hand crumpled loudly. She twisted again, wide eyed and cheeks bulging with a mouthful of alcohol. Back in the living room, Shinji stood behind the _ruins_ of her television set, the same one she'd had since college. His arms were sunk up to the elbows in the one appliance in her apartment older than she was. She swallowed the beer and blinked.

Shinji blanched, and immediately began to glow, soaking the whole apartment in gold. "I-I can fix it!"

The low-key corona was pleasant and warm like sunlight, so Misato just smirked into it. Always so earnest and dependable, her Shinji. "I bet you can. I'm more surprised you broke it."

"I just was trying to make it better because the screen was tiny and-" Shinji babbled for a moment before falling silent.

Misato slid out of her seat and stepped up to the couch, throwing one leg over the back then the other before dropping down into the center cushion. "Shinji," She bounced and landed lightly on bare feet, waving him to stand up and holding her arms wide. "It's fine, it's fine! "

She urged him to come around and grabbed his wrists when he did, tugging playfully. Along the way, a bit of the television innards came with his hands. "It's just been a year since you broke anything. On accident." She cocked her head to one side and looked up from his chest to his eyes, curiosity and concern mixing freely. "Are you alright?"

A muscle in Shinji's neck shifted, and he looked away. Down at his sides, one hand fiddled with the vacuum tubes and dangling wires. Even so tall, his jaw was still a little boyish, and so was his deflection. "I'm fine! I just have a lot on my mind is all."

"You sure?" One dark eyebrow arched high, and Misato hummed thoughtfully. Smirking, she let her voice turn lilting. "You haven't been asking to sleep with me for a while. I've told you before, it's no problem."

_That_ got a blush on the boy's cheeks, and Misato let out an unvoiced sigh of relief. Nothing like a natural reaction to put her at ease. Shinji all but _pouted_ too, and Misato found herself laughing. "You know what I mean, Shinji-kun."

The boy huffed, fighting his own little grin. It was brittle though, and Misato wondered. Still he answered. "I'm fine Misato. It's like I said- there's a lot going on..."

Misato nodded slowly, letting his hands go so she could wrap her arms around his middle, careful of the sharp metal in his hands. What with their height difference, she was perfectly set to curl in and press her ear to his heart. She would've died to admit it out loud how _cheesy _it was for her to enjoy listening to his pulse. She counted off four beats and gave him one more lingering squeeze before letting go.

When she finished pulling away though, her eyes fell on the remains of her television, and she wondered again. Shinji had already started to pull away when she stopped him with a hand on his jaw. Misato turned his head so she could look him in the eye. "Shinji, are you _sure_ you're alright? Nothing the matter?"

Shinji didn't flinch at the hand on his cheek, but the brittle smile came back. "I'm fine, really. You don't have to worry."

_And hearing you say that is exactly _why_ I'm worrying_. She had to admit though, at least he wasn't apologizing anymore. But the fact remained that somewhere between NERV headquarters and her apartment, Shinji had discovered how much easier it was to be a stone.

He tried to move away again, but her hand dropped to his shoulder and stopped him once more. "Too late, consider me worried. Shinji, you've been working yourself ragged for _months_. Are you _sure_ you're running on all cylinders?"

They both stopped for a moment, digesting that last question. Shinji broke first, letting out a short little snicker before Misato joined in. Gearhead metaphors weren't exactly _common _in her apartment, but almost always amusing when they happened. A bit of the tension leaked out of Shinji's eyes though, so Misato considered it worth the silent ribbing.

Shinji rubbed at one cheek when the laughter subsided. "For the last time, I'm fine Misato."

There he said it _again_. Like being fine was a catch-all deflection, something he could throw out and not be questioned. That his natural self had to be teased out was all the confirmation she needed. The older woman nodded once and sucked in a quick breath. Now or never. "Prove it."

The boy stopped short for a moment, blinking rapidly and looking down at her with the most honestly confused look she'd ever seen. And Misato considered herself champion and confounding people, including herself. She felt her jaw work, scrambling for an answer or direction or _something_. Proving herself wrong would be a relief too, but she had to be _sure_.

Her eyes settled on the solid gold disc burning over his brow. "Your examination trick, what you used on me way back when with my ribs and scar. Use it on yourself."

"Misa-" Shinji gaped, but she pressed a finger to his mouth and frowned. "No, not getting out of this Shinji. Do it."

He pushed her hand out of his way, harried and flustered. "I don't even know of it works on me!"

Misato stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest. "Try."

Shinji sighed again and closed his eyes, mumbling under his breath while he focused. The gold disc flashed brighter for a second, and his corona got incrementally brighter. A few seconds later he was finished, and Shinji slumped into the couch. Propping his head up with one arm against the armrest, he almost looked relaxed... or resigned. The bit of television guts in his other hand dangled against his leg. Misato sat down on the opposite end, waiting.

He didn't bother looking up or opening his eyes. Shinji started reciting symptoms, his voice had dropped down into a dull monotone. "Acute psychological strain brought on by lack of sleep and relaxation. Sharp decrease in mental focus related to same. I ignored the primary symptoms of sleep deprivation, but the secondary ones kept building up."

The boy sat up and sighed for a third time, hunched over and staring at the bit of metal and wire in his hands. "I don't know what to _do _anymore. Every project I've started has stalled out somewhere. There's too much to do and not enough time to do it. Then I get handed even _more_ work and I'm not even finished with last week's."

Misato slid up closer to Shinji and put a hand on his back, moving in soothing circles. It was small, but it was a start. To the rest though she had something of an answer. "I don't know what it is exactly you've been doing back at NERV... but I do know that when I have too many things to do and not enough time to do them... I know there's a solution."

Shinji looked up, eyes wide and haggard. It took Misato a second to realize she hadn't _seen him stressed_ for nearly six months. He'd always been so strong and steadfast. He rubbed his nose and nodded once. "A solution?"

Pressing in closer, Misato wrapped her arm around his back and side and gave her pilot an encouraging squeeze. "The solution," she began. "Starts with finding someone else to take care of it. Leaders don't do everything ourselves..." Misato reached for the part of her former television and plucked it out of his hand, tossing it over her shoulder without a word.

Grinning, she offered him a soft look and tapped his nose when his face scrunched up in dismay. Here was a perfect demonstration. "Rei will go out and buy a new TV, _for_ us."

He boggled at that, and begged for clarification. Now wasn't the time for questions though, and Misato now saw the rest of the night planned out in full detail. She reached over to push his jaw closed with her free hand and smiled into his confusion. "In short, we delegate. As for the rest, here's what's going to happen."

"Second thing," Misato grinned warmly and started ticking off points with her free hand. Along the way, she leaned in pressed her lips to his temple. "I'm going to call in days off for both of us, and then tonight we are going to sleep. And you won't complain either." She winked, and her grin shifted to a light smirk. "Taking care of ourselves is just as important as getting work done."

Shinji just nodded, listless and more than a little lost. That was fine though, it happened to everyone at some point. Misato was just going to make sure it got taken care of too. "Thirdly, the day after tomorrow, you and I are going to go into NERV and use your section-leader powers to solve your workforce problem."

"Lastly, I've been missing your packed lunches for quite a while now. So have the girls, though I doubt Asuka would admit it. I think you need to set aside more time for yourself. And I haven't seen you enjoy anything more than cooking."

Another nod was her answer, and Misato stood up, letting her hand wrap around one of his and tug him upright. Teasing and more than a bit mischievous, she snuck in another lingering hug before pulling back, smiling brightly.

"I also think I'm the only one in the world who can say this with a straight face, so..." Misato trailed off, sweet and charming and every pleasant tone she could muster. Lesser folk turned to stuttering ooze in the face of her charisma. Shinji just burned tomato red and smiled into their comfortable routine. Taking his hand and settling it on her hip, she pressed in for a sidelong hug and gave the boy a hopeful, wheedling look.

"...Could you head into the kitchen and make me a sandwich?"

* * *

><p>Ten, no, <em>twelve <em>hours of sleep. Shinji woke at dawn the following morning, and time spent blessedly unconscious had almost seemed unreal to him. When he looked in the bathroom mirror, it took Shinji a second to recognize his own face. He may have not shown obvious signs of exhaustion, but now compared to yesterday was a marked improvement. No drooping eyes, almost-imperceptible slackness in his cheeks, nothing but healthy-if-somewhat-large teenager. He felt lighter than he had in _years_. Stress he'd been carrying since before he even arrived in Tokyo-3 had faded away over the night, leaving him clear and focused.

Misato had also _massaged_ him to sleep that night, and his back still tingled. She'd picked up his pressure point technique at some point, almost gleefully pressing the 'clear and relaxed' neuro-physical button he discovered. Ahead of him, the kitchen he had built with his own two hands awaited him. The ingredients were safe in their cupboards and refrigerator. Lacing his fingers together, Shinji stretched and cracked his knuckles, grinning faintly.

It was _cooking time_.

* * *

><p><em>Shinji<em> woke up at five in the morning if he had his way. Misato however firmly believed that ten AM was the time to be awake and heading for work. Of course if she _had_ to be responsible, being awake and ready by seven was possible. Shuffling out of her room and into the main part of her apartment, a familiar and tasty aroma hooked its way around her nose. Breakfast snacks were a _fantastic_ way to start a day, no matter what time it was. Floating into the kitchen, Misato grinned her pilot's back while he stared at the double-wall oven.

With her state of dress no worse than last night, she didn't feel too naughty sidling up to Shinji and curling around one of his arms.

"Whatcha makin'?" She grinned drowsily, cuddling closer. "Biscuits? Maybe muffins? I smell a bit of cinnamon..."

The boy practically _rippled_ in her embrace, like his limbs were sound waves. He craned his neck around and down to see where his arm was wedged, the white tanktop and Misato's teasing smile. Now _this_ was familiar territory. Shinji let out a short, sputtering cough and pointedly looked no where other than the stove, turning a faint red. Once his throat started working, he answered by opening the oven and pulling the tray out with his bare hands. "Decent protein health bars."

Misato's face fell.

* * *

><p>Training day, and this time something was going to be different. Shinji had arrived first at the Proving Grounds first, even before Asuka. She'd given him a mostly unreadable look at that, but nodded once after some internal judgement. The tiny acknowledgement pleased him more than he would've guessed. The redhead had recovered nicely, mostly due to the fact that she was already in <em>fantastic<em> shape beforehand. Shinji then stopped for a moment and reviewed that thought. He shook his head and winced, hoping to clear the blood away from his cheeks. Now was not the time to think about fantastic shapes.

After warm ups, Asuka had declared they would do another suit-up drill. The grin that worked its way onto Shinij's face was both entirely involuntary, and entirely honest. Asuka directed the other two pilots to their starting lines and looped the stopwatch around her neck and into her shirt. She raised her hand and took a deep breath. In one well-practiced move dropped her arm and shouted _go!_

Just like the dozens of other times they did this drill, the elevator proved to be the choke point. And like before, that elevator represented any number of similar places in the Geofront that would not wait just for the pilots in an ideal situation. Shinji had arrived first as usual, with Rei and Asuka sliding through the doors almost simultaneously. Any other day they would have slammed into the far wall hands first. Today Shinji was there, hooking his arms around their middle. _Not_ doing things like that was a giant waste of him being first.

Asuka squirmed out of his grip and muttered a faint 'thanks'. Shinji wasn't going to sweat the small details though, he had a _plan_. The elevator stopped at the top of the cages and the three pilots surged out one after the other. Well, Asuka and Rei did. Shinji walked. He also skipped the changing room, heading for the plug access gantries in his street clothes instead.

An observatory screen snapped on, and through it Asuka gaped, demanding to know _just what the hell _he was doing. Shinji just turned on one heel and walked backwards, tossing a little salute at the nearest camera. All according to plan. The _potential_ he'd found a few weeks ago now actualized, and in a way, he had to thank Asuka for it. He wouldn't have ever thought of it on his own.

While Asuka blustered and huffed in the dressing rooms, Rei stepped out in her white plugsuit, jogging for her finish line. Shinji stood next to his own simulation plug, waiting patiently. When Asuka finally made her way out, she stalked over to him and growled. "Ikari Shinji _what are y-"_

Shinji just held up a finger for silence. He reached down to his shoes and mimed pulling a sock on, and Asuka watched as his shoe _vanished_. The booted sole of his plugsuit appeared in it's place, wreathed by glowing curls of sunlight and glittering sparks. One leg, then the other, and finally shrugging into the rest of his plugsuit in a matter of seconds. His regular clothes had vanished along the way, even his watch and belt. He grinned a little grin and ran his hand through his hair. A sunburst whorl flared out, and in its place was his neural headset.

Dumbstruck, Asuka held up the stopwatch and clicked it once.

* * *

><p>Lazy Sundays in Summer were... Lazy. Saneda Ayumi lounged back in her thin chair and wiped a hand over her brow. It came back damp with sweat. There was only a handful of weeks left in school for the year, finally eating into the extended classes due to the closures earlier in the year. No homework either, not that she <em>wanted<em> to do homework, either. The clock ticked eleven-thirty in the morning and she sighed.

The pager on her desk buzzed, and suddenly Ayumi was all action. A second later she wondered if that made her desperate. A second thought reminded her that Shinji's absence tended to range from 'just extremely busy' to 'Presumed Missing: call the police'.

She skimmed at the hundred-character display. Shinji: _"Missed you. Sorry I haven't talked much."_

Pulling out the keypad, Ayumi nodded and started talking out loud even as she typed, thumbs brushing over the buttons. "It's alright. You explained before. Top secret stuff."

_"You are really amazingly understanding." _She smiled at his response, but the second line sent her _beaming_. _"We should make time to go out."_

Ayumi's smile widened with each key pressed in reply. "That's really sweet, but I don't want to push you anymore. I learned my lesson."

The pager rumbled again in her hand. _"I understand, maybe later." _it read.

The girl sighed softly and cradled the pager in her fingers, stretching. It shook again, and she glanced at the screen. The LCD display had the strangest message: _Pin-Pon!_

Then the doorbell rang. Ayumi was already on her feet heading for it when her mother called to get the door. Bare feet on carpet and wood, she slid through the cramped furniture of her family's apartment and out toward the front. Slapping a control, the door swished open, and there stood Ikari Shinji, her boyfriend. In one hand he held his pager, and his other he held a fresh cut white flower.

A bit of red spread out across his cheeks, and he let out a little, jerking laugh. "It's uh, later. Lunch?"

* * *

><p>A week later, Shinji stood behind a podium with a half-dozen index cards in his hands, and Misato at his side. Ahead of him was one of Central Dogma's numerous meeting halls, filled with a hundred of NERV's engineers, scientists, technicians and related staff. He shuffled the deck of notes just out of sight, mostly out of nerves. He'd already memorized every word on the page, and Misato had coached him through the basics of giving a speech.<p>

He leaned into the microphone and bit back a cough. "G-Good morning. Thank you for coming."

The men and women filling the space blinked impassively, and Shinji _almost_ clamped up right then and there. He shut his eyes and concentrated, no reason to be afraid. When he opened them, he was calm. "For those of you who may not know, My name is Ikari Shinji, and I am the head of the Special Projects Division."

Behind him, a projector threw a diagram on the back wall, laying out a chain of command with Shinji at the top. "As of today, you are now that Division."

* * *

><p>All three pilots had arrived on time and ready for morning training, and Asuka had discarded the rest of the daily schedule they had been using.<p>

Looking around with fresh eyes, Shinji noted that much had changed in the Proving grounds itself, but his perceptions most definitely had. Everything seemed brighter, clearer. He knew for a fact that his technique to go without sleep had negated the obvious consequences, but now that he actually _had_ slept... Well, he wasn't sure how to feel about that either. For the first few nights Shinji had almost run up a wall, frustrated with the _time_ wasted sleeping. Misato had been able to successfully restrain his workaholic streak though.

The results had spoken for themselves however, and a double-handful of breakthroughs on various stalled projects had let Shinji shed an equal amount of weight from his shoulders. Reduced stress was a beautiful thing.

After more than a month of training though, Shinji was a little surprised to realize that he had been conditioned. When Asuka blew on her whistle for example, he found himself jumping at attention. It wasn't full military discipline by any stretch, not that he had much experience with _that _either. In any case, Asuka had, in her words, successfully instilled something like team cohesion. If not cohesion, then something close enough to fool a casual observer, or Ikari Gendo.

In the end, it was the fact that none of them wanted to fail the others that saved them. When his eyes cut over to Asuka, Shinji wondered. _Something_ had changed since their discussion in the infirmary over a week ago. Shinji couldn't put his finger on it, but Asuka was... not so much nicer as more directed. She took the time to explain things, instead of just give orders.

With a mostly free day and no simulations, the three pilots were for the moment standing as equals. Shinji had to admit it was a novel feeling, being so readily included. He'd also brought his latest batch of nutrient bars that morning, and Asuka and Rei both had been duly impressed. Though he also had to remind the girls that each bar was a little bit less than a full meal in calories and nutrients, and there wasn't much he could do about the body's need for a healthily full stomach. Rei had set down the second bar with obvious reluctance.

Finishing her own snack, Asuka tossed the hand-folded wrapper aside and stretched. The red tracksuit jacket rode up a bit revealing a slice of bare stomach over the waistband of her pants. Rei had dressed similarly, though her hair was damp with sweat from their morning warm up. She'd been looking healthier every day now as well. From where he sat on a nearby bench press, Shinji was content to be silent and wait.

Then Asuka blew her whistle and he nearly fell off the bench. When he looked up at her, the redhead grinned. "So, do you have super-strength?"

Now _that_ was a complicated question. Shinji rubbed the back of his head. "Uh... Sort of?" He held up a hand and asked her to wait a minute while he reset the bench press. They had enough weights for three people to exercise comfortable, and Shinji used quite a lot of it. When he was finished, he pointed to the bar. "Uh, three-twenty kilograms. More or less."

Rei stepped up next to Asuka, silent but watching just as intently. Shinji felt a bit of sweat build up on his brow and winced. Akagi-sensei never inspired so much anxiety. His hands wrapped around the bar, and he _pushed_. The bar and plates rose up into the air with effort, but far less than anyone would have expected. Shinji let his arms drop down slowly and touched the bar to his chest, repeating the motion a few times just to make the demonstration clear. Asuka blinked at that, giving him an oddly unreadable look. Rising to his feet, Shinji towered over the girls, but still blushed a little. Showing off wasn't high on his list of priorities, and even less so without his secret-identity suit.

Now Asuka cocked her head to the side, openly curious. "Can you punch with all that?"

Shinji felt a bit of relief bubble up inside him at that; a question he could _answer_. "No, which bothered quite a few people when we all started testing. I uh... I don't actually hit much harder than most athletes." He shrugged. "Boxers, stuff like that."

"Really now..." The redhead drawled pleasantly, pulling her neural headset off with one hand and grabbing a hair tie from a pocket with the other. She pulled her hair back into a simple pony tail, grinning. "I'd like to see for myself, if you don't mind."

The boy felt himself take a step back, stammering. "Wh-what?"

Asuka cracked her knuckles against the palm of one hand, than the other. Her grin was mischievous, and just a hint of wicked. "I'd like to spar with you. Last time I knocked you on your rear pretty fast, I figure now's a good time for a rematch."

"I-I don't really like fighting people. Or sparing. It's gotten... Messy."

"Messy?" Asuka echoed.

Rei stepped in then to answer Asuka's question, laying a light hand on Shinji's arm. She looked the girl in the eye, speaking clear and even. "I have seen him demonstrate in combat. Maiming at minimum is a very real concern."

Frowning, Asuka mulled that over for a second. The skepticism was clear, but the girl was being surprisingly civil. "But you can't hit harder than a boxer?"

Twisting his arm around, palm up and palm down, Shinji pointed at his bicep tried to explain. "It's not really uh, all this that's hitting the target, though. Magic kung fu remember?"

He mimed a strike like a teacher would demonstrate for a student, splaying his hand at the end like a tiny explosion. Asuka watched, utterly focused. "Normally you kind of learn how to use your muscles. But I move... some other kind of way and I can fling tanks for a couple dozen meters."

She looked up and blinked again, her tone flat. "'Another kind of way'?"

"Something inside, like my soul." He stalled, searching for the proper terms. "Soul... muscles?"

Slowly Asuka's hand reached up and began to massage the furrow that had grown between her eyebrows. "Lets take it from the top then, no soul muscles."

Shinji just waved his arms helplessly. He wanted the answers just as much as she did. "I don't know really what else to call it all. I have an Exaltation. I have Exalted. I'm a Zenith Solar. That's all I know that isn't just..." He waved his hands. "Me figuring it out."

Asuka sighed, now rubbing her temples. "Alright, alright. Not going to touch that with _Rúyì J__īngū B__àng_." She let her hands drop, but not before clapping once. "Okay, I know how you _feel_ but I really want to know what you can _do_. So...?"

Running through his options, the boy quickly realized he was in trouble. His medical and construction techniques were far too nebulous to describe quickly, but he mentioned them nonetheless. He handful of other odd capabilities as well, before exhausting those particular wells. With nothing left by way of reasonable explanation, Shinji fell back on the one thing he knew best about his status: rote memorization.

A whirlwind of practice swings followed into dead air, as he methodically noted everything he was aware of doing with each one. For Asuka's sake, he dumbed down the intent behind his blows as best he could, using names like "car fling", "wall breaker" and most uncomfortably "limb sever."

Asuka had watched each strike with a neutral, but otherwise inscrutable look on her face. Though if Shinji had to _guess_, she was using her prosthetic extensively. Arms crossed over her chest, her fingers drummed along her bicep, and her temper flared just a little. "That was the exact same thing each time!"

Shinji snorted, wondering just what she'd been expecting. "It's just- there's not that much to it!"

"Well if you want to _fling a car_ you should probably set your legs better!" Asuka stepped in and dropped her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back down. Shinji blinked and complied, more out of shock than any particular effort on Asuka's part. The blatant violation of his personal space sent needles prickling all throughout his body. Meanwhile Asuka pushed his unresisting feet into place with her own, while Rei looked on silently.

She stepped back then with a huff. "I _know_ you know that real striking power comes from the whole body, you should use it!"

Shinji looked down at the adjusted stance, swallowing the awkward-uncomfortable pinprick feeling. Standing like that _did_ feel better; he could more readily bring his legs and hips into a swing, but... He looked up at her and lifted his hands. "I don't really need to _do_ this though?"

"No, _you _don't, but you're also not a multi-story humanoid wrecking ball. Think like you're an Eva!" Uncurling his fists unconsciously, Shinji blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Evas don't have to do this either!" Asuka scowled at the logic, but waved for him to continue nonetheless. Her expression was painfully clear this time; there had better be an explanation coming. Shinji opened his mouth, but then he closed it, begging for a few seconds to think.

After that internal deliberation, he winced. "I'd need to use vague impressions to explain it..." He warned. Asuka just let out a quiet little snort.

Rei, silent up to this point, cocked her head to one side and spoke. "It is a transcendent quality?"

The redhead blinked at that, while Shinji sagged in relief. "_Yes_. That! That word! _transcendent_." He waved again, sighing softly. "I _transcend_ things. I don't fully get it either."

At that, Asuka fell silent. She chewed on her lower lip, padding barefoot around Shinji in a slow stride. He wasn't entirely sure when she'd kicked off her trainers either. Rei stayed nearby, steadfastly silent but undeniably present. Finally, turning on one heel, the redhead smirked. "Alright, I still want to _see _what you can do though, so how about this;"

The girl tossed her hair back again and grabbed her jacket zipper, and Shinji felt his throat lock up. Asuka stretched even while she peeled off the sweat shirt, twisting her torso left and right and bracing her arms against each other. The revealed dark army green top was _snug_. Sports-bra, his mind supplied. He was _staring_ and he _knew it_ and he _had a girlfriend for this sort of thing_. There was no need to look at Asuka, _none_. His eyes slid over to Rei, and she gave him a perplexed look. No that wasn't going to help either; she was pretty too.

Left with nothing, Shinji forced himself to look up at the hangar ceiling, and hope for divine intervention.

"What?" Asuka it seemed was far too perceptive for his own good. Inadvertently dragging his attention back to her, the girl reached for the waistband of her sweats and pushed them down. Shrugging with a fist-full of fabric in each hand, she added. "All this would get in the way."

With that, she let the pants drop and kicked them away. Beneath the sweats had been the same kind of shorts and top she'd worn when trying to keep pace with him. Back then he just wasn't able to notice. Now he couldn't _help_ but notice. _Long _legs and- _do not stare._ Shinji clamped down on every errant thought he could and _focused_. Being _exhausted_ was safer!

And she must've noticed his wandering attention, because Asuka _glared_. Something she was _incredibly _good at. When he met her stare with his own, an all-encompassing, infinitely-heavy mantle of doom settled around his shoulders. She stalked around to a clear padded area with a taped down circle, the sparring ring, and Shinji followed against his will.

"Being in my presence is a _privilege_, let alone having the opportunity to oogle me. Mark my words Golden Boy, I _will_ collect on what you owe me for this!" She pointed at her eye and patch with two fingers on one hand, before turning and pointing at _his_ eyes. "I'm keeping my eye on you."

Shinji took a half step back, suddenly _lost_ amidst the hormonal confusion and Asuka's own mood swings. He just could _not_ read her, at all. Off to the side, Rei glanced from one pilot to the other, and she took on a small, oddly Misato-esque smile. The subsequent silence spoke more than anything else any of them could have said.

Asuka blinked once while the silence stretched. Then she grumbled, turning a bit red. "Not _that_ way."

Feeling his eyes shift over to the patch, Shinji cringed as Asuka turned even more red. "Not _that way_ either!"

Huffing and stomping through the short-lived embarrassment, Asuka took her place at the sparring ring, opposite Shinji. She pointed down at the floor with one hand, and had her other on one hip, dominating her half of the arena. "For now I just want to see you move and dodge. I'm not going to hurt you and I probably won't even touch you. You think you can handle that, Ikari?"

Shinji quieted the churning in his stomach with a bit of will and arete, nodding faintly. Rei stood off to the side, and Shinji felt her shift between him and Asuka. The redhead nodded once, ponytail bobbing. "Alright, ready?"

There was no need for 'go'. Asuka advanced, just fast enough to make it a reasonable test. Shinji leaned back and away from her first swing, and the second. _Dodge_, he reminded himself, the word ran through his mind. Asuka was true to her word too, and her intent was clear; none of her strikes touched him. The girl shuffled back a half step, bouncing lightly on the tips of her toes. One, two, three- and _dropped_. Shinji watched as she fell down, throwing one leg out in a textbook perfect floor sweep.

_Dodge_, again the only thing he needed to do. He dropped down himself, bringing own center of gravity down around his ankles before springing upright, a fraction of a second before Asuka's leg would've hit his ankle. Vaulting up through the air, Shinji looked down and couldn't help but notice how _tiny_ the girl was. She whirled in place, still crouched and craned her neck up to watch his ascent.

It was then he realized that part of why she looked so small, was due to him having jumped a few _meters _straight up and over her head. Shinji folded into a slow tumble and landed on his feet, a few steps behind his opponent. Asuka stood up herself, watching.

She broke the silence with a word. "Okay," Asuka moved over closer to Shinji and waved for him to raise his arms. "Could you make like you're punching? I want to try something."

Considering she wasn't asking him to take a swing at her, Shinji had hardly any problem with that idea. He settled into position with one arm extended and a perfectly shaped knife-hand. Asuka nodded once, glancing left to right along the length of his arm. Then she _blurred_. He'd sparred with faster people, but not many. One of her hands settled into the crook of his elbow while the other grabbed his wrist, and she pulled and pushed, forcing his arm to bend in line. Stepping forward with all the weight and power she could muster, Asuka folded his arm up and pressed Shinji's wrist into his collar bone.

With his arm bent into a triangle, Shinji tensed his legs and held firm, standing even as Asuka pushed against him. And through it all, she was _grinning_. She let him go and danced back. "I think joint manipulation still works. Can I try an arm bar?"

Shinji nodded, more than a little bemused. Holding his arm out again, Asuka stepped around him this time and put one hand against his shoulder, the other on his wrist. This time she pulled and pushed so his elbow locked at full extension, but she had to work pretty hard against their height difference. Standing upright he was largely immune to the girl because of it. Instructing him to wait the ground and letting her put full weight on his arm was another story.

It hadn't _hurt_, having her shins braced against his over-extended limb, she didn't weigh enough for that. Asuka however had proved that he _could_ have been pinned, like any normal wrestler. Deny him leverage and deny him the fight. She wiggled his trapped arm to drive the point home, smirking faintly. "Well, at least you won't have to worry about Greco-Roman wrestling when fighting an Angel. It's not like they know martial arts."

From where he sat on the floor, Shinji smiled into the mat. Her mood was contagious, it seemed. He looked over at Rei, who stared right back with unblinking red eyes. But then she smiled, only slightly. Asuka may've been right about his _joints_, but he was still strong. With just his shoulder, he moved his occupied arm. Pressing up against the mat with his knees and free hand, he stood upright, even as Asuka twisted and hooked her legs around his bicep, clinging by reflex. With his arm held out to the side, the girl hung a good six feet off the ground.

Still grinning faintly, Shinji angled his head to look past her legs and arms, and Asuka matched his look with an unimpressed glower. She dropped down and punched his arm with one tiny fist. "Ha ha, very funny. I can use you as a chin-up bar in a pinch."

She turned to face Rei, hands on her hips. "Anything you want to say?"

Rei just shook her head. "I don't need to say much."

"Sounds about right." Asuka nodded once before clapping her hands. She glanced from Rei to Shinji then back again, humming thoughtfully. "We should teach you how to fight too."

It was then that Shinji added another look to his mental file on Rei. It was a look of _trepidation_. He laughed then, and wasn't entirely sure why.

* * *

><p>There was a list buried somewhere in Ritsuko's office. Which one she couldn't say, mostly because she'd lost count of how many offices she currently used. Offices and labs. Sometimes the command center <em>itself<em> felt like her office, with how much time she spent there. As for the list, it was a series of projects, things she _wanted_ to do, had _funding and manpower_ for, but _no time_. Between the ongoing readiness drills, Evangelion upgrades, and the captured _Angel computer_... Well, Ritsuko suffered. It seemed to be her lot in life.

One of her two _current _thorns happened to be the ongoing product demonstrations. Fortunately for Asuka and Misato, NERV could get by some days without a live exhibit. Ritsuko had no such excuse. Ritsuko had no such excuse. Briefings for her staff and presentations for potential investors, that sort of thing. Ritsuko leaned back in her chair and sighed hotly. She was going to need to make an appointment with a chiropractor if she spent much longer bent over a terminal. Reaching for a cigarette, she thumbed the lighter and lit one end, savoring the first lungful.

The playback on her terminal caught her eye again as it finished its loop, and it showed Shinji's little stunt the other day with Asuka. And just like the first time Ritsuko had seen it... "It makes even _less sense!_"

"What?"

Ritsuko spun in her chair and took another drag on her cigarette. She blew the smoke out the corner of her mouth, and it hovered around her in a cloud backlit by the glow of a few dozen monitors. Misato stood in the doorway, far less haggard than she had any right to be.

"Mass storage and retrieval!" Spinning back to her station, Ritsuko waved her hand and brushed a key with the other, throwing the recording onto a larger screen. On it, the recorded Shinji smirked at Asuka and pulled his plug suit out of thin air. "There's no precedent in scientific or historical sources for "Sunlight Powers" and... Whatever that was!"

The dark-haired woman raised one dark eyebrow before moving closer, hiking up on the console next to her friend. She threw one leg over the other, letting one foot bounce idly. "Rits, you've.. you haven't had one of these freakouts in a _long_ time." Misato cocked her head to one side. "Are you okay?"

Ritsuko sighed and slumped back into her seat and kicked off her shoes along the way. She waved at the screen with a wan grin, the frustration spent. "This is just my routine venting at living in a currently irrational universe. I'll be fine and back doing science in a few hours. Where _is_ our walking violation of basic physics, anyway?"

"Funny you should ask..." Misato looked up at nothing, smiling softly. "I think he's bringing his new team up to speed."

Stamping out her spent cigarette, Ritsuko's lips compressed down to a thin line. "They're all... _local_, right?"

Misato crossed her arms and huffed. "For fucks sake, Rits. Shinji isn't _conjuring up _any new interns."

* * *

><p>He had <em>ten<em> project leaders. Shinji had no idea what to do with just _one_. It didn't help that the youngest man present other than himself happened to be _three times his age_. Anywhere else they would've headed research firms, or had a string of titles attached to their names at prestigious technical schools. Here in Tokyo-3, they worked for NERV. They worked for _him_.

After the initial announcement, he fell back on the cheat sheet Misato had helped him make. The little index card had a handful of helpful hints, like 'be yourself', and 'just show them your stuff and let them ask questions'. As for the first suggestion, _himself_ was roughly equivalent to _extremely awkward fifteen year old kid_. He rubbed the back of his head and tried to fight back the cringe. He didn't even know their _names_ yet...

"So..." Shinji waved at the expanse of his Geofront work area. He'd cleared out the dividing cubicles and stowed the vending machine out of sight. All his prototypes, written diagram and formula were laid bare for everyone to see. The scientists and engineers strolled forward, composed and palpably dignified. Shinji felt something squirm in his gut just watching.

He coughed and cleared his throat, trying again. "So, these are the projects I've been working on." He pointed at his MRI prototype, assembled and connected for the sake of demonstration. Half-finished mockups filled the rest of the room, and he elaborated on each as the group spread out further. They were distressingly silent the whole time, and then it finally dawned on him; they expected _orders_.

Shinji swallowed the lump that had spontaneously manifested in his throat, and hoped the sweat on his neck wasn't too visible. He looked back at the MRI. "I created this to improve image resolution, but the output is impossible for anything short of a MAGI class supercomputer to render."

A thin looking man stepped out of the group, wearing a lab coat over his tan NERV jacket and slacks. "What compression algorithm is it using?"

Scratching the side of his head, Shinji blinked. "What's a compression algorithm?"

The various adults all exchanged looks, before the thin man stepped forward. Reaching out, he cuffed Shinji upside the head. Then as one, the project leaders laughed.

* * *

><p>Standing in his geofront lab, Shinji believed that <em>progress<em> was the most pleasant thing he had experienced in recent memory. He couldn't say he liked being surrounded by_ people_ so much, but the chatter and activity around him seemed to make his days go by all the faster. Misato's apartment was still _home_ and he only pulled two sleepless nights a week, on her orders. It worked out well overall.

Engineers and scientists had split up into teams on his order, _his_. Both the leader and the subordinates were still in the process of feeling each other out, of figuring out the other did things. _Management_ hadn't come naturally to him, but Shinji felt the same potential in himself extending out in that direction. It was the most basic expression of his power, and he couldn't even remember when he learned that particular version. Still, he reined himself in; Shinji had to adapt to a changing environment as much as anyone else, and he didn't need to work himself to metaphysical exhaustion either.

There was also the fact that no one had gotten around to issuing his subordinates welding masks either.

Passing by his MRI prototype Shinji watched the thin man from before, the same one who had slapped him upside the head. He'd been stooped over a mobile MAGI terminal for a solid hour now. A handful of wizened computer scientists were clustered around the thin man, speaking in low tones and technical jargon. It took Shinji a few seconds for it to all sink in, before he remembered to pay attention to the actual _conversation_.

"...id's right, if we get this thing to start outputting manageable data, it'd jump medical imaging technology a good twenty years ahead."

"Maybe!" Another man coughed, poking at one of the superconducting wires and its sheathing. "How was this even fabricated...? Ikari-san!"

Shinji blinked and halted misstep, swiveling to face the voice. It was a stocky, short-limbed man, with thinning grey hair and round, thick glasses. All of that totaling up to the archetypical image of a scientist. He also had a name tag on the right breast of his lab coat; N. Kurosawa. Waving Shinji over, Kurosawa pointed at the MRI's innards. "How did you create these?"

"Uhm... By hand?" Shinji rubbed the back of his head, smiling slightly. Sometimes being able to just _say _things like that were worth the awkward looks. A demonstration was in order. A few moments of rummaging in various containers had Shinji come back with the raw materials to make one of the superconductor elements. He focused, and liquid gold fire sheathed his forearms arms; the gathering crowd of men and women watched him essentially _braid_ an advanced, magnetic resonance imaging component.

The end result wasn't _actually_ a braid, but his hands twisted and wove the pieces together regardless. The finished part was nearly identical to the one Kurosawa had pointed out earlier.

The scientists all exchanged long, meaningful look at one another. Kurosawa _beamed_ and moved to flag down the other engineers and technicians "Ah... Ikari-san, if you can do that so easily, then I imagine you wouldn't mind if we..." He gestured hopefully at the new part and exposed MRI innards. The rest of the specialists all nodded eagerly, pulling on gloves and readying tools.

Shinji blinked, but nodded. Carnage followed, as the collected brainpower and engineering know-how descended upon his prototype. They pulled it apart piece by piece, exulting over the assembly. Nearly component _was_ hand made, with only a handful being special order from some other facility in the Geofront, or an external source. One man ripped out the power supply and held it above his head, laughing. Shinji, for a brief moment, was reminded of a nature documentary on piranha.

The thin man coughed into his hand. "Ikari-san, weren't you worried about trying to build enough of these?"

Tossing the extra bit aside, Shinji nodded glumly. The plans at least were on file, and he'd recycle the prototype's remains later. "Yeah, Even with that trick, I'd need hundreds of man-hours to make enough imagers for just this city."

The thin man gave the boy a sage nod before reaching out and smacking him upside the head, _again_. "I'm fairly certain we'll have the compression and rendering problems figured out by the end of the week. _You_ should start thinking about how to build the machines to build _this_ machine."

* * *

><p>As the workdays grew longer the more the boy realized how <em>stupid <em>he had really been, trying to run month-long work-shifts. Shorter terms were infinitely more efficient, and _far _less stressful, it seemed. Barely at the end of the first week, the latest find his engineers had pulled from a long forgotten pile was something even Shinji himself had trouble placing right away. He had initially frowned at the sealed tub of white-clay gel, and the notes taped to the side. Then the light went off.

"Oh, I remember that now." He knelt down and pulled the lid off, scooping up some of the paste with his hand. "I was running into some problems with structural materials. I knew what I wanted the stuff to _do_, but whatever I tried couldn't do it-, metal, plastic, ceramic, silicate; nothing had the properties I wanted."

The scientists all nodded along, having grown used to his sometimes inconsistent fits of genius. With his other hand, he reached into the tub and started feeling around on the bottom. Pulling back, his hand was coated white, and between his fingers was a wrench, bonded fast to a test tube. The accidental test subject had been set inside and long sunk to the bottom. Scraping it all clean on the edge of the tub, he showed the thing to all present.

"So, I started messing around with using more than one, and combining them. First in just different parts," He handed the clean wrench to the nearest pair of waiting hands, a silent invitation to 'go nuts'. He continued uninterrupted. "-and then trying to make composites that didn't sacrifice any of the strengths I wanted, but covered the places they were lacking."

More of Shinji's underlings peeled away from their projects to join the crowd. The increasingly dense throng of people circled around him, not quite hanging on his every word, but listening respectfully. Shinji wondered them if that was what teachers felt like addressing a class... maybe he could ask Fuyutsuki-sensei later. Shaking his head, Shinji raised the handful of cured wrench-and-tube up high so everyone could see it. Kurosawa had settled into his place as the first-among-equals within Shinji's immediate subordinates. Reaching out, the old man took the some of the pasty chalk gel for himself, rubbing it between his fingers.

"This was one of the things I came up with near the end. It didn't do what I wanted, but it had some potential." He pulled off a sticky note with a scribbled bit of text. It read "Get back to this!"

Shinji let out a weak laugh and crumpled the note up. The scientists surrounding him urged him to continue, so Shinji held up the scoop of gel. "It's basically a new form of cement. With a chemical treatment and with a few hours to cure, this stuff hardens into pretty much whatever shape you cast it in."

Everyone gathered around nodded slowly, having passed the wrench-and-tube around a few times."Anyway, I think it outperforms concrete for compressive strength, and steel for tensile."

One of the engineers called out over the huddle of brain power. "How much does it cost to make?"

To that Shinji shrugged. He settled down and thought on it, and the gold disc on his brow flickered brightly. "I think you could convert a cement factory or something into making it. The raw materials are pretty cheap; it's just chemistry."

Again the scientists and engineers exchanged looks, this time ones more predatory and scheming than the awe and confusion the first demonstrations had inspired. Pausing briefly, Kurosawa pulled from his pocket a thick stack of bills, and handed them smartly to the thin man, who had the decency to avoid appearing too smug. They didn't even need to slap him that time, Shinji felt it just fine.

* * *

><p>"They're going to do <em>what<em> to my Evangelion?!"

The two pilots stood in the observation chamber above the Evangelion cages. Inside, the Production Type was braced in its solid harness, while engineers and maintenance crews lowered giant pieces of hastily sculpted plastic casting from higher gantries above. Men and women with rivet guns bolted sections together around the giant war machine, shouting out as work orders were completed to some unseen plan. A thick, grey sludge was pumped through massive tubes, starting somewhere in the complex, and ending in the completed molds around the Eva's feet.

Asuka's eyebrow twitched madly with every bit of slime coating her pride and joy.

Shinji cringed, keeping his eyes down and rubbing the back of his neck. He couldn't quite help the smile though. For _once _though, he was just the messenger. "It wasn't my idea; Ritsuko heard about the material properties then thought of a rough idea. She handed it off to her team and then Misato found out."

Shinji let his hand drop, and carefully looked up at Asuka's face. "Everyone knows you're heading out to sea. Misato just wanted the best for you."

The girl stood ahead of him, arms folded over her chest and tapping her foot in time with some unheard beat. Finally, she sniffed. "Just make sure it's painted red when they're done."

* * *

><p>After a week, 'being in charge' had started to sound familiar, even welcome. In a way it was relaxing to simply not <em>do everything<em>. There was already talk of extending Shinji's division facilities again, and the various team leaders had their own authority to exert as well. During those talks he had considered re-purposing the Proving Grounds again, as it was _technically_ for his Exalted research. The more he thought about it though, he'd come to realize that Asuka had claimed the space, and was putting it to far better use than he ever had.

For now though, the cavernous office space was sufficient. Tables, chairs and workbenches spread out everywhere, along with boxes of raw materials, tools and the various prototypes. Some were still mostly his, largely declared 'black boxes' save for the notes on their function and the basic sciences. Most of the time those insoluble designs were one of _manufacturing_, not comprehension. When Kurosawa and the others had pulled apart the MRI, they'd been surprised at how physically dense the electronics were. Efficient, it was not- that's what prototypes were for.

A brewing argument snapped Shinji off his train of thought. He looked around for the source of the dispute, scowling faintly. One of the whiteboards had been pulled out, steadily being filled with equations by the two mathematicians standing nearby. They gestured wildly, bumping into each other and fighting for space as they argued. Shinji loomed behind them, honestly curious.

The man on the left scrawled out another formula, and Shinji tilted his head, trying to make sense of the symbols and script. Meanwhile the other furious wiped away a section and rewrote it, clucking dismissively the whole time. Squinting, Shinji slowly began to parse the meandering scribble, and the symbol on his brow began to glow.

Reflecting off what uncovered whiteboard there was, the two scientists blinked at the sudden light show. They spun simultaneously, apologizing. Shinji ignored them for the moment. Instead he focused on the board itself. The formula they were describing was fairly straight forward, describing electromagnetism and the related field equations. They must have been working on the MRI... _Why spend time on the math though_, he wondered. He'd spent a few days running through all the relevant equations himself, after all. It _had_ to be on record around there somewhere.

Frowning, Shinji reached out and touched a symbol, almost whispering. "What are you doing here? Where's this coming from? You're just taking this equivalence as true."

The man on his left coughed weakly, and his eyes bulged out. While he caught his breath, his co-worker cleared his throat. "That's... _Ampere's Law_."

Shinji looked from one man to the other, blinking once, twice, and finally narrowing his eyes. "Who?"

For the umpteenth time that week, the two older gentlemen exchanged a look, and their lips twitched. Shinji sighed and slumped, shuffling toward the door. Kurosawa leaned away from a monitor to ask where he was going.

"Out," Shinji sighed again, scowling. "_To the library."_

* * *

><p>The sun was setting on Tokyo-3, and Ayanami Rei had come to a decision. A plan was already forming in her mind, even as she reached for the cellular phone in her bag. Wind tugged at her shirtsleeves and uniform skirt, and very nearly pulled her hair out of its tail. She thumbed a few buttons and the phone rang. She answered promptly and only asked a handful of questions. There was no need for unnecessary conversation. Thanking the agent on the other end, Rei dropped the phone back into place and turned smartly, heading into the city.<p>

Having lived there all her life, Rei rarely noticed some of the strange facts of life in the fortress city. The school was built for more than a thousand students, but only a few hundred were present and enrolled. Population in the city fluctuated wildly, some months it bustled with tourists, military personnel or new families lured by promises of hazard pay and excellent career opportunities. That day she _did_ notice one strange thing; Tokyo-3 had a total of three libraries within its city limits, far more than it needed.

Sectioned away in a converted office space, one particular library was close enough to the Geofront entrances and a train station. Eminently logical, now that Rei thought about it. She breezed into the lobby and made her way toward the stairs, bypassing the elevator. Two flights up opened onto a wide open space, filled with bookshelves, simple oak tables and thickly cushioned reading chairs. The smell of ten-year old paper and dust hit her nose.

Outside shining in, the setting sun coated everything in a burning orange haze, forcing Rei to squint through the glare. The whole library looked almost untouched, almost _unused_. At the far end, behind a curved desk sat the librarian, and just off to the side at one of the tables was Ikari Shinji. Dozens of books were piled on the table around him, along with carts as well. Rei stepped along the plush carpet. Her plan was working, so far.

"Ikari-kun."

The boy snapped upright, blinking wildly. The second his eyes settled on her, he calmed down with a peeved look. Still, he smiled at her, whispering. "Rei-san." He glanced around, suddenly curious. "Why are you here? How did you find me?"

Rei pulled a chair out and sat down, quietly and precise with perfect posture. "As to the latter, I called Section Two." A man in a black suit leaned out of the shadows across the center isle, waving cheekily. "To the former, I simply wanted to be here with you."

Shinji's face turned a bit red, and he hunched in on himself in a familiar way. "Ah... Rei I-"

"I believe the colloquial term is 'hanging out'," She cocked her head to one side, smiling faintly. "Correct?"

The boy let out a long sigh, offering the girl a silly, relieved smile. "Yes, that- what you said."

"Excellent." Rei nodded primly, "You will be happy to know that I am in fact, not propositioning you."

Shinji blinked once, and then let his head fall, thumping against the table. "Misato is going to _pay _for that."

The blue-haired girl simply smiled wider. Little did he know...

* * *

><p>After Shinji had recovered, Rei had asked him what he was doing. Pushing aside a stack of notebooks ten high, he reached out for a particular book and flipped it open. "Basic primers on physics; Electromagnetism. Chemistry, engineering, stuff like that."<p>

Rei nodded, leaning over to take the book in hand. The math was... dense, to say the least. Her interest in developmental and practical psychology were byproducts of maintaining her absolute territory; the hard sciences often eluded her. She wanted to _reciprocate_, however... "Would you like help?"

"Huh?" Shinji looked up, pencil halting mid-stroke. "Help?"

"I may not understand it," She held up the book in her hand. "but I can find more books for you, take notes, check references..." She blinked, suddenly aware of the hopeful inflection to her voice.

Shinji looked at the stacks and carts full of books, and his increasingly dense notes and shorthand. Slowly, he nodded, grinning. "Yeah, I'd like that."

Rei smiled, sitting up and reaching for the nearest pile.

* * *

><p>After dark, the two teenagers left the library positively dripping in books. The train ride home was quiet, pleasantly cool despite the sweltering hot June day. Once off the platform, Shinji and Rei made their way from the station toward home. The street lamps cut out wide circles of bright yellow light every few feet, and a bare handful of cars wound their way through the urban cluster.<p>

Rei watched Shinji out the corner of her eye. The bulging canvas bags hanging from his hands swung lightly. He blinked and let out a short laugh. "Maybe a hundred pounds of books," he smirked. Looking down at her own far lighter load, he waved. "What'd you get?"

Pulling her own bag open, Rei reached with her own grin. "History of automotive sports, super-cars of the past three decades. Auto-repair guides."

Rounding a city block,Shinji fished out his phone and called ahead. Misato was already home. Smiling, he slipped it back in his pocket and turned to Rei. "So, is there anything in particular you want for dinner?"

* * *

><p>Misato stalked through the corridors of NERV, feeling the strain of the last two weeks dig hard into her shoulders. Her extended web of favors slowly wound together, leaving de-facto control over several nation's worth of resources at her fingertips. NERV bases around the world had been re-opened, cleared of dust and channeled over land and sea toward Vladivostok, the second stop in her Pacific Tour. Reaching into her jacket pocket, Misato swiped her ID card at the nearest reader. Lights set into the door up ahead flashed amber, then green. She passed through with a gust of changing pressure, tossing a wave through her hair.<p>

Sniffling, Misato wiped her nose on nervous habit. Crises happened, as did setbacks and unforeseen situations. During training a week ago, Asuka had ended up working Rei so hard, the First Child caught something. That something had hit Asuka next, and by that point Shinji had diagnosed it as a common cold. After packing the three pilots up and stuffing them in her apartment, Misato ended up catching the bug too. Only Shinji remained immune as the days ticked down toward deployment.

Shinji however had come out of the ordeal admitting he'd developed a technique to cure rhinovirus infection. And, he added, possibly cancer. It was becoming something of a trend for Shinji, figuring out _A_ and ending on _Z_, without touching anything in between_. _Misato grinned at the memory; the look on Ritsuko's face when he explained was _picturesque_.

That was last week however, and today was a new day. Fresh-faced and fortified with a pressure point massage and strong coffee, Misato made her way to the Commander's office, a thick sheaf of papers tucked under one arm. A pair of armed guards outside the office door waved her in without a word. No one dared question Katsuragi Misato's identity.

The floor was clear, throwing up light from the Geofront landscape below. Misato made her way across the chamber, long strides eating up the distance until she stood right in front of the Commander's desk. The man himself sat with his elbows down and fingers laced together, eyes looking over the top edge of his glasses. There was no time for pleasantries, or even decorum.

Misato opened the folder and spread its contents out, barely restraining her smirk. "All assets and permissions accounted for, Commander."

Unlacing his hands, Gendo reached out for a page. His eyes flicked over it line by line, slowly and deliberately. Probably just to screw with her, or so Misato believed. She refused to move, no tapping her foot or sign of impatience. Minutes passed while the Commander read, reaching into his desk at points for a pen and paper. Misato tried not to make it obvious, but she watched his hands closely. She was going to have to send out some warnings, it seemed.

Finally, the leader of NERV shuffled all the pages back into their folder. A moment later her produced another form and stamped it, nodding once. "The A-17 combat order has been given. You head out to sea in seven days, Major Katsuragi."

* * *

><p>After leaving the Commander's office, Misato made her way down into Central Dogma. A high speed train waited at the nearest station for her, its track arced into the main artery trailing down into the Geofront floor. There was no turning back now; everything she had worked for up to this point had been put in motion. In the privacy of the empty transit car, Misato slumped against one of the center poles and tucked her chin behind her knees.<p>

The stakes swam through her mind, and Misato found herself starting to shiver. Wrapping her arms around her shins for warmth, she tried to fight off the chill. Her crazy plan went past something simple, like wagering her career; not that she cared really. Her rank was a means to an end, along with a lot of things in her life. She wasn't even too worried about _dying_... Misato cut that thought off there, no need to dwell on it. The rest was true however, she wasn't just gambling with herself, but Asuka, and the all-too-shaky reputation of NERV.

Despite that though, Misato found the gambling metaphors coming faster and easier, and she smiled past the shakes. A good commander learned how to stack the deck in their favor, and she still had one more ace up her sleeve.

Getting off the train and pushing further into the central complex, Misato flashed her badges at checkpoints, calling ahead for doors to be opened and preparations made. Section 2 was NERV security, and for all intents and purposes, it answered to her. It was for that reason that she knew about a very important person currently staying in the Geofront, and just what to do about that fact.

There weren't any guards at the door, and it wasn't locked. Only a camera watched the jail cell, but there was no one to view the recording. She wrenched the door open, scowling. "Kaji Ryoji."

"Yo, Katsuragi." The UN inspector sat up from the thin plank bed, smiling past his surprisingly well-kept beard. He tossed her a two-finger salute and rolled to his feet. "This is a lovely surprise- am I getting a... _release _for good behavior?"

If she hadn't know better, that tone and accompanying eyebrow would have made her suspect he'd spent his entire time perfecting that line, but no. It was simply Kaji.

"Hardly," Misato glowered, and she willed her face to be as stone. "It's time for you to do your job as liaison. I'm ready to wage war on the Angels, and the committee if I have to, and you're coming with me."

Kaji blinked, and looked around his cell. Spacious, and far more plush than most prisons he'd seen or been in. He cocked his head to the side, bemused. "I take it by your tone I don't have a choice."

Crossing her arms, Misato's eyes went flinty. "None whatsoever."

The long-haired man grinned, sauntering forward as if the woman in front of him was _not_ armed and _not_ pissed as all hell at him. He made a move to drape a hand around her shoulders, an old standby from years ago. Misato's fingers all but _blurred_, and Kaji found his limb twisted up and straining. She flexed her thumb and heard a knuckle joint creak under stress, but didn't smile.

Kaji however did, grinning through the pain. Forced to his knees and straining, he drawled. "Katsuragi, nothing would please me more than to have you watch me work."

* * *

><p>Three days to remained until deployment. On board a NERV VTOL, Misato pressed her face against the glass and counted her assets, again. Four converted cargo ships were waiting in the same dock Asuka had arrived at back in February. Out of sight and waiting in the Sea of Japan was the rest of the United Nations Pacific Fleet. A bit more than a dozen pre and post-Impact naval vessels were soon to be under her command, and Misato found herself scrambling to secure them all.<p>

She rubbed the bags under her eyes and slapped her cheeks, painfully aware that the thermos between her ankles was bone dry and devoid of coffee. One sleepless night had stretched into two. Stuck halfway across the country, there was no Shinji or Ritsuko to tell her to sleep. Her magic pilot would have _made her_ do it too, especially after the big speech she'd pulled out about _his_ all-nighters. Sagging back down in her seat, Misato smirked despite her exhaustion. It was an adult's prerogative to be hypocritical when it suited them.

A thick, hard-backed folder waited in the seat next to her, filled almost to bursting with documentation and her command codes. All her authority was in those stacks of paper. Kaji had come through when it counted, reaching deep into whatever pockets he had for the last bit of unofficial power she needed. If she had to be honest though, Kaji was dependable in his own way. Reliable, like a cold sore, and just as tough to get rid of._ It wasn't anywhere near as bad as college though_, she mused. _We plan a date out two weeks in advance and he shows up with a blonde and brunette in his arms... Didn't even have the decency to try for Ritsuko!_

Misato rapped her head with one fist, sighing. Old memories and broken relationships were starting to become _relaxing_.

* * *

><p>The VTOL banked hard and dropped like a stone, heading for its landing pad. Looking back out through the window, Misato hoped her kids were doing alright. Crunch time was on <em>everyone<em>, and they were all hoping to clear their schedules.

Asuka shivered, and re-wrapped the scarf around her neck a bit tighter. The Geofront was _cold_ in the mornings. Plugsuits, even with their heat regulation, were _woefully _inadequate at keeping people properly insulated. The leather jacket Misato had gotten her included some amazingly warm lining though. Sized for an adult, the aforementioned jacket was only just a little bit less than perfect. The redhead almost drowned when she first put it on. Huddling in for warmth, Asuka exhaled softly and wished Akagi would _get on with it._

The 'it' in this case, was yet another technical demo. Ikari's little special project division was _finally_ starting to show positive results. Kenya's biotech sector were practically salivating over the improved material for muscle cable fibers, though there was still be no word on distributable synchronization technology. While Ritsuko droned on about their test for the day, Asuka looked down at the subject itself, cradled in her arms.

To most people it would've been painfully obvious; a sub-machine gun. Unlike most guns though, its main body and barrel were all made of a chalk-white something-or-other, a 'composite ceramic'_. _Asuka's eye cut over to where Ikari was. The other pilot was in his promotional disguise, otherwise unrecognizable. He fidgeted slightly, but with the full face mask, Asuka couldn't tell if he was looking at her or not.

As for why she was holding the gun instead of say, a Section-2 officer, or Shinji himself, that came down to two factors. One was understandable; she'd had firearms training before. _Limited_, admittedly, focused on Evangelion scale weapons and the like, but the same basic concepts held true. Asuka made sure the gun was slung safely and unloaded, and kept her hands as far away from the trigger as she could.

The other reason was downright _offensive_; she looked better in a plugsuit.

Or rather, she looked better in _her _plugsuit than anyone else present. Ever since the initial demonstrations, her blazing red uniform had become something of an emblem for the NERV pilots as a whole, and she stood as their representative, even while her vaunted field expertise took a backseat. It was almost insulting, one of the preeminent minds behind the Evangelion project, standing in for a _glorified glamour shoot_.

She understood from a _marketing_ perspective, to be sure, but Asuka chewed the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. _Someone_ was going to pay for the indignity. A half-dozen idle thoughts of vengance drifted through her mind, and Asuka smiled. Complete and total academic dominance over Akagi seemed like a good place to start...

Ritsuko said something, turning and waving at Asuka. The girl blinked, hefting the weapon and marching across the stage. Time to go to work it seemed.

* * *

><p>It was incredibly difficult for Shinji to stay still. Inside his helmet, a tiny fan circulated his hot stale breath out through a filter, exchanging it for cold fresh air. He still hadn't found time to modify the suit, for comfort or functionality, and a bead of sweat dripped down his forehead. It worked its way down the bridge of his nose until it hung there, poised to drop. There were a lot of discomforts he could ignore, but his sense of touch had never been turned off either.<p>

Outside his helmet, the Geofront was cold, but he couldn't feel it as anything other than an objective sensation. There was no real chill, or reason for his skin to rise up in gooseflesh. The sweaty, painfully snug suit wasn't helping either. Looking up across the stage, he noted a handful of familiar faces. Returning observers. Ritsuko had been serving as spokesperson since Misato flew cross-country to handle the last minute preparation for her mission.

Shinji winced. Ritsuko... wasn't very good. Tuning her out, he shook his head as unobtrusively as he could, and the bit of sweat on his nose finally threatened to give way.

While waiting for the drop to fall, he watched Asuka make her way to the outdoor firing range they'd set up that morning. When she'd shown up for the test almost engulfed in her scarf and jacket, _adorable_ had been the first word that had popped into his mind. The second they'd given her the gun made from his ceramic formula though, Shinji sealed his helmet and made a point of looking anywhere but her. Was he worried? Not really. For all the veiled glowering, shooting him wasn't her style, and he could still catch bullets after all. Riddling the ground at his feet for an impromptu dance number, or bludgeoning him to unconsciousness? More likely, and something he was _absolutely _certain Asuka would've tried, if sufficiently motivated.

Focused on her part in the proceedings, Asuka loaded the weapon and readied it, calling out 'range is hot!' before lining her eye up with the sight. About twenty meters away was a large concrete block with a target tacked across it. Shinji watched a puff of condensation form in the wake of Asuka's breath, and she squeezed the trigger. A three-round burst shot downrange, stitching a short vertical line across the paper sheet. By no means a bulls-eye, but completely superior to Shinji's own skill. He hadn't even been the one to design the gun, either. Someone else in his think-tank had made it on a whim, experimenting with the composite formula.

Squeezing the trigger again, Asuka fired once more, then a third time. A few bursts later, she unloaded the weapon and laid it on the table. Snapping her gloved fingers, Asuka fixed Shinji with a pointing hand. The silent order was obvious- 'you're up Golden Boy'.

Rolling his neck to one side, then the other, Shinji made his way across the stage, nodding easily to the assembled generals, scientists and engineers. Earlier, he'd been called upon to demolish a reinforced concrete block with one punch. Easily done if he said so himself. Now he was called into close out the morning's demonstration. 'Bookends', Ritsuko had called it.

Nodding to Asuka, he picked up the gun while she got out of the way. Hefting it, he judged the weight, getting a feel for it's properties. Not a lot to it as far as guns went, aside from the exotic material. A comparative handful of non-ceramic parts filled out its inner workings. Winding up, Shinji chambered his arm and took a deep breath. In one focused move, he twisted at the hips, exhaling and pitching his arm forward. The gun tumbled end over end, eating up distance in a span of a few seconds.

It slammed into the target block, cracking the front face and ripping the paper bulls-eye apart on impact. A thick chunk of material sheared off the block and slid to the ground, while a winding fissure spread through the rest. Shinji waited while an all-clear was sounded. A NERV employee designated as range operator moved up to inspect the ruins, and he plucked the gun from the rubble. Pulling out a magazine he had on hand, he reloaded the weapon and cycled the action, before pointing it away from anything important and pulling the trigger.

The gun fired as if it had been brand new.

Shinji sighed, and the drop of sweat finally slid off his nose.

* * *

><p>"Well, this has been a complete waste of our time."<p>

Both Children had been up at the break of dawn, and on Asuka at least, it showed. Haggard, the girl paced from side to side within the cage elevator, in time with the wheel that clicked through floors. Off to the side and leaning against a far corner, Shinji turned his disguise helmet over in his hands. Spinning it between two fingertips, he sighed and counted the helmet sections. Asuka may have been louder, but Shinji was suffering just as much in his own way.

Asuka groaned again, stopping at one wall and resting her head against it. "Ugh... I haven't even finished packing yet. Whose brilliant idea was it again for more product demos right before combat?" She sighed and twisted, bracing her back against the wall. "Oh, it was Akagi's idea..."

Glancing up with her uncovered eye, Asuka snorted. "Ikari, are you just going to stand there and ignore me?"

The helmet froze in Shinji's hands, finally looking over at Asuka. Meeting her eye, he offered the girl a wan smile. "Sorry, Sorhyu-san."

Peering through her bangs, Asuka matched his tiny grin with a tired one of her own. "C'mon Ikari, commiserate with me here. This is what we're supposed to be doing at our age, meddling adults ruin everything, bitching up a storm about petty and forgettable kid stuff."

Shinji didn't answer right away. Instead he rolled the helmet around in one hand, holding it up and peering into its visor. The whole thing looked far more complicated than it actually was. Panel lines, clips and catches gave the illusion of it having far more articulation than absolutely necessary. Simple movie tricks for a really awkward plan. Dropping his arm, he let the helmet dangle from his fingers by the chin plate.

He opened his mouth then, but there was nothing. Closing it, he frowned and tried again. "...Ah, it all does seem kind of slapdash."

Asuka blew out a sputtering breath, frowning. "Damn right it is. Why a gun demo, anyway?"

Shinji just shrugged. "Easy to understand?"

"More like lowest common denominator." She rolled her shoulders under the heavy folds of her jacket. The scarf had been wadded up and stuffed in a pocket. "We're sitting on a gold mine of science and technology, and we're doing a three-ring circus." Looking up at the elevator ceiling and past it, Asuka wondered aloud. "Who is going to want a ceramic gun anyway? Some paramilitary outfit? Is that what we've downgraded to, from defending humanity?"

Fiddling with the helmet once more, Shinji ran his thumbs over the edge of the eye-slit. "Its not so bad I guess, it keeps everyone paid."

Asuka fixed him with a withering stare. "Getting paid in light of the apocalypse. What a wonderful attitude, Ikari." She snorted. "You've been hanging out in your steel-plated bunker too long."

"I've... done a lot of good things from there!" Shinji's brows furrowed, and he forced out the reply despite the stutter.

The elevator slowed, smoothly coming to a stop. Even as she spoke, Asuka stepped out the opening doors and into the Evangelion cages. "Oh I can imagine. A lot of hard-earned paychecks and splinted wrists."

One hallway gave way to another, then empty corridors, until the two teenagers found themselves walking along the highest gantry in an empty cage. Painted on one wall were two massive numbers: 02. Asuka's Evangelion had already been shipped out to the harbor up north, where Misato was overseeing final preparations. The girl leaned against the railing and stared at the empty space, sighing softly.

Following a step behind, Shinji huffed. "It's not like that!"

Pushing away from the rail, Asuka whirled to face the boy with a scowl. "Well, what is it like then, huh?"

"I'm not saying it doesn't suck." He stopped a few steps away from her, taking a deep breath and letting it out. "I'm leading a team of people three times my age or older. Scientists, engineers! These people have forgotten more about their fields then I've ever learned. I have no idea how to lead them, I don't even know if I can."

The response he got was far from expected. Asuka snarled, all but spitting out her reply. "Oh that's _fucking rich_."

"Ikari, I've been shoved off to fucking _high school_ while you have employees, resources! You're recognized as a peer or even an equal!" She rounded on him again, and slapped her plugsuited thigh. "I'm a _marketing stunt_."

She wasn't done yet either, not by a long shot. "If you so much as _sneeze _in a way that defies physics, Akagi hangs off your every word like God himself telling the secrets of the universe!" She swept her arm out at the empty cage. Repaired walls and walkways were framed with hazard tape, standing out as new scars throughout the cage.

"I sync my Eva by remote-" Asuka's face went red, almost screaming. "_With a thought_, and I get disciplined with a house-arrest!"

With that, Asuka stalked up to Shinji, planting her five-foot-nothing right at his feet. Her toes almost touched the tips of his boots, and she looked up right in his eye. "You don't think you can?" Her lip curled, and white teeth flashed. "Ikari, if you can still say that, then you don't deserve it."

The boy folded in on himself, like he'd been struck hard. Shinji hissed passed his clenched teeth before he answered. "I never _asked _for any of this! I never wanted to be anything like this! Not a leader or magic or an _Evangelion pilot!"_

Asuka folded her hands over her chest, and the temperature in the cage dropped a hundred degrees along with her voice. _"Then what good are you to me?"_

Shinji's hands curled into fists, and his knuckles strained against the gloves of his suit. He rose up, _towered_ at full height against the girl, looming over her. The disc on his brow flared out, casting a shadow down on the gantry like she was fixed in a spotlight. Asuka took an involuntary step back, her uncovered eye widened while her pupil shrank down to a pinprick. Only her patch gave clear vision, filtering out the burning sunlight. Unasked for telemetry told her about the blood pooling in Shinji's face, or the chemicals sweating out on his skin.

The explanation she wanted to demand was just on the edge of her lips when Shinji cut her off. He did not smile or leer, but there was a liveliness, a sudden burst of energy behind his words. "I don't deserve it, huh? And you do?" The questions were almost percussive, enough to rattle the deck plates beneath their feet. "And why are you trying to tell me what _I_ deserve?"

Even as she spat out the words, there was something _different _this time. His posture, his tone... she was calling for lightning from a blue sky, and said it anyway. "Because for everything you have, you need your hand held!"

"Hand held? That's _perfect_ coming from you. Before you were all about victorious cooperation!" Shinji stood even taller, somehow. The burning disc glowed hotter still, washing out the planes of his face until only a faint impression remained. "You don't want to be a winner, you want to be a tyrant without consequences for your actions! Big talk about unified fronts until something goes badly for you, and then you look for a scapegoat to shield your ego from failure. You're a hypocrite, because the biggest prima-donna on the team has always been _you_."

Asuka was not going to stand for that. She planted her feet and thrust one finger up into the boy's face, incensed. "Bullshit! You needed me pushing you to eve get where you are now!"

He didn't even flinch, nor did he scream. Shinji stood unbowed in the face of Asuka's fury, looking down past his nose and chest. There was no need to raise his arms, despite the even tones, his voice echoed off the cage walls, bouncing down into the bottom and back up. "I don't _need _anyone pushing me. Everyone _needs me _to do their dirty work. After all, _I'm_ the one-man division here, now aren't I?"

Tightening her grip, Asuka found herself subconsciously holding the railing for support to keep from retreating again, however slightly. The gantry was her home turf, her sanctuary, and damned if she was going to show weakness here. The redhead stood her ground and growled into the boy's face. "Spoken like a spoiled child given a choice gift from his daddy! You looking for a big office just like his, or going to just build it yourself?"

"Spoiled? Sorhyu, for being an under-appreciated genius, you never think anything through." Shinji let out an ugly snort, and the light of his brow receded, but only by a bit. He held himself tall, and seemed to spread out, filling up the gantry with sheer _presence_ despite not moving one bit. "The one virtue I've ever seen you show is total commitment to your ideals, which would be a great thing from anyone but an emotionally manipulative _brat_."

The first remark had cut on delivery, and Shinji left her no chance for a response. He pushed down hard with every additional word. "Were you more angry that I was my father's lapdog, or that it meant I'd never be _yours?"_

At that, Asuka rocked back on her heels as if she'd been slapped, but did not give ground. She stared straight ahead and through the boy, with her working eye and the patch. Fury and indignation built up in the girl to the breaking point, and she let it out all through her fist. Pressed so close, all her training lead to an uppercut that would've broken teeth, broken jaws.

But Shinji's hand was _there_, tucked under his chin and waiting for her. He did not block so much as stop the blow. Gently, the boy nudged her arm down and shook his head with a frown. In the same motion, he pushed down on her knuckles with his palm, hopping up off the ground and up-ending himself into fluid handstand. All seventy-five kilograms of pilot rose over her head, balanced on the girl's fist, and Asuka _gaped_. Pitching forward, the boy tumbled over and landed behind, shaking the gantry on impact, and Asuka felt her hair lift and blow out of her jacket collar. A _mountain_ had moved behind her, or so one part of her said.

She blinked once, twice, and stared at her still curled fingers. Then she spun, only to see the boy had already made it to the far door. "Where do you think _you're_ going?!"

Shinji stopped at the door and looked over his shoulder. He looked her right in the eye and _glared_. "Maybe _now _I can get some work done."

And then he was gone. Asuka gawked at the empty doorway for a minute, then two. A muscle in her throat throbbed in time with her pulse, straining against the stiff collar of her plugsuit. Whirling, the girl stalked away in the opposite direction, charging through hallways and corridors until she found the nearest Section 2 checkpoint. Fists clenched at her side, Asuka glared at the man behind the desk and gave one simple order.

"Get me _the hell _out of this country."

* * *

><p>As a rule, Rei did not really spend much of her time <em>worrying<em>. However, the increased awareness of her own mortality and limited capability of being replaced had given her a much greater sense of proportion. Her life was unique and finite, despite having extensive infrastructure dedicated to always ensuring there was _an_ Ayanami, somewhere. Most teenagers didn't contemplate the concept of mortality either, so in that regard Rei considered herself an exception. All of that rumination lead to one inescapable conclusion: Life was finite, and by extension so was time.

Therefore, Asuka was _late_.

At first it had not really concerned the girl. Rei had gone about her nightly routine. She showered, dressed, and secured her much more manageable reserve of stabilizing agent. Asuka however had developed a reputation in her mind for being _punctual_. Again not usually a sign for concern, Rei knew there were ongoing, extended product demonstrations in the Geofront, and any number of tasks that needed the Second Child's attention. Being late was understandable. Not being called to explain _why_, now _that _was confusing.

It was for that reason that Rei decided to start a search. Her phone had come pre-programmed with a handful of relevant names and numbers, and she had added to more as the years went by. Project E offices connected her to one of Akagi-sensei's underlings. That person directed her to someone in Tactical, then the liason between Special Research and Public Relations. In hindsight, Rei noted that it probably would've been easier to call Section 2 first, but she felt more reassured by being thorough.

Section 2 however had only given her a simple, painfully unhelpful answer. "The Second Child has headed up north."

Rei had _no_ idea what that meant, which lead her to scroll to the third name on her list, after the Commander and Akagi-Sensei, respectively. Three rings later, Misato picked up. "Y-Yeah?"

The girl sucked in a short breath. "Misato-san, I'm not sure where Asuka-san is. I think you should be made awa-"

Misato cut her off mid-word. "Asuka is _here_, Rei, at the harbor." On her end, Rei could hear water beating against the side of a ship, and the Misato had to speak over the evening coastal winds. "I have _no idea_ what happened, but Asuka got into it with Shinji or something! I've barely been able to get a word out of her."

Rei cocked her head to the side without thinking. "I see."

Misato sighed, overloading the speaker for a second or two. "L-Listen, I'll see if I can get Asu-_Asuka! Get over here!_" There was a muted, _extremely_ familiar shout on the other end. The sounds were muffled further when Misato clamped her hand over the mouthpiece, but not before Rei heard "_It's Rei!"_

Waiting patiently, Rei heard a rumbling, shuffling boom and scrape, the phone being passed between people most likely. Asuka's voice crackled out the speaker, hoarse from screaming. "Rei?"

"Yes, Asuka-san."

The other girl was silent for long time, save for her breathing. Rei was nothing if not patient. "Rei... _Shit_. I guess we're not going to hit the arcades before I ship out, huh?"

Despite herself, Rei nodded. "No, that seems unlikely."

"I'm sorry," Asuka growled at something, Rei wasn't entirely sure what. "I just, I just can't _be_ in the same country as them, alright?"

Again, Rei cocked her head, otherwise alone and unobserved in her room. "'Them'?" She echoed.

Asuka's reply was a wordless sound of frustration. "Not now, I'll try to explain later. You need to take care of things there alright? I need someone I can trust in Tokyo-3..."

"I understand, Asuka-san." There were some parts Rei had to admit she _didn't_ understand, but Asuka wasn't exactly a master of doublespeak or controlling her inflection. More 'business' was not what her friend needed at that moment. "I will watch your apartment while you're deployed."

"You don't have to do that..." Asuka trailed off. She'd started strong, but it was clear to Rei her heart just wasn't in it. Belatedly, the blue-haired girl realized she finally _understood_ that particular idiom, but reminded herself that Asuka was the priority.

Taking a page from Misato, the girl kept her tone deliberately light. For Rei, it came out even more like a whisper than normal. "Correct, but I want to."

Plastic creaked, then audibly relaxed. Asuka must have gripped the phone pretty hard. "...Thanks, then. You know where my spare key card is, or you could just vault the balcony..."

_Reassurances_, Rei thought, as many as she could think of. "I can manage. Everything will be alright here."

Both pilots went quiet again, but Asuka refused to let it last for long. She mulled aloud into the receiver. "Yeah... So..."

"...So?"

The redhead let out a gusty breath, blatantly temporizing. Not that Rei could begrudge her. "Well, I'm glad you called. It was..." Asuka let the statement hang. "...nice."

The two teenagers lapsed into another stifling silence, just listening to each others breathing for several seconds. Nearly a year ago, Rei had been given a piece of advice that now started to make much more sense. Saying goodbye was sad, almost tragic.

Her smile was tiny, but Rei could feel the change in her voice as she spoke. "Asuka-san, I'll see you and Misato-san when you get back."

Asuka coughed a little, but she smiled too, all the way across the country."Yeah... Yeah, I'll see you later too, Ayanami. Don't let anyone fuck with you, alright?"

It was then that Rei had an _idea_. She grinned into her phone and licked her lips. "I believe you have made it sufficiently clear that I am 'claimed'. We can attempt another rendezvous some other time."

She hit the end-call button before Asuka could reply, but Rei had absolutely _no _trouble imagining her friends' red-faced scream.

* * *

><p>Lashed to a concrete pier extending out into the post-Impact Bay, the converted transport ship <em>Soyokaze<em> sat almost motionless in the harbor. The sun had set hours ago, and the wind was cold. Leaning against the port-side rail, Misato smoothed her hair back into the collar of her jacket and tried not to shiver. A few yards away and behind some nautical something-or-other, Asuka mumbled into the Major's borrowed phone. Misato sighed and looked up at the sky, seeing low clouds cut slashes out of the star field.

There was just no good solution, at all. Draping her arms over the railing, Misato leaned further forward and pushed her hips back, braced against the deck with the heels of her boots. Whatever had happened... happened, and the dark-haired woman had absolutely _no_ idea what to do about it. Asuka had come in blazing by VTOL a few hours ago, and she was _still_ seething mad. Something to with Shinji, which of course piled problems on top of problems.

Misato's jaw tensed as she remembered. Earlier, her first thought had been to demand an explanation, to apply discipline. But when Misato had seen the hollow, drained look on Asuka's face, the only thing that could come to mind was asking _why_. She hadn't gotten an answer then, and still wasn't getting one now. The girl had looked _brittle_, almost. Never broken, Asuka was too tough for that and Misato knew it, but whatever had happened between her and Shinji had taken it out of the girl.

And _Shinji_ was her other concern. Of course without knowing even Asuka's side, she couldn't make any sort of decision or form a course of action. Misato stared out over the harbor and the bits of light that proved people were still working. Shifts were going around the clock to get everything set up in those last few crucial days, and to Misato, the logistical weight bore down on her shoulders with a vengeance. Asuka was still talking to Rei, enough that Misato had to strain her ears if she cared to. At that moment though, Misato felt as if she were being stretched between Japan and Vladivostok.

Drop everything and run home, aiming to fix whatever was broken with _both_ her pilots... Or stay and focus on Asuka, trusting NERV to handle Shinji. Her choices, in a word, _sucked_. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. Shinji needed her, probably, _Asuka_ needed her definitely, and the _mission_ needed her. Misato's lips compressed down to a razor thin line, almost hard enough to bruise.

"Major Katsuragi?"

Misato's hand clamped around the rail hard enough to shake it, and the rest of her body locked up tight in less than a second. Wide-eyed, she glanced to the side, seeing a crewman saluting her with his free hand. A clipboard hung from his other hand. Slowly, Misato willed herself to relax and straighten out, returning the salute.

Formalities out of the way, the crewman handed the board to her, explaining. "Apologies ma'am. " He helped her find a few specific pages, requiring her signature and input on the continuing preparations. While Misato scribbled her name where indicated, the sailor added- "We would've called you, but your phone was busy."

Wincing, Misato let out a short laugh and pointed over her shoulder. Timing was on her side, because Asuka stepped into sight, staring blankly at the loaned phone. Then the girl _screamed_.

* * *

><p>Deep inside the Geofront, Ikari Gendo sat in his office at his desk. The massive chamber was silent, save for the faint whine of a holographic projector, and a pair of recordings; one audio, and one video. The Commander extended one finger, halting playback for a moment. He brooded then, quietly and barely blinking. Mused, schemed, and above all, planned. If it were Akagi or the Old Men, paper and pen would have been his weapon of choice, but Katsuragi Misato, simple wit was enough.<p>

His hand moved again, and the system obeyed his gestural command without hesitation or complaint. The playback resumed, scrubbed and looped over the relevant slice of conversation. The Second Child's voice filled the chamber, crystal clear and free of distortion. _"-just can't _be _in the same country as them, alright?"_

Light from the display reflected off his glasses, mirroring the user interface in off-color tones. Several minutes passed, and Gendo deemed his preparation sufficient. Unlacing his fingers, Gendo laid his hands on the desk and summoned the single fully holographic MAGI terminal in the Geofront. Command codes nearly twenty years old gave him system access that defied even Akagi's understanding of the triumvirate. The salvaged and restored Dawkins protocols were reactivated, and new parameters set in line.

"MAGI command sequence. Redirect incoming UN Pacific Fleet communication to primary terminal." He spoke the terms aloud; a bad habit Gendo had to admit, but he was an _administrator_, not a programmer.

"Suppress all outgoing communication from Tokyo-3 to the UN Pacific Fleet, Second Child Sorhyu Asuka Langley, and Major Katsuragi Misato."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Enjoy


	34. Lure

_Then spake Leothric, son of the Lord Lorendiac, and twenty years old was he: "Good Master, what of the sword Sacnoth?"_

_And the village magician answered: "Fair Lord, no such sword as yet is wrought, for it lies as yet in the hide of Tharagavverug, protecting his spine."_

- Exerpt from _The Fortress Unvanquishable, save for Sacnoth_

* * *

><p>The flagship of the United Nations Pacific Fleet was a former American aircraft carrier, sectioned to the UN Navy under an agreement older than the Second Child. <em>Over the Rainbow<em> was home to over five thousand people. Sailors and airmen drawn from over twenty nations filled its bunks and passages, and they represented both the best of humanity's naval tradition... and the worst. The Pacific Fleet was the strong water arm of the world that had stopped waging war.

Standing on the bridge, Katsuragi Misato couldn't help but consider both it and her captain as living fossils.

The fleet was already several days into the first leg of its trip, where the NERV facility in Vladivostok waited to offload necessary supplies. Raw material from the greater Asian and Siberian territories were destined for the numerous cargo vessels following along, both to keep the fleet running, and to keep Asuka's Evangelion in one piece. The great war machine itself was still safely stowed aboard the _Soyokaze_, pre-loaded with B-type equipment. Asuka had _insisted_, considering more than sixty-six percent of the earth was water.

Misato kept a firm grip on her neutral expression, but inwardly, she wilted. Surrounded old dour men with grizzly, salt-and-pepper mustaches, Misato felt distinctly... out of place. Asuka, still clad in her plugsuit and jacket, hung sullenly in the older woman's shadow. _Over the Rainbow's _commanding officer, Admiral Stolocker, scowled past the low-set brim of his cap, and Misato suppressed the wince; she was supposed to be briefing them, _right_.

One of the crewmen manned his console and flipped a few switches, before handing her a headset microphone. She licked her lips and cleared her throat before holding it to her lips, but not before giving the technician a look. He gave her a decidedly thumbs-up; she was live.

"Good Afternoon," Misato's voice rang out over the public address system, and extended out from the carrier to ever other vessel in the fleet. "This is Major Katsuragi Misato of NERV. As of July twentieth, Two-thousand-sixteen, the UN Pacific Fleet is under my command as per Special Treaty Seventy-Eight."

The speakers hummed and crackled with feedback on the last word, and Misato waited for it to die down. The bridge crew and officers were all carved of granite, for how much they reacted. Misato swallowed thickly and pressed on. "Our mission is to investigate XT sightings throughout the Pacific and Atlantic theaters, with Unnatural Warfare support from Second Child Sorhyu."

Clipped, professional, and above all _English_, Misato tried to get her point across. Only at the end did she let some of her real self through. "For the past fifteen months or so, _something_ has been chewing up coastal wilderness and civilian installations across the planet. "The pattern interception system classified these unknowns as Angels."

She paused, and her eyes cut left to right across the people staring right back. May as well go for broke. "Whatever they are, the threat they pose is no different. So we are going to find them, chase them to wherever they hide on this planet, and _kill _them. You may all return to your duties."

* * *

><p>A week later, Misato settled into her seat and sighed. She had long since made it clear to Asuka that the pilot got the bed. Misato was going to just make due with the desk chair.<p>

It was the tiniest stateroom aboard the massive aircraft carrier, and Misato knew it. Barely fit for one person, the pair were going to have to get _real_ used to the idea of sharing each other's personal space. The whole room was maybe two strides wide and three deep with a shared desk along one wall, and a single, _narrow_ bed along the other. To make matters worse, the bathroom and facilities- _the head_, Misato reminded herself-were _not_ part of their quarters. Instead the NERV officer and pilot would have to walk ten yards down a dark hallway. And that wasn't even the most painful part.

The most painful part, was that when Asuka had rushed up north, she left behind everything she'd packed. Which meant that the girl only had the clothes on her back; the standard red plugsuit, the leather jacket, neural headband and patch. Her scarf had been hurled on the small bed across from Misato's. Clad in one of Misato's spare sweaters and a pinned up pair of boxers, Asuka raged.

Not that Misato would _blame_ her, much. Two days ago, hygiene had become a very pressing problem. Asuka had sworn a blue streak and marched into the showers, not _quite_ demanding Misato stand guard for any gawkers. A handful of _helpful _crewmen reminded the Major that when at sea, long hot showers were a luxury... and that Asuka had taken up twenty-odd minutes of their time. It was an _enlightening_ experience for everyone involved.

The girl's plugsuit though was _clean_, after nearly two days of being sealed up against her skin. Misato shivered, and not for the first time, wondered how her pilots took care of other kinds of business... She decided then it wasn't a question that needed an answer.

It was also _cold_ on board the carrier. The floating city soaked up the ocean's chill and held on to it like nothing Misato had ever encountered, and she cursed her vanity for wearing her mini dress. Snug cotton leggings kept the edge off, but that wasn't helping Asuka either. The older woman pulled off her red NERV jacket and draped it over the other girl's shoulders, pointedly ignoring the palpable fury. Asuka tried to jerk her shoulders away, but it wasn't like there was anywhere to _go_ either. Gently, Misato guided the girl to her bed and pulled the leather jacket off the chair, draping it over Asuka's bare legs. That done, she slid in behind and wrapped her arms around the girl's middle.

* * *

><p>Lacking more traditional inter-service rivalries, Misato figured a sailor or airman was close enough to a soldier for her to make a good impression. The trick was <em>finding them<em>. Over five-thousand people were on board the carrier, and several thousand more were spread out amongst the ships in the fleet. Coming from Japan, Misato also thought she understood what it meant to conserve space. The design of the _Over the Rainbow _informed her she was incorrect, in no uncertain terms. Near-vertical stairwells and cramped corridors made navigation confounding at best, outright treacherous at worst. Misato was by no means a tall woman, by Japanese standards or any other, but _Asuka_ was having a better time getting around than she was.

Finding a place to go or something to do was one of a few dozen concerns at that. Misato ducked into an alcove between two bulkheads, where nothing in particular looked important enough to bother. She let out a gusty sigh, but smiled regardless. Counting the list over in her head, Misato ticked points off on her fingers. Work helped her focus, it seemed.

One, she had to finish helping patching in the fleet's communications to the detection network. The UN may have _controlled_ the satellite interception system, but she helped design it; the strategic side at least. Two, she had to track down Kaji and lean on him until he needled the right people around the world. Glad-handing alone would not help her fight up _this_ particular jurisdictional hill.

Looking around the corridor, taking in the numbers and letters stenciled along one bulkhead, Misato added a third objective to her list: Prove to Asuka she wasn't lost.

* * *

><p>A week into the voyage, Misato found her sea-legs. Beyond that, she learned enough about the carrier's layout to make a fair attempt at getting around. Her shins <em>ached<em> however, from one too many hatch-rim impacts. She had however found _something_ resembling an off-duty culture on board the carrier. The half of the crew that _weren't_ at their given post tended to gravitate to the various galleys and few public spaces. And, in a surprising show of grace, Misato had been invited to the Officer's wardroom.

Settling down at a bench between a pair of junior officers, Misato looked up and watched a steward set a mug of coffee before her. Rank _was_ observed, she couldn't help but note, but it was informal. 'Major' didn't carry as much weight on board a ship, but she wasn't going to complain either. A flash of red caught the corner of her eye. Twisting in her seat, Misato very nearly lost the grip on her mug: _Asuka_ had been invited in as well.

That might have explained the reduced decorum- the girl was almost _holding court_ through sheer, bullheaded force of personality. Asuka wasn't one to be _charismatic_, but she sure as hell tried. Misato stared over the rim of her mug and felt one of her eyebrows arch high. She had to lend Asuka some of her clothes, and there hadn't been enough time to negotiate something with the ship's tailor. On Asuka, Misato's black mini-dress needed a belt for cinching, and the rolled up slacks were... not flattering.

To her right, a Lieutenant nudged her elbow, pointing at the girl with his own mug. "I know she's one of the pilots, but you two have the same tastes Major Katsuragi... is she your daughter?"

* * *

><p>Flipping a tiny switch on the side of her patch, Asuka's vision blurred. Orange lines overlaid her field of view, first describing angles, then shapes, finally three-dimensional polygons. Every edge and surface in the ship's corridor had been outlined, flagged with material analysis. The prosthetic was somewhat self-programming, or it piggybacked some of it's functions off of her own brain. Without a lab, Asuka couldn't say which. Concentrating, the girl <em>pushed<em> the schematic into the devices' memory.

Leaning against the cold steel wall, Asuka tried not to shiver. Misato all but _preened_ next to her, well out of anyone's way, but watching, waiting. Every so often, a crewman would charge on by. Flipping over to image enhancement, Asuka had to note it was a crew-_woman_.

Misato must have noticed, because her smile curled at the corners. "Modern Navies may be co-ed, but relationships while at sea are _strictly_ forbidden."

Asuka let out an ugly snort and crossed her arms over her chest. "And yet you're _still _treating this like a singles cruise."

The corridor went dark at the far end, as something blocked the hanging lights one after the other. The looming shadow approached, and as it neared, Asuka's eye went wide. Olive-green shirt, crew cut hair, rock-crushing jaw, and unambiguously _masculine_. Asuka felt the temperature drop a few degrees as the man's shadow passed over them. He flashed the pair a pearly white grin, and the narrow hallway suddenly _swam_ with testosterone. Leaning out from around Misato, Asuka watched the man move away, and one eyebrow quirked up at the jigsaw muscles visible through his T-shirt. A marine, definitely.

"And you," Misato grinned and switching to Japanese, licking her lips. "Have never been able to appreciate the fine art of _window shopping_."

* * *

><p>Officer country was 'invitation only', and as a 'civilian with special liberty', Asuka was not allowed anywhere particularly important. Not that there was much to do <em>anywhere<em>. A given ugly grey corridor was the same as any other. The galleys were often full of constantly moving flow of people, taking meals, swapping stories, hurrying back to their posts. In a way it reminded her of _high school_.

With nothing better to do, Asuka got in line and grabbed a food tray and got in line. _Still_ uncomfortably similar to high school. There were a few strange looks, but that was due to the plugsuit. She couldn't afford to wear it constantly, but it was the closest thing she had to _proper_ clothes. The jacket helped too, covering a good bit of her thighs. Anyone staring did so because she was a _pilot_, and not just a civilian girl. The scowl kept awkward questions to a minimum as well.

Pulling away from the serving area, Asuka threaded through the press of bodies, utterly lost beneath people inches if not _feet_ taller. More than a few of them made way as she passed, out of courtesy or curiosity she couldn't tell, and wasn't interested in thinking about. She found a mostly empty table at one end of the galley and sat down, picking at her food.

Off to the side, someone said something to her, and Asuka looked up. She stopped, poised with forkful of possibly mashed potatoes hovering near her mouth. A crewman with curly red hair and a face made of curves loomed over her. Whatever he'd said hadn't even sounded like _language_. "I'm sorry, what did you say..?"

He tried again, smiling like he was used to it, and then Asuka _understood_. It was English dialect, somewhere from Ireland or Scotland. Her patch was already borrowing her language and pattern recognition to break the phonemes down. With the translation in clear text across the left side of her vision, she figured out what he said as he repeated it.

"What's your name?"

Oh, entirely reasonable. Asuka set her fork down and reached out for her composure, clamping hard on her temper. Her face settled into a dour mask. "Sor- _Asuka_ Sorhyu Langley." Her standard English was a little rusty.

The redheaded sailor sat down without an invitation, smiling broadly. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he started in on something, a topic Asuka couldn't make heads or tails of. At first the accent was almost impenetrable, but bit by bit Asuka figured it out. "-And so I say to him 'you're crazy for that- making a pass at an admiral's daughter!"

Asuka didn't bother holding back her surprise. Admiral's daughter? Did she _look_ like a sailor, or a man? She opened her mouth, ready and willing to utterly destroy him and his story. A new hand beat her to the punch, cuffing the curly-haired sailor upside the head.

Tray in hand, the newcomer nudged the other man off to the side. She sat down with a huff. "Nobody wants to hear your admiral's daughter stories, Carter."

Asuka felt her mouth click shut, and hope welled up in her chest; a _lady soldier_. Sailor, she amended. A plain looking brunette with her hair kept short, bleached at the fringes. She speared a hunk of meat with a simple fork and wagged it at the other man, before pointing at Asuka. "Especially around a _kid_!"

Being doused with a bucket full of icy seawater would've been preferable for Asuka, right about then. The scowl worked its way onto her face without thinking, but the woman and Carter ignored her in favor of bantering. Between Carter's accent and the woman being a motormouth, Asuka couldn't make heads or tails of the hashed conversation.

Finally though, the pair remembered the girl they sat across from. Smiling broadly, the woman reached over the table in greeting. "Sorry- Mind gets away from me. My name is Kim Bolton, E-3, or OR-3 depending." The pilot stood to shake her hand, but Kim's hand aimed higher, pressing against the girl's head and tussling her hair.. With the blood draining out of her face, Asuka dropped back down. Her thighs hit the bench hard enough to make it creak.

Neither Bolton or Carter didn't seem to notice. The brunette toasted the girl with her mug. "You're one of the pilots, right?"

For a moment the girl stared over the table, trying to process that question. A foul stinking shame built up in the back of her throat, because just for a moment, _she'd_ forgotten her own status. Asuka willed the green tint away from her cheeks and sat up straight, drawing on every bit of imperial pedigree her teutonic ancestry allowed. _This_ was familiar territory, and she desperately needed it. "I am! Second Child and Pilot of the Production Model Evangelion."

"Cool shit," Bolton almost gushed. "So is it remote or something? Like a video game?"

Asuka drew herself up as much as she could, not even bothering to stop the shock leaking into her voice. "What? No! I sit in it and pilot!"

Bolton leaned back and held her hands up in surrender, shaking her head. "Sorry! I just thought what with the gadget and all." Her hands dropped, but not before she tapped her own brow.

Asuka's hand few up to her prosthetic. "This isn't a controller!"

Carter leaned in, squinting. "Then how'd you lose it?"

"I didn't-" The girl scowled, clamping down and shooting her best glare at the other man.

The sailor bowed his head in apology and begged for forgiveness. As he spoke, Asuka read her patch dialogue for translation. Then she realized Carter was trying for an _accent_. "Beggin' the captain's pardon, when does this whipped dog of a bilge rat walk the plank?"

The crowd around fell silent, and red crept up the sides of Asuka's neck, past the collar of her plugsuit and jacket. That man had just crossed a _line_. Bolton's hand lashed out again. "Don't be a dick, Cart."

Asuka's lip curled, but she didn't _quite_ snap. She wasn't made of glass- she could fight her _own_ battles. Instead she pulled the patch up and blinked by reflex. "I didn't _lose it_, but-" Repeating herself, she stalled for a moment. For one there were security clearances... She sighed and said what she could. "There's nerve damage."

What little conversation there had been ended on that note, and Asuka stewed in the silence. Two more crewmen joined Asuka's table then, slapping Carter and Bolton on the back and shoulders as they shoved into position. More followed, crowding and jostling around as space around the girl rapidly filled. Glancing around, there were _tons_ of empty tables, so they all must have gathered for the _company_.

Men and women in a whole range of uniforms and kit, shoving and laughing between bites. A dozen accents, full-on dialects and a smattering of French, Mandarin, Russian and English. Asuka felt her cheeks burn red-hot with some of the things they joked about, indignant and mortified by turns. Another sailor wedged in next to Asuka, a meal tray in one hand and textbook in the other. The girl almost declared her salvation to the heavens- _Academia_, _something I can talk about!_

She nudged the man's elbow, and couldn't help but note the elaborate, almost three-dimensional tattoos that wound up his bare arms. He looked up from his book and blinked, and Asuka jerked her chin at the page. "What are you studying?"

He licked his lips, wincing. "Ah, world history. I'm trying to get my GED."

Rocking back in her seat, Asuka _reeled_. He hadn't even graduated _high school_? Looking around, a bit more than half the people were maybe five years older than her. As she thought about it, she realized of them were serving to pay for college, and Asuka had already gone and graduated. She sunk back deeper into her jacket and picked at her food.

Bolton whistled sharply, smiling again. "Hey kid, you alright?"

Another sailor broke in, giving the girl a playful shove. "We're probably boring her stiff. Listen," The man put on an understanding look. "Wardroom 6-B's set up for books and movies. You want me to show you?"

Deep down Asuka _knew_ they weren't trying to be patronizing, or at least, not _offensively_ so. It rankled though. She stood up and pulled herself out of the lunchroom crowd, flipping her eye patch down. "I'll find it myself."

* * *

><p>Being given more or less the run of Officer's country on board the carrier, Misato did her best to keep busy. Unlike say, nearly every other armed force in the world, she had one facility and <em>six<em> assets to manage, compared to armor, infantry and twenty other odd things a commander had to track. The Pacific Fleet basically _ran itself_, as long as they didn't see an Angel. Basically, Misato had nothing to do except wander.

A quick glance into the kitchens saw her ushered out by white-smocked stewards. A steaming mug of coffee was pressed into her hands, along with the utmost diplomatic urging to _stay out of the way_. Nonplussed, Misato took the cup and sipped. Polite, courteous, and pointedly _distant_; those were the words that defined the UN Navy. The Marines were okay- serving as a unified American unit attached to the _Over the Rainbow_. But for all her past exploits, there wasn't a lot of common ground.

Taking another sip, Misato leaned against a bulkhead wall and shivered. She was lucky and knew it, most of the crew on board went _months_ without seeing sky or daylight. Assuming she had permission, she could make her way to the bridge for a bit of fresh air. Misato wasn't interested in wearing out the Admiral's hospitality, anyway.

There were things that still needed to be done though, things that had to be pushed through jurisdictional boundaries and fleet politics. Another reason why she wasn't interested in being a bad guest. The Evangelion power supply had to be tested, and drills needed to be set up, adapting carrier operations to Evangelion deployment and vice-versa.

Stodgy old fools all, she figured, and there was no point in denying the horror. There wasn't anyone _fun_ in the fleet.

Another thought occurred to her then, as she finished off her coffee. Swallowing the last mouthful of bitter drink, she realized she was going to have to get used to it. _Over the Rainbow_ was a dry vessel; only the captain or admiral's had mustaches, and those were under lock and key. Misato was certain a still was _somewhere_ in the fleet, moonshine vodka and the like... but she wasn't _that _desperate.

Finding a place to hand back her empty mug of coffee, Misato sighed and hoped Asuka was having better luck making friends than she was.

* * *

><p>A topographical map of the aircraft carrier made navigation <em>exceedingly<em> easy. Trivial almost. As long as Asuka knew which end of the ship was which, she had no trouble finding her way around... to a point. Her map had filled more than two-thirds of the vessel, but it lacked _labels_. It took her less than an hour to find the room set aside for crew entertainment, and it was thankfully empty.

Cramped, like every other place on the ship, every surface was filled with closed cabinets and sturdy shelves. Some basic tables were wedged into alcoves and bench seats, along with a handful of board games; the staples, chess, checkers, even a go board. Interesting, but impractical without an opponent. Asuka stalked along the cabinets, rifling through each one. Fifteen year old movies, Every one an ancient VHS tape. Most of them were recordings too, hand-labeled from and mailed from who knew where. At the last shelf, she whipped her hand away from one shelf as if burned.

They didn't even have the decency to hide their...

Asuka sighed and let her hand fall. More movies, none of which interested her. The other wall was lined with well-aged books of all kinds. She didn't consider herself a literary _elitist_, the classics were often just as dull to scientists and engineers. She was pleased to note the _Lord of the Rings_ on one shelf, though she'd read that one _years_ ago.

Aside from solitude and enough space to stretch, the wardroom was looking more and more like a bust, until she investigated the TV cabinet. A tangle of black cords hung from the half-opened panel, and a bit of exploration completely salvaged her day: a console and _games_. A few more minutes of effort had her blasting aliens in the most generic of side-scrollers.

* * *

><p>Days later, Misato found herself back in the tiny stateroom aside Asuka. The pilot's plugsuit was being washed in the ship's laundry, so Asuka yet again had to raid Misato's luggage. The black mini dress came out once more, and Asuka hunted around for a belt to cinch around her waist.<p>

Wincing, Misato tried to hazard a bit of friendly advice. "That dress really _isn't_ meant for a belt, you know that right?"

Asuka just looked up at her like she was crazy, for once not wearing her eye patch. She tugged the fabric around her hips out and let it drop. The bottom hem dropped plenty low enough on her thighs, but Misato understood perfectly. A stiff breeze... Asuka made it even clearer. "This belt is all that stands between me and decency, woman!"

Misato crossed her arms and smirked. "There you go, calling me _woman_ again..."

* * *

><p>There were times Ryoji Kaji <em>hated<em> being a smoker. Being on board an aircraft carrier was one of them. A double-dose of nicotine gum sat braced against his cheek, and he willed the stimulant to flow faster into his bloodstream. It never worked as well as he liked.

Maybe that was why he snapped a little harsher than normal, when the crewman nearly spilled his important cargo. "Hey!"

The sailor stumbled, fighting to keep balance. "Sorry Inspector," He cradled a double-stack of small metal-walled cargo crates in his arms, while a few other similar containers lined the hallway. Kaji stepped up and took the topmost crate and saved the man further trouble, or embarrassment.

Tucking it under his arm, he turned, only to see Misato passing through the nearest hatch. "Well, You brought more luggage than _I_ did."

Kaji just tossed her a jaunty salute. "What can I say?" He hefted the crate in his arm. "I need spare batteries for my razor, and ties for my hair. You know I want to look my best for you."

Misato stalked forward, rolling her eyes. Her hips rolled like a tiger, or a terrible, sexy dragon. Grinning, he couldn't help but imagine the jets of smoke shooting out her nose, even as she nearly bowled him over.

* * *

><p>It was a beautiful sunny day outside, and Sea of Japan was warmer than Asuka expected. Which was to say it was <em>wet, miserable and cold<em>, as opposed to _freezing_. Even accounting for the noonday sun. Thanks to the wind and ever-present mist, Misato's borrowed wardrobe was only good for their tiny stateroom. Otherwise, the Second Child wore her plugsuit and jacket as often as possible. It may not have been warm, but it kept her drier than most other people out on deck. As for _being_ on deck, she had to swear up and down on more rule-books and manuals then she'd ever seen in her life. Then the captain made her swear on an actual _bible_, just to drive the point home.

All of that, because the carrier flight-deck was dangerous, and _loud_. A handful of the carrier's on board aircraft were being sent out, equipped with highly sensitive blood-soul pattern detectors. The catapult launches and screaming jet engines rattled her bones from hundreds of feet away. An ugly pair of headphones protected her ears from the worst of the noise. She watched another fighter move into position, and Asuka had to admit, the whole process was a lot like deployment out of the Geofront. The few times she'd gotten to ride the launch rails had been _amazing_.

Closer, someone shouted, loud enough to make the girl turn...

* * *

><p>On the flight deck, huddled close to the bridge-island and well out of the way of everything important, a middle-aged man rubbed his hands together and tried not to freeze. His name was Wyatt Levidon, and his life was suffering. A professional military photographer on attachment with the Pacific Fleet, he had no idea his lazy, puff-piece tour was going to turn into a fantastic, <em>lengthy<em> crusade against stygian horrors from beyond the stars. The original plan was simple; take some photos of sailors and airmen hard at work keeping the peace. Now, the fleet charged for one of the two _warmest_ parts of Siberian Russia, which actually didn't sound too bad, if not the _Stygian Horrors. From Beyond the Stars._

Still, Wyatt suffered, because there was no new material on board the fleet, save for the Evangelion- which he was not going to get anywhere near. No matter what his publishers said or did, there were things man was not meant to know, and he drew the line at _giant goddamn robots_. Fortunately the war machine was on an entirely different ship, far and away from his petty mortal concerns, like breathing.

Off to the side, a flash of proper cherry red caught his eye. A few dozen feet away was a girl- an actual girl, like his neice back in England. Seeing as how she didn't look or dress anything like the rest of the crew on board, that put her in one of two categories. Either she was a civilian, like him, or considering the shiny rubber suit and over-sized jacket, the Pilot. The giant robot he happily ignored, but this darling redhead was an _opportunity_. Like any good photographer, Wyatt always kept a camera handy, and against all conventional wisdom, shouted for the girls' attention.

She turned, just as a gust of wind caught her hair and swept it forward over her shoulder. With all the speed, grace and skill instilled in him over his long career, Wyatt mashed the shutter button.

Then the girl _snarled_. "What the hell are you looking at?!"

* * *

><p>Three weeks into the mission, the Pacific Fleet reached Vladivostok. Impact had changed Primorsky Krai, scouring away miles of city and industrial infrastructure. In its place, the United Nations had sunk massive foundations, superstructures and manufacturing facilities. Vast train yards spread out tracks like arteries, meeting up with surviving lines and new paths leading inland. Evangelion armor and weapons were assembled all across Siberia, funneled down into the ports and testing facilities all along the mechanized coastline.<p>

The fleet itself was on rotation, coming into port a few ships at a time while the remainder held off at sea as a defensive picket. On the bridge along the outside walkways, Asuka leaned against the railing and looked out over the city. Somewhere out there in a sunken bunker, a rapid, crashing metallic scream echoed out, enough that it shook dust from concrete walls and roads, even as far out as the docks. Not that anyone around would care- this was a place where people worked. Asuka could not spot a single house or apartment.

Elsewhere, massive cranes lifted equally huge containers. From where Asuka stood, the workers and docks looked like anthills, boiling with activity. The cranes lowered one container after another into a fleet cargo ship, the top deck hatches spread wide open for more material. The red slashes across each container marked them clearly as _weapons_. Misato had pulled out all the stops, it seemed.

Then a voice out of a dream hit her ears, and Asuka _shivered_. "Haven't seen you for a while, Asuka-chan!"

A few dozen thoughts crashed into each other, fast enough that she only had a second to really process. Asuka's mind went into overdrive as it considered her options. Coy and sweet? The past few days were leaving her without much good cheer to go on. With her plugsuit, Asuka contemplated a more flirtatious approach, hiking up her jacket and taking advantage of the lean and rail... But at the same time, _Misato_ was on board, and a battle of the body wasn't one she could win.

It all proved to be a moot point anyway; her mouth was open and speaking, even before she even finished her assessment. She tried and succeeded at keeping the wince out of her voice. Mostly. "Ka-ji-san~ Where have you been?"

Kaji himself looked like he hadn't seen the sun in weeks, which wasn't saying much, because Asuka had been stuck below decks just as often. He had however found enough time to keep his beard well-trimmed. The man of her dreams shrugged, and his hair whipped around in the harbor breeze. "Filing reports, mostly. Calling up the chain of command. How's my favorite girl been doing?"

The illusion shattered. It self-destructed, detonating into successively smaller secondary explosions. _Girl?!_

Asuka clamped down on her disappointment though, and did her best not to let it show. Twisting around, she rapidly discarded pretenses and paths proven ineffective. She'd show _him_. Standing straight, arms at her back and the picture of perfect poise, Asuka squared her shoulders, nodding curtly. "I've been fine, Kaji-san. I've been looking forward to putting the crews through start up procedures, once we've loaded up the extra gear here."

Bemused, the UN inspector leaned over the railing and pulled out a cigarette- even outside, he wasn't allowed to light it. "Procedures?"

"Evangelion launch drills. There's not a lot of precedent for an At-sea deployment, but we're going to be patrolling the attack sites as we make our tour anyway." Asuka sighed, but couldn't help the theatrics. "They'll need to know how we do things."

Kaji just stared at her, increasingly unreadable. A single eyebrow crept up his forehead as she continued. "That's an awful lot of responsibility, isn't it?"

There was a sense Asuka was _missing something_, she couldn't quite put her finger on it though. She pulled more professionalism out, draping it over her shoulders like a mantle. 'Too much' had never entered into her vocabulary. Re-centering herself, Asuka pushed through the uncertainty.

"It certainly is, that's why _I'm_ here." She tossed her head, as if his question was a bothersome fly. "I should probably go and check on how they're loading the weapons too. It won't do me any good if I can't reach ammunition for a reload."

With that, Asuka turned primly on one heel and marched for the hatch. Once she was down the stairs and out of sight, she realized something, and a bit of red spread out across her cheeks. In a roundabout way, she was _playing hard to get_.

* * *

><p>They were only a few days past Vladivostok now. The Pacific Fleet had pushed east, cutting across the ocean toward California and Central America. Impact had obliterated most of Panama, to say nothing of the Canal. Still, it enabled an oceangoing vessel easy passage from the Pacific into the Atlantic. Misato however, had <em>no idea<em> as to their progress. Without a map, she only had the admiral's word they were on track. She didn't doubt the man's word of course, but being cooped up in a dim metal city for days on end wore on a person.

Weeks sleeping in a stiff desk chair wasn't doing her any favors either. Misato stretched, bracing hre back against the chair and rocked her hips back, drawing out a long series of pops and crackles. Her spine _melted_, tangibly relieved. Two feet away and stretched out along the bed, Asuka huddled under a double-layer of blankets, with a dog-eared book propped up in her hands.

Twisting, Misato tried to work out more kinks, sighing softly. A little small talk would be good for the nerves too. "I never forgot how to sleep in crappy conditions..." She licked her lips and _pulled_, popping another disc into place. "But this chair-" Misato just tossed the girl a wry smile.

Asuka just turned a page, sullenly noncommittal.

The major slumped in her seat then. "Back before I came to Tokyo I had insomnia. I'd be up all night, or I'd be lying in bed half-awake for hours..." A proper grin worked its way across her lips. "You however, sleep like a rock."

Marking her page, the girl thumbed the book closed and gave the older woman a wan little grin. Misato was happy to count it as a victory. "I do what I can to keep busy."

Desperate for a change of pace, Misato eased herself out of the chair and sat on the desk, hands hooked against the edges and leaning forward. She rubbed her calves together, hoping to keep some blood moving. "Yeah... I have to say though, some of my best nights have been back home. Shinji's like the best teddybear in the world."

Almost immediately, Misato realized just how badly she stepped in it. The girl let the book drop into her lap and she just _stared_ at the older woman, _through_ her. The dark-haired woman kicked herself again, fighting off a scowl and putting on the best, understanding smile she could muster. Whatever happened back at NERV must have been one hell of a fight, but the _specifics_, Misato had no idea. At the end of the day though, Misato just _didn't know_, and her hands were tied.

Asuka for her part had retreated behind her unassailable wall of pride. Her shoulders rose high and trembled, tensing enough for Misato to see lines of muscle. She turned enough to make sure Misato could see both her eye and patch, scowling. "If you're so sore, you can have the damn bed if you want it."

Misato's hands tightened around the edge of the desk and grit her teeth, cringing. There was no way for to talk around _that_ statement; their bedding arrangements had already been set weeks ago for a reason. The girl had plain _out maneuvered her_. Distantly, some part of Misato's mind wondered if that was what other people felt like when she spun out elaborate verbal traps and double-entendre... Unlike those times though, there was no laugh or easy joke out.

Instead, all she could do was slap one palm into her face and offer the most sincere look of apology she could muster. Dragging her hand down, Misato spoke past her palm. "I'm sorry, that slipped out. Been a hard few days."

Asuka slumped and let her shoulders drop, exhaling softly. "Yeah, I'm sorry too."

With that, Asuka reached over to the light switch and flicked it down, leaving the stateroom in total darkness.

* * *

><p>The <em>Soyokaze<em> was a hastily modified cargo ship, converted into an Evangelion transport and deployment platform. That was a fancy way of saying the internal holds had been gutted, replaced with a complicated mass of internal pumps, watertight sealant and security devices. The Evangelion itself floated on its back in chilled containment fluid, half-submerged in the ships' internal spaces. A massive tarp covered the rest of it, while massive restraining bolts and inset locks kept the war machine pacified.

Nearly fifty technicians and engineers swarmed over around the weapon, dashing along bridges made of air-filled oil drums lashed under plastic deckplates. Above, the cargo hatches laid into the top deck yawned open on hydraulic springs, letting in sunlight and suddenly hot Pacific ocean air. The tarp began to billow and writhe under the growing breeze. One by one, those bolts holding the Evangelion down were removed, some by remote and others with wrenches and muscle power. Halfway finished, a special controller entered the appropriate commands, and the machine sat up. Bending at the waist, the Evangelion moved under battery power.

The public address speakers crackled and snarled with static, feedback screeching through the hold. The electronic shriek easily gave way to a shout. "Stop dawdling! The longer you guys blunder around the less power we have for combat! Thirteen minutes and counting!"

As one, the engineers hurried.

"I can _see you_ _guys_- Watch it when you raise the Evangelion! Those doors aren't fully cleared yet!" Asuka let her finger off the transmit button and sighed into the radio. "I mean, seriously...?"

Onboard the _Over the Rainbow_, leaning against the railing and platforms lining the bridge island, Asuka watched the crew of the _Soyokaze_ run through a deployment drill. She closed her eyes, but the field of view on the left side of her face persisted nonetheless. Her perspective jumped and stretched, shooting forward in telescopic zoom. The cargo ship was several hundred yards away, and she could see far enough to read nametags.

A handy thing, when reminding people _when not to screw up_.

Less useful though, when it disrupted her peripheral vision. Achingly familiar dress-shoe sole on metal deck plates were enough to get Asuka to lean back, banishing the telescopic vision and open her eyes. With her hair caught in the wind and jacket billowing around her her, it was a _perfect_ moment for Kaji to arrive. The ponytailed man leaned through the open hatch, waving lightly.

Then Asuka's face fell when Misato stomped through the same door. The older woman shouldered past Kaji, scowling something fierce. Asuka's eye cut down to the Major's hand, and how it rubbed at her apparently sore rear. That, plus the scowl and- _No_, that would _not stand_. Asuka planted her feet, pulling on that professional mask like her life and dreams depended on it. Because they did.

Turning back to the _Soyokaze_, Asuka raised the radio and took a breath. She had to put her best foot forward. Her vision jumped forward, but not before she saw Kaji lean against the rail, elbows hanging over the edge. She forced that pleasant sight from her mind and focused. The dreamy picture was going to be her reward; _oogle later_. Across the ocean, the Evangelion was sitting fully upright, still swaddled in the forty-meter long tarp.

Frowning slightly, she scanned the deck for problems. "They're still slow. I know these conditions aren't ideal but..." Asuka clicked the radio in hand. "Keep an eye on the battery levels. It takes us days to charge off of the ship's diesel generator."

A smattering of aye-ayes and 'yes-ma'ams' echoed back over the speaker. Letting her eye and proesthetic adjust again, she turned back to Kaji and Misato, allowing a tiny smile. Still sore over whatever had happened earlier, Misato had claimed a wall and planted her back against it, arms folded over her middle and still scowling. Asuka smiled a little wider and counted it as a conceeded, but still unconfirmed victory. She preened as subtly as she could manage, standing tall and proud.

Kaji smiled, making Asuka's heart slam into her ribcage hard enough to hurt. "What say you give those guys a bit of a break for a minute, I was meaning to talk"

Inwardly, Asuka was doing backflips and cartwheels, and cared not one bit how silly the metaphor sounded. Despite the glee, the girl did her best to keep cool and collected. "Oh? What about?"

The UN Inspector looked across the ocean at the _Soyokaze_ and the crew running around, levering the Evangelion into deployment position. "You've been working hard the past couple weeks, huh?"

"Of course!" She turned away and _almost_ struck a pose, banking again on the ocean breeze to help her out. It didn't disappoint. "My talents are legendary, after all."

Kaji let out a short laugh, grinning a little wider. "You might be overdoing it a little though."

That brought her up short, confusion leeched the warmth out of her chest. It gave way to indignation. She spun and stomped one rubber sole on the deck. "What?! Those guys over there wouldn't be managing half as well if I wasn't here to hold their hands!"

Another gust of wind pulled at them, tossing Kaji's ponytail over his shoulder and thuroughly ruffling Misato's hair. Asuka stood facing into the gust but did not bend, waiting for an answer. There wasn't one, just the sound of the ocean pressing against the side of the ship and the scream of jet engines in the distance. Misato kept her position, watching but not intruding.

Glancing sidelong at Asuka, Kaji broke the silence. He was painfully unreadable even now. "Say, Asuka-chan?"

_Professional_, the word hummed in Asuka's mind. "Yes?"

He waved with one hand at her, gesturing from head to toe. "Why are you in such a rush to grow up?"

The question hit her hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs. Meanwhile, Misato pulled away from the superstructure wall, suddenly and strangely subdued. Asuka forced her will out, clamping down hard on the dozen of things her body and emotions demanded. _Betrayal_ was the wrong word, but something in her gut coiled tight, squeezing her stomach hard enough to make her gag. The wind picked up again, blowing her hair back and forcing her exposed eye wider. The gust stung, but she refused to let it show.

Instead she wished Kaji would stop asking stupid questions. "Because _I am."_

Kaji just stood upright, rubbing the stubble along his jaw and looking her over. Plugsuit, jacket, patch. _I'm beautiful, a mature, elegant lady! Why won't you _see that!? The older man shook his head and smiled softly, leaning forward to ruffle her hair and kiss her bangs. "You're on your way, Asuka-chan. I promise you that."

With that, he slid past Asuka and back through the hatch, leaving her alone with Misato.

* * *

><p>Lech one minute and Father the next. Misato shook her head and sighed. If he weren't so damn <em>insufferable<em> she'd actually be able to admire him. Still, Kaji had _tried_ when she asked him to help. She took short steps over to the railing where Asuka stood, concern plain on her face. Asuka stared at her with an empty eye and the pride drained out. It made her look _brittle_, like she'd been made of badly cooked clay.

She sighed, and not for the first time _loathed_ her inability to _say_ anything. Misato could fill the air with words, but it took her nearly a year of living together to learn how to speak clearly to Shinji. She had to do the same thing to Asuka in a few weeks, if not days. There was so much more going on in the background of their world, the plans and projects surrounding _everything_ they did, the emotional stability of a teenage girl looked positively tiny.

At that moment though, Misato believed Asuka was most important thing.

Asuka meanwhile sighed, tapping the radio against her thigh. She didn't bother to look up, and her question came out more like a statement."You put Kaji up to that, didn't you."

Misato winced, but couldn't help the small smile. A clever Asuka was a good sign in her mind. "Yeah. We're just worried about you."

Huffing, the girl just spun away and scowled over the railing, looking at nothing. Misato took the chance to step closer, until she was standing next to the pilot. Asuka had pulled herself together somewhat, no longer looking so fragile.

Leaning forward, Misato draped her arms over the railing. "Listen... I really don't need to know every detail, but I want to help. To do that I need to know what's going on."

Asuka kept her eyes on the horizon, not that Misato could see past the black plastic patch. The oceans were calm at least, and the Pacific stretched out glass-smooth and shining. Asuka shifted, and Misato watched let out a sound close to resignation. "Am I really a tyrant?"

Misato cringed, caught between trying a bad joke at a bad time, and an honest answer. She went with the latter, sighing softly. "Yeah, sometimes."

The girl was quiet for a long moment, brooding and stone-faced. "Good, right now I want to be one for a little while longer."

Any answer to that was cut short by the sound of snapping metal and the crackle of the radio in Asuka's hand. The girl surged into action, leaning over the rail and thumbing the transmit button. "Oh you _idiots!_ Watch what you're doing! We don't have enough of that to waste!"

* * *

><p>A hundred yards away, cables and metal buckles snapped as they strained against bad angles. Caught on machinery and internal structures within the hold, the binding that held the tarp down over Unit-02 broke apart in a dozen places. The thick material still billowed in the wind, throwing heavy folds of tough woven plastic around while ragged bands of cargo straps whipped around.<p>

While Asuka's voice rang out over the intercoms and radio, technicians and engineers rushed, trying to corral the growing hazard and fix the problem. One by one the torn straps were secured, tied or bolted down. On the top deck, one unlucky crewman however found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time, wrestling with a circulatory valve at the Evangelion's elbow. The tarp shifted, rippling and snapping hard enough into him to knock the man clean over. His hip connected with the wrench jammed into the valve, and the seal cracked under the strain, drenching the man with a thick gout of LCL.

The geyser shoved the man hard, back into the railing and nearly sending him overboard. The orange metalic blood washed over his legs and cascaded down the side of the ship, taking his hat and tools along for the ride. A smear of color spread out in the wake of the ship, trailing for hundreds of meters.

* * *

><p>The Pacific Fleet was less than a week away from the Panama Transition, and Katsuragi Misato found herself in the Operations room on board the <em>Over the Rainbow<em>. She eyed the consoles and screens, acutely aware that their systems and such were a bit more than _half_ her age. The NERV Major felt her eyebrows spasm, twitching madly. Or maybe the twitching was due to Kaji blatantly invading her personal space. He stood close to her, arms behind his back and close enough his for his elbows to brush against hers.

Misato puffed up her cheeks and huffed, taking a deliberate stomp to the side. Kaji's achingly familiar laugh followed and seemed to drape around her shoulders, lingering. Around her, crew and equipment operators chanted over their consoles in low tones, mostly in clear English with a smattering of French. The screens and readouts didn't glow the stereotypical green, but covered a whole range of colors and squiggling lines. Compared to the holographic displays back home, it was laughably crude.

All told, it was an uncomfortable step back in time, in more ways than one.

Still, they _were_ patched into the interception system. Kaji had handed over the codes earlier and Misato made sure the fleet sensors were set up right.

A bead of sweat crawled down the side of her neck, and Kaji _had_ to notice. He leaned in, rumbling in low tones. "You know Katsuragi, if you're hot, you could always take off that jacket."

Misato's scowl etched itself deeper into her face and she zipped her NERV jacket all the way to the neck. The '_nothing I haven't seen before'_ was left unsaid. Tucking her chin into her collar, Misato focused on business. "What's our data look like."

"Asuka's been a bad influence on you..." Kaji let out a short, drawling laugh. Sobering, he stood up and glanced at the myriad screens. "Sticking mostly to the Atlantic territories, against all established wisdom."

"Despite the fact that to this day, we know the Angels were going to come for the Geofront and the Evangelions."

The UN inspector gave her a hard look. "Is Asuka bait?"

"I hope not," she admitted. Misato showed her teeth off, but it wasn't a smile. "But if anyone wanted to dangle on a hook in order to kill an Angel, she'd be second in line after me."

* * *

><p>A bit more than a day away from Panama, Wyatt Levidon found himself out on deck of the carrier once more. This time there <em>was<em> something interesting to see- flight operations had been suspended for some kind of maintenance effort, or training. Still under the aforementioned tarp, Wyatt could still see the edges of the red, black and orange war machine. Limbs, _legs_. From heel to toe, the thing's _shoe_ was several times longer than a car. As long as the Evangelion was on deck, he was denied from taking photos, due to _lack of clearance_. Despite that, his liaison on board the carrier had _graciously _allowed him to keep his cameras, just so long as he kept the shutters closed.

And it really was a shoe. A foot would've made more sense, with tendon-sprung claws or hinges and hydraulic actuators. For a supposedly revolutionary war machine from the advanced hub of the Japanese tech sector, he hadn't expecting something that seemed for all the world like a homeless figure swaddled in a blanket with a pair of high-end trainers- right down to the custom soles. Instead it was _still_ _a shoe _and Wyatt realized he was rambling. It reminded him of a _corpse_, now that he thought about it. He'd seen enough in his profession. The same kind of unnaturally human _stillness _projected leagues larger was something to inspire pause... or even terror.

Without being able to take pictures, that left Wyatt with little to do. On deck, he made sure to stay out of the way of everything, but at least there weren't any aircraft hurtling around. More than a few crew members were out and about, no doubt under their own non-disclosure agreements. Not surprising of course; even in a Post Impact world the sunny Pacific Equator was tropical. The sky was blue and cloudless for as far as the eye could see, and the waters were calm. Aside from _boring_, it might've been a vacation.

At the bow end of the carrier, Wyatt did spot something new, a _woman_. He pulled his camera out and zoomed in for more detail. Not just any woman, but Major Katsuragi Misato. Standing next to Admiral Stolocker, the woman pointed out to sea, clipboard in hand and hair tossed in the wind. Wyatt knew a glamour shot when he saw one, and as long as the Evangelion wasn't in frame... Well, his editor wasn't going to complain.

* * *

><p><em>Over the Rainbow's <em>bridge was crowded that day, packed in with officers and three NERV hangers-on. Misato was glad to know that Admiral Stolocker had thawed somewhat over the past days at sea, willing to let Kaji, Asuka and herself come up to the bridge. Granted the Major _needed_ to be there for the transition. To the north and south, two long smudges of land stood out on the horizon- the last recognizable bits of the Panama Canal.

What remained was a straight shot through to the Atlantic, at the cost of the land bridge between Central and South America. Fifteen years ago, tidal waves had swamped the low-lying lands, obliterating the canal and structure. That and a subsequent tectonic event had all but sank the small country into the mantle. Now, dark clouds tended to hang high over the region, whipping into tropical storms and worse whenever inconvenient.

Seeing land remained something of a morale boost though, even Asuka was cheerier than normal, if only slightly. The bridge was one of the few places she hadn't yet fully explored, and it showed. Just out of earshot, the girl spent her time asking questions, and since there wasn't a lot to _do_ outside of normal duties, nobody had a problem answering her. Misato just hoped nobody started actively patronizing her pilot. It would not end well, for anyone.

One of the bridge officers stepped up and gave the Major a polite nod. As long as she was outside their chain of command, there was no reason to salute her. Misato grinned regardless, switching mental gears for english. "Is there something you need?"

The clean-shaven man grinned, ducking his head and sneaking her a sly look past the brim of his cap. With a mug of coffee in hand, he toasted her, then Asuka. The girl was standing pretty in one of Misato's button down blouses and hemmed-in pants. "Your daughter's a peach, Major, first impressions notwithstanding."

Misato blinked, and a finger of dread crawled up her spine. Or maybe it was Kaji via some puerile sorcery. "First impression?"

"Real princess type. 'Yes Majesty, go forth my peon.'" He let out a short laugh. "My daughter was the same way at that age."

Laughing quietly behind a hand, Misato wasn't sure what to correct first; her family tree or his estimate of the girl's character. "Asuka? Oh no, I wouldn't-"

"Wouldn't what?" Even within the limited confines of the bridge, the pilot was unexpectedly to her left. She'd apparently ambled over after the half-hearted exploration had run its course.

Misato slammed hard on her verbal brakes, willing her voice to go smooth and lilting. She flung one arm around Asuka's head and pulled her into a one-sided hug. "Wouldn't want to sour that sunny disposition of yours!"

Rumpled and with her hair suddenly piled up on one side, Asuka crossed her arms and huffed. "Hrmph!"

Responsibilities were what saved Misato from further scrutiny, and she found herself offering thanks to her job. Watch stations on both sides of the Central American gap were tracking the Pacific fleet as it approached, and Panama control was on the radio and asking for her.

A crewman handed her the appropriate headset, already patched in. "Major Katsuragi here."

Speakers throughout the bridge and in her ear hummed, letting a pleasant, accented baritone ring out. "Major, welcome to the Pacific/Caribbean transition. Standard housekeeping procedures here, we'd like for you to transmit appropriate clearance any time."

She'd been expecting that, and had handed the Admiral the codes ahead of time. "Transmitting now," She let a little bit of charm leak into her voice. "Anything else we can do along the way?"

"Not particularly, Major- wait one." The line went dead for a moment, before the radio operator clicked back on. "Just got word your fleet is tripping our SOSUS lines. You have any submarines trailing you?"

Misato blinked and shook her head more out of habit. Most submarines were strategic weapons, N2 and nuclear equipped. Both far outside the pull she had at hand. "Not that I know of, " She turned to the Admiral, and he confirmed. "No submarines in the United Nations Pacific Fleet."

The operator on the other end hummed thoughtfully. "Hmm, we'll none of our active pickets in the area are seeing anything. There's just too much displacement for how many ships are in your fleet." Misato was sure he was shrugging on the other end. "Whales sometimes tripped our sensor nets, but whales don't come round anymore."

The Major frowned, and a different, icy chill settled in around the small of her back. _That _sounded suspicious, even Kaji thought so. Misato watched as the nominal UN inspector slid into the seat next to her, while Asuka watched over her shoulder. Kaji pulled out a pen and bit of paper, scribbling a quick word out: _The Committee?_

Misato just mouthed 'could be' right back. Looking out the window from side to side, she counted what ships she could see. "I don't presume to speak for the Admiral or any of the captains in this fleet, but maybe someone forgot to file something when we left Vladivostok? We did take on a _lot_ of gear."

Another thoughtful pause before the operator replied. "Well, your clearance checks out. Major, I would love to take you at your word, but I'm going to call ahead to Norfolk and get a couple of subs to shadow you for a while."

There was already enough jurisdictional bullshit going on, Misato saw no reason to add to more of it. Considering possible involvement from the Committee, a little extra insurance was welcome. She explained the situation and held the headset out to the old officer. "It's your fleet Admiral, until we see an Angel."

The old man nodded grimly and took the microphone, coughing lightly. "This is Admiral Stolocker, we'll rendezvous with your submarines along the way."

"Thank you. Admiral, Major- enjoy the Atlantic and good hunting." With that, the radio clicked off.

* * *

><p>Even post-impact, the Caribbean was a vacation destination for a significant portion of the world. Which Misato felt was a tragedy, as she was most assuredly <em>not<em> on vacation. Two American attack submarines had briefly joined the Fleet without incident, but Misato quickly learned almost no sailor in a surface navy was happy with submarines in the area, no matter their political affiliation. No tears were shed several days later when the pair had broken off, citing a need for extended diagnostics. Something to do with sonar.

Her _other_ problem was scowling into a radio handset and peeling the paint of the bulkhead wall. Misato padded through the hallway as quietly as she could, wincing. Asuka's voice _carried_. "Uhm- Asuka?"

"_Wha-_Oh. Misato," Asuka let go of the transmit button, and the scowling, imperious look all but vanished. Clad in her jacket and plugsuit, the girl looked up and sounded more than a little _pleasant_. "Whatever you need, can we handle it fast?" She waggled the radio in hand. "The cross training thing I set up isn't going well, and we're going to need _months_ of crew shifts for this hunting trip."

The cringe that worked its way up through Misato's neck and into her face, there was no way to suppress it. She raised a hand, hoping to lay it on Asuka's shoulder then thought better of it. No need to agitate the girl needlessly. Best to pull it right off, like a bandaid. She held Asuka's attention with a steady look. "We're not going to find an Angel on this trip. We're not here to fight Angels."

Asuka whirled then, nearly running into a structural support before sliding around it. Having cleared the obstacle, she just stared, jaw hanging slack and her bare eye gleamed dully. "... What."

Misato knew she deserved it, even as she explained, tight and rational. "There's... Really no way we COULD like this. Whatever's been screwing around the Atlantic, it's always going to be ahead of us. It can move faster than the fleet, choose when and where to engage us."

The girl stammered then, incredulous. "B-but we have the intercept system!"

"Assuming it _is_ an Angel, they can drop in and out of our detection- it's never been perfect. If a blue pattern shows up, by the time we get there it'll be long gone." Misato sighed, _completely_ aware how frustrating she sounded. She ran a hand through her hair and waited, tense.

Now a bit of fire surged back into Asuka's voice. She stomped her foot and held her fists clenched at her side. "Then we bring it _to_ us!"

"The ocean is a big place, Asuka." Misato shook her head, wishing it was so easy. She _wanted_ it to be easy, for Asuka's sake as well as her own. "We can fish all day, but you and your Eva aren't enough bait."

Plastic and rubber creaked loudly in the corridor- Asuka's plugsuit gloves. Her hands shook wildly. "Then _why_?"

Misato threw her arms wide, not helpless but close to it. "Because NERV has to show the world we are doing something! Telling them 'we're out here, and we're not going to leave the rest of humanity out to dry.'"

There was a brief war of emotion on Asuka's face as the blood attempted to drain from her features. Misato watched the color be pushed back up by an almost glowing surge of red. Asuka's scowl bordered on furious, but her voice had dropped deadly flat. "So that's it then, isn't it? All just another demonstration for you fucking people?"

Misato blanched, giving the girl needed ground in response. Her eyes drifted towards the floor. "Asuka I-, it's not-"

A sharp stomp put a stop to that, locking her back to Asuka's accusing glare. "Why can't you adults all just _say what you mean?! _All this... cloak and dagger public relations _bullshit!_ What happened to being honest and _speaking your goddamn mind?!"_

For once in a long time Misato had nothing she could say or do in reply. The over-large coat slid down Asuka arms and onto the floor, and Misato licked her lips. "Listen, we..."

Asuka all but tore past her instead, voice rising up and echoing off the steel. "Whatever it is, forget it! I always listened, that's why I'm even here!" The snarl echoed behind her as Asuka pushed out into the hallway, drawing shouts from distant crew. "I'm _through _with _listening!_"

Misato blinked once and slumped back against the wall, staring at the jacket spilling over her toes. She stayed there for one heartbeat. On the second she slammed her fist into the metal and heaved herself upright, snatching the coat up in the same motion. Charging after the girl, Misato strained her ears for the sound of rubber on metal, vaulting stairs and shouting at sailors and crew to stay out of her way. Asuka's trail wasn't hard to find- the girl had left a path of rumpled and disrupted soldiers.

A flash of red down another hallway was the last hint Misato needed. She planted a foot and wrenched her body to the side, ankles protesting harshly. A straight shot through a dark corridor let Misato's longer legs eat up the distance. There was no _way_ she was going to let this fester. She whipped an arm out and caught Asuka by one wrist. The leather jacket came next, draped around Asuka's shoulders. Pulling, she ducked under the wild fist and swallowed the girl in a bone-crushing hug.

Curling forward, Misato pressed her face into Asuka's hair, talking but not really speaking. Mushed against her chest, Asuka squirmed and tried to thrash, but Misato had locked the girl's arms against her side. The struggling slowed and faded when the girl ran out of fury, leaving the two of them standing alone in the dark corridor. Asuka's shoulders shook, but even Misato knew she was too tough to cry.

The girl growled into Misato's sweater, and she felt the words hum in her chest. "You _lied_. _Everyone lied_. Why should I trust you now?"

Misato rubbed her cheek against Asuka's hair, speaking softly."If it was all show, we could have brought any of the pilots. It _had_ to be you, Asuka. Had to."

Now snarling, the girl's shoulders flexed and she tried to shrug free, but Misato refused to let go, not now. Asuka gnashed her teeth and hissed, again about _marketing_.

Misato just squeezed her tighter before letting go. She hunkered down and draped her arms over the girl's shoulders, looking Asuka square in the eye. "Yes, it's completely marketing, and did you ever stop to think about why that is? Because you are the standard of pilot I want the world to see. I want them thinking we have a dozen, two dozen more pilots skilled like you sitting back home on their hands, _waiting_ for the hammer to get dropped."

The floor pitched beneath them, and a concussive, echoing boom shook the carrier. Whatever Asuka had hoped to say died under the screaming klaxon alarms. Red strobe lights flashed along the walls, and Misato felt herself go weightless, Asuka still bundled up in her arms. Listing, the corridor twisted around the pair. Impact was inevitable, and Misato shifted, curling around the girl before the hit. She felt her head slam back into the bulkhead hard enough to see stars.

Forcing her eyes open, Misato's body hummed with a sudden surge of adrenaline. She couldn't see. Then she realized her eyes weren't malfunctioning, the _ship_ was. The dark hallway plunged into almost complete darkness, Lying on her chest, the only bit of light in the area was the dot of blue on the side of Asuka's face. The eye patch function light was a tiny pinprick in the dark.

Asuka pulled herself up on hands and knees, jaw hanging slack. Misato for her part _ached_ all along her shoulders and the back of her head. Worth it though. She looked up at Asuka, and the girl stared right back with her one uncovered eye. The ship pitched again, but Asuka just rocked back on her heels and twisted, ready to charge. A hand on her wrist stopped her cold. Speakers throughout the ship crackled with static, and a crewman's voice rang out over the alarms.

Groaning, Misato pulled herself upright. "Asuka wait-" She stared up at the girl, and absolutely _knew_ how desperate she must have looked, but it didn't matter. She had to make herself clear, now. "Can, can you do that for me?"

Asuka looked down at the hand then back at Misato herself. "Yeah. Yeah I can do that."

Misato watched the girl dash off, jacket and hair whirling behind her. She stood and steadied herself, even as crewmen with flashlights and tool kits stormed the corridor. Hooking a hand around the nearest sailor, she demanded a flashlight and directions. She had to get to the bridge herself.

Above, the public address speakers crackled again, this time in the clear._ "-tack. I repeat, the Pacific Fleet is under attack."_

* * *

><p>Glowing orange lines spread out before her, and Asuka sang her praises to whoever came up with 'augmented reality'. Charging through the halls, her heads-up display outlined every floor plate and obstacle yards before she hit it. Photoreceptors sucked in every bit of light they could, casting the left side of her view in electronic green. Rounding a corner, Asuka nearly bowled over a sailor before spinning around and sweeping forward. "Sorry!"<p>

Ship interiors began to blur together as she pumped her legs for all they had; she could catch all the breath she needed in the plug. Her rubber soles squealed against the floor as she slid to a stop. Up, she needed to go _up_. The ship pitched again and crewmen shouted in the distance. Whipping her head left and right while toggling vision modes, she flicked through the patche's memory looking for that map. The wireframe schematic unfurled in her field of vision, twisting and rotating along an internal compass.

Her eyes traced a path and Asuka _moved_. The emergency lights lining the corridors snapped on one after another, flash-blinding her prosthetic for a split second and flooding the rest of the ship in yellow. Vaulting up a flight of stairs, Asuka found more people running to and fro. Water from a burst pipe sloshed over the steps and the higher level. Men with wrenches and welding torches rushed elsewhere, looking for far more serious damage.

Another stairway and two more corridors gave way to the cafeteria, then she backtracked, blocked by a sealed hatchway. The carrier lurched for a third time, and the intercom crackled. "_Othello down, Majorie down!"_

Breathing hard now, Asuka hauled herself up a ladder, into some engineering space she didn't recognize. Oil and grease mingled with the smell of oxidizer and cutting torches. Someone in the crowd knew _her_ though. Carter muscled through a press of machinists and repairmen, fighting with a dozen problems and damage. The redheaded man gave the girl one look before scooping her up by the arms. She was over his head so fast, there was no time to even get angry. Carter all but tossed her into the crowd, and she surfed the bodies until she reached the far end.

Along the way he shouted instructions over the crush of people, cupping his hands to his mouth.. "Two levels to flight-deck missy! Your chariot awaits!"

Framed in that far hatchway, Asuka blinked and nodded. Dashing forward once more, she passed through more crew spaces, threading between more sailors rushing to fulfill their orders. Two decks down, muted booms shook the ship hard enough for her to feel it through the floor. Dust from ceiling-mounted pipes caked her hair. Surface bombardment. The last leg of her run passed by mostly unseen, save for obstacles in her way. Sunlight at the far end of the final hallway gave her all the motivation she needed.

Breaking out onto the carrier deck and open air, wind whipped at Asuka's head and the leather jacket still in her hand. Salt air stung her nose and bare eye for a second, while flight deck crew flagged aircraft down the catapults, risking debris and more to get planes in the air fast enough to matter. The jet engines screamed louder than the catapults, throwing pilots and their fighters into the air two at a time. If they wanted to _land_, Asuka was going to have to move her Evangelion.

Somewhere someone shouted, and the call repeated across the deck. A woman near Asuka waved her arms. "_It's breaching!"_

Whatever it was, Asuka couldn't see the surrounding water past the end of the flight deck. A low, rumbling pulse of sound washed over the carrier, drowning out the jet engines and catapult by sheer _mass_. The deck pitched again, and Asuka set her feet against it.

A column of water a over twice the height of her Evangelion shot into the air, showering the deck and swamping everyone and everything on it. Asuka tumbled, carried along by the two-foot wave along with almost every one else. More than two dozen people were already lost overboard, followed by aircraft and racks of missiles. A fighter already on the catapult broke apart at the landing gear, skidding even as the pilot wrenched at the canopy. Everyone on deck scrambled for any handhold they could find- grooves in the deck, cables and the plexiglass catapult control domes.

Others reached out with human chains, lashing together by arm and leg or whatever they could grab. A gloved hand clamped around the corner of Asuka's jacket, and the girl felt her arm jerk even as more water poured down over her. A shadow crossed over the carrier, and Asuka twisted, looking up into the sudden cover.

_Whale_ was her first thought, if a whale could get longer than a thousand feet nose to tail. Asuka knew, because her patch told her. White skin like uncooked fish arced over the ship, from port to starboard, showering the center of the carrier with a sudden downpour. The thing seemed to move in slow motion, and Asuka found herself thinking back to the time she spent in the MAGI VR. Flicking its tail, the perception-breaking creature angled in toward the ocean once more, dropping underwater with another gargantuan splash.

"Yeah. Right then." Asuka turned and realized the woman who'd caught her was Kim Bolton. The crew-woman had lost her helmet in the flood, shocked and sickened by the cold. The monster probably wasn't helping either. Asuka shoved her jacket into the woman's hands. "Don't you dare lose that!"

That shocked the aircrewman out of her stupor, and the deck crew strung out along the carrier shouted after the NERV pilot, Bolton being the loudest. "Hey kid don't just-!"

Asuka had already put them all out of her mind. Her Evangelion was more than a hundred meters away and the carrier was a sitting duck. The rest of the fleet had been strung out over a kilometer in all directions, a handful of them already smoking smears of black on the ocean, dotted with lifeboats. Escort battleships swung their cannons around and fired potshots at the water, but even Asuka knew the physics- no hope for a hit that way.

Ahead of her, the Evangelion loomed over everything, even swaddled by the tarp and lying on its front. It had slid along the deck while the carrier was being tossed about, leaving one arm dangling over the edge. That was fine, she just needed to get on top of the neck. The crew she'd been training had seen her coming, and they scrambled to enact the start-up procedure. Beneath the tarp, Armor plates along the back and shoulders split open, and the entry plug spiraled out, hatch open and waiting.

Crawling under the tarp, she made her way to the half-full plug and dropped in. Ocean salt and dust billowed out into the LCL around her hips, even as she started the activation sequence. The hatch clicked closed above, and more LCL poured in beneath her. Asuka wrapped her fingers around the controls and held on tight. "Set language mode to German, synchronization... _start_!"

* * *

><p>On the bridge, Admiral Stolocker pressed his cap down on his head and scowled. He looked out over the ocean and his sinking fleet. "Dammit. Katsuragi said we weren't going to find one."<p>

* * *

><p>Asuka's discarded radio in hand, Misato made her way through the lower decks much like Asuka had earlier, though she lacked a map. Stumbling into the main hangar, Misato got her bearings via the wide open elevator platforms. Outside, ships were sinking. "I didn't think we were going to find one!"<p>

* * *

><p>"Dammit Misato!" Asuka exhaled her last empty breath and sucked in a lungful of LCL. From that point on she did not so much <em>speak<em> as make her machine simulate the act. "You just said we weren't going to find one!"

Reaching up, the Second Child powered down her patch and let the Evangelion take over for her perception. Input from four eyes interpolated into the pair she was used to, and she tugged hard on the butterfly controls. Fingers flicked out at joystick controls, calling up system diagnostics. Breathing was harder in LCL, but her lungs were strong. The emergency power timer clicked on, and Asuka willed her Evangelion to _rise_.

The wind hit her machine, pulling at the tarp and binding it around her arms and torso. Shifting, Asuka moved and bundled the cover around her like a sweeing cloak, even as she took a knee then stood, towering over the carrier bridge. She dared not move her feet, painfully aware of the men and women still dashing around the deck. Aviation fuel burned at one end of the carrier, throwing a plume of black smoke into the sky.

Asuka felt her thoughts move toward the radio before her fingers did, patching into the bridge. The Evangelion translated for her.

* * *

><p>Redlining the engines, the Admiral gave the order to the fleet, charging ahead while their battleship escort trailed behind. The bridge staff stayed glued to their stations and consoles, issuing orders along the way. Damage reports filtered in from all over the ship, smoke, fire, structural damage. <em>Over the Rainbow<em> wasn't meant to take massive swells and bottom out, or list so severely.

The NERV woman barged in just as the radio crackled. "Admiral Stolocker!"

He twisted, glancing at Katusragi first then the speaker. A vein bulged in the side of his neck. "What is that girl doing on the line?! We can't afford to mess with her toy right now!"

"Unfortunately Admiral," Misato eased herself in, huffing faintly and sweating. "There's an Angel out there tearing your fleet apart. I hereby claim operational control." She grabbed the microphone and licked her lips. "You ready Asuka?"

Outside, the Evangelion _moved_, passing the bridge superstructure. The tarp billowed out and scraped against the exterior walls, shearing off railings before a massive hand held it back. Asuka's voice burst out of the bridge speakers once more. "Been ready! Plug and power supply are moving up!"

The ship groaned again, and the booms of distant guns rattled the windows. Stolocker held on, trusting his fate to a crazy woman and a _child_. "Expanded batteries and C-Type equipment?"

"Everything's set, Armor's locked in tight." The pilot moved her machine to the ship's bow, where crew and tow vehicles were already pulling its power plug into play.

Katsuragi grinned into the receiver, holding tight. "Then let's go fishing. Evangelion _launch_!"

* * *

><p>Misato had called down to operations and confirmed it- Pattern Blue. Asuka felt fresh power flood her Evangelion, running along conductor cables into batteries muscle systems. The tarp billowed around her, even as her Evangelion stood on the end of the carrier deck, watching the horizon. Eight ships sunk in four minutes. Tapping buttons and console keys, Asuka thought as much as typed her intent to the computer. Without the MAGI, she had to update her HUD manually. Information swept through her field of vision, marking the sinking ships and those still seaworthy.<p>

In the corner of her eye, the mission timer ticked up by milliseconds. Half a mile distant, the Angel breached and arced over another cargo ship. A whipping line of flesh cleaved the hull in half from port to starboard, and the Angel slid under the surface. Across the ocean, two pairs of battleships opened fire, hitting nothing but water. Asuka huffed, and a bubble of spent air slid past her teeth. _Othello_, _Majorie, Helvetica, UN Regent_...Mostly cargo ships, with one destroyer that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The mission timer hit three minutes, and Asuka huffed again. She _hated_ waiting. A box marked 'sound only' slid into her field of view, but she tossed her head and banished it to the side. A list of vessels in the fleet spread out on the other side. Misato's voice echoed inside the plug. "Asuka, are you getting this?"

"Yeah," The girl turned left or right inside the plug, and her Evangelion's head and shoulders followed. "It's sinking whatever it feels like."

Stolocker broke in then. "Be that as it may, my navy's getting slaughtered out there. The girl and her toy better be worth it, Major."

Asuka chose not to dignify that with a response, silencing the radio with a thought. She leaned, adjusting her Evangelion's center of gravity enough to ride the carrier's leading edge like a surfboard. Not that she'd ever surfed before, but the physics were close enough. The tarp caught the wind and fluttered, bound against her body with an arm around her collar. Asuka slid her eyes over the horizon, marking the smears of smoke along the way. None of the mundane weapons were cutting it, not as surface bombardment.

Now... how to increase her threat level. In passive mode, the AT field was like a third limb that always hung around, curled close to the body. She let it unfurl, almost lazily. Today there wasn't any need to chase after her synchronization, it was just _there_, waiting. Asuka felt her perception shift, the world around her didn't so much go solid as _full_, like her sight and will could be anywhere within her domain. The Absolute Territory of Evangelion Unit 02.

The second her field interpenetrated the water, the swell that marked the Angel cut hard right, making a shaper turn than it had any right to. Asuka licked her lips and tasted blood- no matter how they filtered the LCL she knew it was there. "Well, that was a lucky guess."

Most of the fleet were charging ahead, moving at full speed and leaving the wrecks in their wake. Rescue craft lagged behind, scooping up crew who'd been knocked overboard, or around the lifeboats from the sunk ships. Spots of fluorescent green dye dotted the Pacific, marking where men in life vests bobbed. Whatever the Angel was, it moved faster underwater than they did. Then the creature crossed into Asuka's range of influence, and her senses went haywire.

_Synesthesia _was the accurate term, but she just called it _mush_. Her inner ear was telling her the color orange tasted like chocolate. Her stomach growled despite the sudden nausea; she hadn't eaten all day. Asuka pulled the field in and grit her teeth. Sickness aside, she _knew_ where the Angel was coming from. She pivoted smartly on the deck, tarp wrapped tight like a cloak and billowing behind her. Misato broke in again on the radio, saying something about the _Angel's_ field, but there was no time. The swell burst and the whale-thing _jumped_.

Long and thin, it had two scoop-like fins on either side, like forward-swept manta ray wings. The Angel crossed over the ship, trailing more than enough water to sweep the deck clean of everything save the Eva itself. Sunlight scattered through the falling water, throwing rainbows across the carrier and fleet. Asuka looked up at the creature's white underbelly and grinned. Everyone outside should have gotten below by that time, but for whoever hadn't, they were in for one hell of a show.

Then the Angel brought its primary weapon into play. A length of flesh and muscle like the lantern on an Angler fish whipped forward, drawing a line through her Eva and across the deck. Asuka felt her skin prickle beneath her plugsuit as she wrenched hard on the controls. A hard spur of bone on the striking end raked around even as the Evangelion backpedaled half a step, pounding a heel-print crater into the deck. The bone edge missed her left arm by yards, but the nearly invisible AT field cut through her own opposed space, and the armor lining her wrist.

Standing though, Asuka brought her other arm up, knife-hand and aiming to tear. The Angel's massive weight worked against it, and the Evangelion's fingers dug a long ragged trench into its underbelly. Grey blood splashed out and down Asuka's arm and cloak, flushing seawater away from the deck. The shock and impact ran down the Evangelion and into the carrier below, buckling deck plates and shoving the vessel down into the water.

For a split second, the open hangar accesses flooded, before the ship righted itself, springing up and almost bouncing out of the water. The Angel twisted in mid-air, disengaging and screaming even as it lashed out with the cutting limb. Asuka twisted and planted her feet, letting the blade pass through where she stood. A ragged end of cut tarp blew out to sea, even as the Angel darted back underwater, shaking the carrier along the way.

Asuka stepped around and held up her arm, checking the thick band of poured composite surrounding her Evangelion's wrist. Bolted around, and sometimes _into _her partner, the new upgrade bulked out the Evangelion in round curving shapes. What she'd lost in grace, the Eva made up for in sheer volume of _presence_. Asuka let her arm drop and turned to watch the Angel slide around.

As a purely physical defense, the new armor was _amazing_, but no amount of material science was going to stop a weaponized AT field. "Misato!"

Misato's audio-window flipped back into view. "Yeah Asuka?"

The girl kept one eye out on the ocean while she toed the deck with a foot."You saw what it did?"

"We did. Everyone down in Ops on the AT field gear got readings." There was a rustle and hustle on the bridge before Misato came back. "I'm no Ritsuko, but we're thinking it's AT field adapted for the water. Cutting's just a side effect."

Very much a self-evident effect, Asuka could see the results firsthand. A line several yards wide cleaved through the carrier, all the way down to the hangar two or three decks down. Fires were already starting to throw smoke out into the air. Asuka glanced back up at the horizon, only to see the Angel leap out of the water again and cut a battleship apart. A sickly grey smear of ichor stained the ocean, trailing away from the carrier, mingling with the wakes of nearly twenty surviving ships.

The tarp billowed out around the Evangelion again, coated with blood and beading water. Asuka uncurled her index finger and tapped a particular command sequence. "I can handle this," She sighed and reached out over her back, even as a series of charges detonated along her back and shoulders. "... Though I really never wanted to fight like a samurai."

Shredded by deployment, the tarp gave way completely save for a ragged collar around the Evangelion's neck. It clung to her throat and caught on the shoulder storage fins, trailing behind like a scarf. A hilt as long as three of her Evangelion's hands popped out from over her shoulder. Drawn overhand, the weapon was half as long as the Eva was tall and heaved up by payload rocket assist. It all but leapt into Asuka's waiting hand. Held under tension by a core of self-tightening cable bundles, a series massive double-edged ceramic segments clicked and linked together.

NERV called it the Non-Progressive Prototype Blade. Asuka called it _Wellenbrecher._

Unfurling her field once more, Asuka turned to track the rushing surge of water. She grinned faintly and tasted LCL -_blood- _again. _Tasty treat- good to eat, come to me my sweet..._

* * *

><p>Stolocker stared at the radio, jaw hanging slack. "What is that girl <em>doing<em>?"

Misato paid him no mind, though Asuka's impromptu rhyme stuck in her head just as insistently. Hands were clamped tight around every rail and console, leaving knuckles strained white. Misato was no different, holding on to the a stanchion for dear life. The sudden jerk from earlier had nearly knocked everyone to the floor. Meanwhile Asuka had already figured out how to bait the hook, maybe faster than the Major could have, but Misato wasn't feeling picky right then either. She scanned the bridge and every screen she could for information.

The planes in the air were at best expensive lifeboats- no way for surface to air missile strikes. A muted screech of metal and booms marked the destruction of another ship, probably loaded with extra fuel or ammunition. More and more of the Eva's specialized weapons were being taken out of play by _random chance_, and that bugged Misato far more than anything. A _smart_ enemy she could respect. This one was _dumb_, for now. She glanced at a sonar screen, watching a wobbly patch of water move closer to the center line and the _Over the Rainbow _itself.

_Faster_, but there was only one of it... and it liked to jump. Misato leaned around her handhold, hissing. "Admiral!"

The old man snarled in return. "What!?"

Misato waved her free arm, sketching out a tightening circle. "Bring everyone in closer- all the surviving ships!"

The carrier shook again, from what no one could say for certain. Another officer rattled off a damage report, but their engines were still running at the red. Stolocker forced his cap further down on his head and growled. "That's insane Katsuragi!"

"Running isn't working and we can't spread out. Don't you realize guerilla tactics when you see them?" The blank stare the Admiral gave her answered that. Well, it wasn't _her_ fault nobody else understood Unnatural Warfare. She just shrugged, wide eyed and expectant. "Whatever you can manage then! It's like fighting an animal submarine. Bigger shapes in the water might confuse it- it can vault the carrier, but can it jump three ships in a line?"

Outside, Asuka stood her Evangelion on the bow once more, remnants of the tarp fluttering around her neck. Arms held wide at its side, the massive sword waited, presented edge on toward the ocean. The girl's voice crackled out over the radio, lilting and bubbly. "I like Misato's plan, but you're going to have to wait- it's coming back for round two!"

* * *

><p>She was glad the sun was out for her debut combat. Even with the armor, Asuka could feel the heat through her Evangelion's skin. She watched the rushing bulge of water curved around the fleet, tracing a lazy teardrop shape as it circled. It knew she was there now- no need to rush in. Crew on ships all across the fleet rushed to life-boats, letting the freighters churn ahead on autopilot. The destroyers and battleships stayed in though, alternating fire and doing their level best to score a hit.<p>

"Misato-" She snapped, urgent and focused.

The Major's voice came back immediately. "What do you need, Asuka?"

Scanning the carrier and rest of the fleet, Asuka bit her lip, thinking. "Is the deck clear?"

Admiral Stolocker answered in the affirmative, and Asuka nodded mostly to herself. The pilot shifted, holding her sword forward at the ready, hands stacked on top of the other along the hilt. Ahead, the Angel completed its turn and accelerated, angling in straight for the _Over the Rainbow_. Asuka started counting seconds. "When I say, hit the breaks. Cut the engines, drop the anchor, whatever works."

"Wha-?" Misato was only confused for a fraction of a second. "Okay! You got it."

The girl dismissed the reply as soon as it was made. Seconds, she had to count them. That's what she needed. Asuka kept her eyes on the approaching bulge of water. _Vier, drei_. White curls of foam built up on the leading edge, spilling over and spreading out. _Zwei_. For a moment she wondered why it wasn't diving lower, letting the ocean hide such an obvious tell. The rest of Asuka's mind decided it wasn't important yet and kept counting down. Just off the bow, the bulge of water dropped, and Asuka's heart leapt into her throat. She screamed the order.

_Ein! _

Exploding out of the water, the Angel sailed up into the air and lashed down with its bladed limb. It hung there in the sky for a long, agonizing second, and Asuka shouted to Misato. The pilot couldn't see it, but a hand came down on the throttle and the carrier groaned, jerking to not a stop but a bouncing, skidding turn. There was too much ship moving entirely too fast to stop in any meaningful way, but the sudden slowing was _more _than enough. With it's jump miss-timed, the Angel screamed as it bottomed out hard on the deck, ripping up deck plates and crushing what few aircraft remained. One wide fin gouged a hole in the bridge structure, leaving a handful of floors gutted to open air.

Asuka meanwhile stepped neatly to the side, letting the Angel grind along the deck. The ship lurched and bobbed in the ocean, suddenly off balance as it strained to remain upright. The Evangelion took a pair of stalking steps around, utterly composed even as Asuka raised her weapon. That blade came down and directed the weight of a small building into its cutting edge. White flesh split apart, drenching the deck in grey blood once more. Some flooded into the holes and rents torn in the surface, running down into the hangar and lower decks. From her vantage point, Asuka could see the crew already leaping to action inside, taking fire hoses to the soupy mess and growing fires.

Buried tip first up to the second segment in the deck, the sword had cleaved the Angel's tail off in one blow.

The foremost third of the Angel almost slid to the far end of the carrier, leaving it's limp tail far behind. _Over the Rainbow_ groaned as the bow lurched out of the water. Forced to take strains it hadn't been meant to, the ship groaned at the middle, tugging hard on every bolt and weld. The Angel's massive weight settled at the stern, just to the side of the bridge island. The creature's alien fins twitched and spasmed on the flight deck, thrashing for a bit before going still. Blood spilt off the carrier's edges and into the water, spreading dirty white gunk in its dwindling wake. With hands wrapped around the hilt, Unit 02 wrenched the sword out and gave it a rough shake.

Standing bow-legged against the deck tilt and coated up to her knees in grey ichor, Asuka stood between the pieces of her kill, turning to face the bridge. "So, how's _that_ for Angel hunti-_Grkl!"_

A wall of white half as tall as the Evangelion slammed into its torso, cracking dorsal armor and throwing a glittering cloud of red flakes into the air. Against a human the thumb-sized shards would have been deadly hazardous shrapnel. The Angel's tail however felt no pain. Like a severed lizard's tail, the limb squirmed and bucked, coiling across the carrier and bashing against the Evangelion again and again.

Inside the plug, Asuka coughed, feeling her ribs creak from synchronization backlash. Pushed to the ships' port edge, the Evangelion windmilled over open ocean. She willed her AT field into being, angling and aspecting it to protect her against all comers. The flailing tail hit thin air, stopping cold against the crackling orange boundary. Tangled around her free arm, the Evangelion's power cable stretched taut, holding her and the Evangelion leaning over the edge. She stalled, balanced on the arches of her feet while the front half of the Angel stirred.

Misato shouted from inside the bridge, ordering the crew to activate the cable winch. The tail kept thrashing, mashing deep craters into the carrier's top level and crushing the chambers below. _Shit._ Asuka scowled, staring through her Eva's eyes at the spreading damage._ Shit-shit_. Secondary fires were spreading throughout the ship, and the rest of the Angel was stirring. The finned bulk shuffled forward, seemingly desperate to get out of the air and back into the water. Small favors it wasn't whipping everywhere with the blade-tentacle.

Asuka looked up at the winch holding her up, then the bridge. The view jumped forward, zooming in far enough to see the shattered windows and handfuls of people belting orders into radios. Misato was spread between three phones, half working alongside Stolocker and half around him from breath to breath. Turning back to the tail, Asuka let out an ugly snort. That thing _had to go_. If she left too long and there wouldn't be any carrier to fight _from_, and she sure as hell didn't want any more people to _die_ either!

Shifting her grip on the sword, Asuka tugged on the cable and snapped her weight forward, dropping her AT field in the same instant. The Angel tail writhed and reared up almost like it could see her, but that suited her just fine. Thrusting the sword up, she skewered the tail at the thickest point before the sliced end, leaving the tip of the blade sticking out the other side. The carrier shook as the tail beat another line of dents into the metal, and before Asuka could move, the severed limb swung back and caught her full in the chest.

The Evangelion sailed bodily over the edge of the deck before it jerked back. The plug wrenched hard in the socket along her spine, nearly snapping off on the winch end. _Over the Rainbow_ swung in the water a few dozen yards as the Eva spent all its energy pulling the ship. Asuka hung over the water for a split second, watching the tail and Angel slip back under the surface.

Then she fell.

* * *

><p><em>Cold!<em>

Saltwater soaked into the Evangelion's every nook and cranny, boiling under water and throwing up a cloud of rapidly collapsing bubbles. The Eva itself sank not unlike a stone, corkscrewing down and spindling oddly around the still-connected power socket. Inside the entry plug, Asuka's arms shook, straining against the controls as the tumble forced her into out of the seat and into the walls. She grit her teeth and _heaved_, jerking hard on the butterfly sticks. The Evangelion understood her mental directive and threw its arms out, sweeping through the water and stopping the spin.

A hundred meters down, any light in the water was so faint as to be useless for regular eyes. Floodlights all over the Eva's neck and shoulders threw out beams of white that caught clouds of dust and scattered fish as well as the spreading cloud of angelic blood. Looking up, Asuka could still see the hulls of the Pacific Fleet, silhouetted against the afternoon sun. On the surface, ships slowly moved into tighter formations, lashing their hulls together and providing mutual support. Asuka could only see that by the cigar-shaped shadows changing position, or the simple map her Eva's on board computer provided.

More importantly, the Angel was _gone_.

All told she'd been sinking for less than fifteen seconds, and the radio snapped on. "Asuka! Asuka can you hear me?!"

The Eva panned its head left and right. Silt and whatever else was in the ocean cut her visibility to damn near zero. She flipped to other vision modes while she answered. "I'm here Misato."

"The winch is shot, not that we ever expected to have to reel an Eva in by their umbilical cable." The officer's voice came in clear, which made sense really. Asuka wasn't that far below. The pilot took a short breath, surprisingly calm given the circumstances. Still high on adrenaline, she supposed.

Misato had kept talking too. "So, just sit tight for now. The Angel's shoved off somewhere- it's hard to track by sonar and radar, maybe something to do with it's AT-Field."

Asuka nodded, more out of habit than anything. They'd have needed a NERV setup to get plug video. "I can sense the thing with my field if I tune it right but-"

"You can make an AT field do that?"

"Of course I can do that." The redhead snorted, too distracted to feel particularly offended. "I was going to teach Rei and Ikari too."

There was a shout on the other end of the line, the Admiral giving orders and people moving to and fro. Misato came back a second later. "We're on damage control up here and preparing for the third round. Is there anything we can do here?"

Asuka scanned the surrounding area with thermal enhancement, not seeing anything worth mentioning. She twisted around the cable, uncomfortably like bait on a hook. Everything was sluggish, even if the Type-C dive equipment- The girl sighed then, groaning. "Stupid rush job!"

The Major stammered, letting out a brief sound of indignation. Asuka shot back with a clarification. "No no, it's the armor," She shrugged her Evangelion's shoulder, testing her theory. Sluggish, very sluggish. "That' s it. Wasn't built with the dive equipment in mind. My buoyancy's all screwed."

"Are you going to be alright?"

Asuka felt a frown work its way onto her face. The concern was _nice _but... "I'll be _fine_, I just can't maneuver worth a damn unless I blow the skin off." Switching to light-enhancement, Asuka tried to make heads or tails of the murky Caribbean. "Dropped my sword too. Do you guys see it up there?"

A half-dozen ships with surviving sensors were patched in then, alongside Misato and the _Over the Rainbow_. A chorus of 'negatives' and 'no ma'am's were her only response. Meanwhile the Evangelion's eyes began to adjust, or maybe Asuka's were. Her synchronization was hovering at a steady eighty-eight, and she resisted the urge to clamp down on it like vice. _Trying_ for sync just made it harder.

Without a frame of reference either, there was almost no way to tell how long she'd been underwater. The LCL and Evangelion itself would protect her from most everything except the Angel, which _still_ wasn't showing up. A flash of white caught her eye, but it turned out to be a dead fish. _Normal _dead fish, her mind amended. She let out a long slow breath, head drooping forward. The most recent surge of adrenaline drained out as quickly as it had arrived, leaving her shaky.

Staring out into the bloody murk, Asuka triggered a new control. Her left shoulder pylon popped open and revealed a boxy and familiar shape; Progressive Knife. She drew the weapon and took a deep breath. Now all she had to do was wait.

Crap. She _sucked_ at waiting.

* * *

><p>Smoke rose up in thick plumes over several miles of ocean, marking ruined and sinking ships. More than a few survivors were burning too, with crew fighting hard to put out the fires. The fleet had lost over a dozen ships, but no one was certain yet. The bulk had thankfully been skeleton crews, freighters loaded with Evangelion weapons and replacement parts, alongside more pedestrian fuel and naval materials. Past that, there was no clear word on casualties. Hundreds easily, to say nothing below decks, probably more.<p>

Misato bit her lip and looked out over the horizon, barely noticing the wind rushing into the bridge. The windows had shattered when the Angel jumped and _fell_ onto the carrier. _Over the Rainbow's_ flight deck was absolutely totaled, left crumpled and shredded. The Evangelion's umbilical cable had caught on an aircraft elevator and crushed the device. Now the carrier just struggled to stay level. Massive tears had been ripped all the way through to the hangar below.

Mere minutes after active combat, the Admiral had ordered damage control and rescue.

"We can't afford that." She turned to stare the older man down, not at all bothered by his height, rank, or weight. "We need to get ready for round three or we're all good as dead."

Almost everyone present on the bridge fell silent at that statement. Officers and crew slid their eyes over to her, and Misato met every glance with a full, sharp stare of her own. There was not going to be _any_ miscommunication, not here, not now. Hands were tight on consoles while the wind tugged at shirtsleeves. The Admiral moved over, apparently calm and carefully restrained. The air _still_ shook from his passing.

"Explain to me _why_, Katsuragi." Stolocker stopped just short of Misato's toes. He threw his arm out, waving past the broken windows and the deceptively calm waters. "I have men and women in the water _waiting_ for pickup."

Misato just folded her arms over her chest, scowling. "Simple. Angels don't hang around for any reason. It probably attacked somewhere else and we simply haven't heard it yet, and any help we call in is going to come in _after_ that crisis."

Now eyes were sliding between them. A part of Misato thought it was something like a strategic tennis volley, bouncing between ideologies. She forced her mouth to stay fixed and scowling. A smirk would've sent the wrong message. Officers halted their tasks mid-motion. Some had been clearing glass away from consoles, others were in the process of being bandaged.

The Admiral stared down at Misato, and white of his eyes stood out in the shadows cast by his hat."So what then, you expect me to leave them stranded in the water?"

"For now? Yeah, that's what I expect, Admiral." Misato dropped her arms and stalked across the small walkway between bridge stations. She leaned up, standing on tip-toes but not caring, not as long as it got her nose-to-nose with the old fossil. "I expect that, because I am in command of this fleet until the Angel is dead. I expect that because if we're not ready for the next attack we _all_ will die, and then _no one_ will be around to save your people."

Stolocker growled through his steel-wire beard and bristly moustache. His hat down to his fists were shaking, before he grit out a quiet, furious 'Yes Major'. Misato had no trouble hearing what he _hadn't _said. She looked around the bridge, admittedly aware that guiding aircraft was the Operation Room's responsibility.

She caught the eye of another officer and nodded, speaking quietly. "How many fighters made it into the air? Never mind, doesn't matter; tell them to run search patterns for people in the water as long as their fuel lasts. After that they should go to the nearest airfield."

The man blinked once but nodded, relaying the orders, but during a break he paused. Holding the microphone against his shoulder, he frowned. "But shouldn't we keep fighters on station anyway? They're full on munitions."

Misato stretched languidly, for the moment unconcerned about an impending Angel attack. Uncertainty was her stock and trade after all. To his question, Misato just gave the man a slightly bloodthirsty smile. "Well, the Angel is probably going to attack a long time before those jets have to land so..."

The Admiral glanced over, and the trembling eased, slightly.

Kaji leaned through the an open door, already run ragged. He'd been bandaged, gauze taped around his head and soaked through with blood, and more had trailed down his face to stain the collar of his shirt. In short, he looked like hell, and Misato winced.

"Yo, Katsuragi." He waved then, a little sluggishly. She watched the inspector stare blankly at the officers and crew milling about the bridge. "So, what's happening?"

She ignored him and turned to another sailor. _Now_ Misato allowed herself to smirk. "Question: About how many torpedoes can we put in the water?"

* * *

><p>Asuka wasn't sure what was worse; not being <em>able <em>to see or having nothing _to _see. She panned the Evangelion's head left and right, having long since shut off the floodlights. Fidgeting, she flexed her actual fingers and rolled her shoulders, letting out a low, short grunt "M'sato gonna owe me ten dozen massages after this..."

_Waiting_ still sucked too. Bits of grit and tiny marine life spun in curling clouds around the Evangelion's eyes. It was _just_ enough movement to catch her attention, but frustratingly random. The blood wasn't helping either. Thick and silty, more like mud than anything that belonged in veins. Asuka sighed and let a bubble of spent air out. Boredom always brought out her annoyingly analytic side.

Then the ocean currents changed. Water started to move, pushed or pulled by something Asuka couldn't say, but the surrounding ocean started to clear. Twisting shafts of sunlight reached down to her level, and one played over a distant, deadly familiar shape. Adrenaline spiked up and Asuka snapped to action, directing the camera to zoom and taking in whatever detail she could.

Half a mile away, the Angel hung nearly motionless in the water. Not dead, as far as the pattern sensors informed her. It had swum around and collected its tail, or maybe its tail had collected it, she wasn't sure. In any case, the clean slice she'd inflicted had changed, healed together with bulging, tumorous-looking growths. At the base of the tail just behind that wound, a thin trail of fresh grey blood leaked out from where she'd stabbed _Wellenbrecher._ The sword haft jutted out at an angle along the Angel's belly.

And, as soon as Asuka realized that, the Angel twisted. It went from a drifting dead stop to relentless speed. The leading edges along its massive beak and fins were churning with white froth, driving up spiraling corkscrews of ocean dust, dead fish and blood.

Stuck dangling on the umbilical, Asuka spat and jerked hard at the controls. There was only so much she could _do_ without a full range of motion! Her extra armor was great, but _it_ threw off her dive upgrades too. Biting off a sigh, she put the could-haves and if-onlys out of her mind. Instead, the Evangelion swung its arms and legs, pushing enough to start swinging. Ahead the Angel charged in, cleaving through the water like it wasn't even there. It blew past in a near miss, sending Asuka wildly out of control. Trailing at the end of the power cable, Asuka swung around in an awkward, erratic circle. Up on the surface, the _Over the Rainbow_ was probably pitching to one side. At that moment though, Asuka could not afford to care.

Curling around, the Angel lined up for another pass. Asuka let out a quiet snort and nodded. As long as she was still hooked to power she might as well _use it_. Unfolding her AT-Field, Asuka visualized an actualized opposition between her and the creature. _This_ was what she was good at, and Asuka was more than ready to prove it.

The Angel finished its turn and spun neatly, charging in once more. Asuka continued to spin on the end of the line, kicking her legs to steady the orbit. The whole time, she kept her eye and attention on one particular bit of ocean, the one place she declared immutable. _She_ was no where near that point, but that honestly didn't matter as long as the Angel crossed the invisible line- and it did. The creature hit her unfolded AT-field almost head on, and for a moment it _compacted_, its beak-nose flattening out before snapping forward. A heavy, concussive clap of displaced water created an ominous swell up on the surface, and it sent Asuka whirling again, even though she was hundreds of feet away.

Energy spent, the Angel skidded along the plane-aspected obstacle, it's own water-cutting fields tearing a gaping line in Asuka's before it deflected fully. It beat the water with the massive tail before shooting off again, gearing up for a third pass. Inside the plug, Asuka unhooked her legs from the seat and let out a long, slow breath. It wouldn't fall for _that_ again.

At the moment though, the Angel was content to take an even longer circuit, probably thinking of a new angle to attack from. Asuka wasn't going to complain, short of it making things _complicated_. It was an Angel, she was a pilot. She was going to kill it, no need to gild the lily. In the meantime though, she wondered. Raising her Eva's arm, Asuka focused, tugging at the region of altered space that defined her AT-Field. She'd hundreds of experiments back in Germany, but none of them with or even _under_ water. The Angel's water-blade trick didn't look _that _complex, she wondered.

The radio snapped on and Misato's voice filled her ear. "Asuka! We're getting tugged around a lot up here, what's going on!"

"It's trying to kill me and probably the fleet." Asuka couldn't help the distant tone, focused as she was. She swished her arm through the water a few times, but no joy on reducing resistance. "Right now I'm trying to figure out how the Angel moves so fast."

"Shit- Well we're having trouble tracking it on radar and sonar, but we've got cameras in the water now and gearing up for torpedo cover." Misato clicked off the line for a second, and Asuka wiggled her fingers, keeping one Evangelion eye out for the Angel. Misato came back a second later. "As for movement, the Admiral's boys tell me it's something like a pump-jet. Like a jet-ski"

Another familiar voice broke in then, though Asuka wasn't up for her normal routine, not right then. She could still _feel _Kaji's smirk through her radio. "So like that one time in Cuba?"

Misato squawked, stammered and for a moment, completely lost her military composure. "I told you never to mention that again!"

"Relax Katsuragi, you looked fine." He didn't wait for an answer from Misato. Instead he focused on Asuka, audibly concerned. "So how are you doing, Asuka?"

Ahead, the Angel was getting closer and moving fast. It was going to eat up the mile between them in no time. To Kaji she huffed and tossed her hair by habit more than anything. "Bit busy for you right now, Kaji-san. Go flirt with Misato some more."

Letting go of any progress on water-cutting, Asuka refocused her field on defense. She fixed a point of space ahead of where she'd be, where the Angel was going to try and cut her down. The massive fish-thing hurtled forward, and Asuka counted the seconds before impact. At the last moment though, the Angel shifted, abusing its flexibility and cutting a new spiral path through the surrounding ocean. It swept past her field, only cutting a slice out of one edge as its fin crossed her Absolute Territory.

Asuka reeled herself in mentally and physically, throwing a warding hand up to block the inevitable. The hasty last-second barrier she put up between her and the Angel shattered. A half-second later the full weight of the Angel slammed into her Evangelion's stomach, and Asuka felt a rib _crack_. Acceleration forced her forward, bent half over the seat's center console, and her jaw clamped down so hard it was a miracle she missed breaking any teeth. After that, her whole face _ached_ on top of the growing pain in her side. A second, metallic _snap_ echoed out through her Evangelion, and for a split-second, the plug went icy cold.

Her power cable had been ripped out, and emergency batteries kicked on. Plugsuit life-support spun up, numbing her chest and forcing her body to relax. She would have rather dealt with the pain. Asuka heaved back in her seat and grabbed the controls once more, turning her attention back outside. Pinned by water and the Angel's own constant movement, Asuka at _least_ had more free reign to move, unhooked. She glanced at her left hand and grinned. Raising that arm, she brought the progressive knife down into the Angel's snout, hard.

The strike had cut a ragged slice through the tip of its beak, well forward of the tiny bird mask at the top crown. Oddly, it wasn't using the blade tendril either, just letting it trail behind. A fresh plume of blood flooded into the ocean, and the Angel _bucked_, flinging her up then as soon as her blade met flesh. Tumbling hard end over end, Asuka only got one glimpse of the Angel before something completely aborted her rational train of thought.

"Nobody said anything about teeth!"

Banking over and curling up like a serpent, the Angel stood poised before her Eva. It hung there for a long second, just watching. Then the water-cutting whale opened its mouth and bit down.

Whatever pain Asuka expected never came. She cracked one eye open and checked a damage report- superficial. The _armor still worked_. Outside, Asuka and her Evangelion hung out of the Angel's mouth by one leg, stuck limp even as the Angel carved through the water. A handful of it's teeth had broken off against the ceramic wrapped around her Evangelion's thigh. _Ha! Serves you right!_

Still, she needed her _weapon_. The pilot ran through her options and resources, scowling more and more every passing second. Her batteries were good with twelve-minutes of power left sure, but using her AT field for any length of time was right out. The progressive knife thankfully hadn't gone anywhere, still buried in the Angel's nose and just out of reach.

"Asuka! We lost the umbilical- what's happening!?"

"Damn thing tried to _eat me!_" The pilot bent the Evangelion forward at the waist, reaching for the Angel's nose and coming up short. "It's gonna take me a sec to get loose."

"No that's _perfect!_ Listen, we can track your Eva, and we've got enough more than enough torpedoes up he-" A sudden burst acceleration cut Misato off, and Asuka's vision greyed out along her right side.

Shoved into the plug wall, Asuka forced her awareness out, into the Eva and the surrounding ocean. The Angel twisted hard in the water, whipping the Eva around by its thigh. It spun and twisted and angled up for the surface, towards the aircraft carrier's hull.

The Angel turned, curving around while Asuka flailed both as the Eva and inside the entry plug. In one smooth arc, the Angel turned and _ground_ Asuka against the ship above. Shrieks of metal on ceramic echoed through the plug and every inch of the Evangelion itself, and Asuka felt the sudden shaking twice over. Barely five seconds had passed since the Angel had caught her.

Misato's voice came back a moment later, full of static and sounding liquid. "-suka! What's that noise?!"

Asuka peeled herself away from the wall and rubbed her brow. She sucked in a quick breath and pulled her hand back, not at all surprised to see it come away bloody. "Just... getting my bearings."

Whipping around for another pass, the Angel carved out into open water. Asuka found her Evangelion folded over the whale-thing's nose. Water tore at the Evangelion's arms and shoulder pylons, pulling out interior bolts and connections. The pilot willed her attention forward, eyes focusing in on the bit of red and black metal still wedged on the white, toothy beak. Her massive hand curled around the knife hilt and ripped it free, throwing up a new plume of blood. The Angel shuddered, biting down harder with broken teeth.

Tumbling, the Angel rolled her in the water like an alligator, or a frenzied shark. Asuka's own thigh _burned_, even as her Evangelion's limb creaked. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the fleet getting closer and closer. By that point Asuka had lost track of her adrenaline highs, but another fresh burst flooded her veins. Pinned or not though, she still had her free hand _and_ her knife. Screaming, Asuka brought her empty fist down into the nearest exposed tooth, cracking it apart in one shot. A second hit shattered more enamel, as did the third and forth.

Not enough to get free though. Now Asuka turned to the knife. Flipping it over in her fingers, she brought it down overhand, carving a new scar into the Angel's snout. It bucked and twisted hard, but still held on. More slashes carved away chunks of white flesh, and the Angel bore down faster on the fleet flagship. Asuka risked a look over her shoulder and paled. Spending minutes of her backup battery, she unfurled her field.

The Angel bit into the sudden obstacle, one of the water-cutting fields around its right fin collapsed and forced it to grind along the altered space for seconds or more. Stopped short of the carrier by a hundred yards, the Angel coiled up and snapped its head around. It's mouth opened at the last second and Asuka found herself _free_ for the first time in what felt like forever. She tumbled through the water and pumped her arms and legs- fighting for whatever bit of distance she could get.

Misato and Kaji said something, but Asuka didn't have time to listen. The Angel spun around again, faster than a snake and just as limber. It cut through the water, mouth yawning wide open for another bite-and-pin maneuver. This time Asuka was ready for it. She kicked down, catching one armored heel on the Angel's mauled nose. Flipping overhead in the water, she, caught her hand around the base of the whipping-blade tendril and slid back. The creature's undulating mass of flesh spread out beneath her for hundreds of yards, going narrow and wide as its whale-manta body shot forward.

Orange lines and telemetry spread out through Asuka's field of view, highlighting her sword hilt, just past the tumorous scar. She reached out then, part computer assistance and part raw skill. Her fingers hooked around the massive pommel and her whole arm jerked, hyperextended as she bled off momentum. Motion caught her eye, and for a second, Asuka swore she was seeing double. Ahead, veiny boils and pustules of flesh lined the ragged wound, and wriggling shapes squirmed inside. Infantile angels, part regeneration and part spawn.

Asuka drove her knife into the nearest blister and cut the embryo apart. "...Gross."

Hundreds of feet ahead, the Angel's nose dipped down towards darker waters. Asuka had a second to note the delay of watching the body curl and flex away from her. A second later, the tail snapped up, tossing her away from the Angel and ripping the sword free in the same move. Stuck at neutral buoyancy, Asuka twisted slowly in the water while the Angel prepared for another high-speed charge. Asuka settled back into her seat and let out a long, slow breath. Six minutes of battery power and dropping fast, Spreading her arms, she waited. Progressive knife in her left hand, _Wellenbrecher_ in her right.

A thought-command reconnected her to the fleet. "Misato, Kaji? I think I could use some help down here..."

* * *

><p><em>Over the Rainbow<em> listed dangerously off to port and threw smoke into the sky from a dozen fires. Half the bridge officers had rushed below decks to help with damage control. Katsuragi Misato stood at the radio console while Kaji hovered behind. Not a concern, not when her _enemy_ was down there with _Asuka_.

The radio hissed out static, and Asuka's voice pitched faster and higher with every word. "I have ten seconds before this thing hits me again. Misato, If you've got a plan, do it fast!"

Misato leaned into the radio and pressed the call button. "Asuka, you are going to let the Angel hit you and then hold on for as long as you can."

_"You want me to what!?"_

Seconds ticked by even as she explained, but it was _necessary_. "Our torpedoes can't track it, but they can track _you_. Get away from the Angel as soon as the torpedoes get close."

"Okay I'll do it-ohshithereit_comes!"_

Misato turned to the nearest officer, already holding a phone to his ear and waiting for the order. She opened her mouth-

* * *

><p>"-<em>Fire torpedoes!"<em>

The Angel slammed into Asuka's Evangelion, this time catching her not on the beak or nose, but in the shoulder where the fin flared out and merged into the beast's neck. Asuka coughed, wondering for a moment if _another_ rib had just cracked. She put the pain out of her mind and focused. Sword and knife in hand, she rolled in the crook of the Angel's body. Swinging hard, her sword cleaved a long line into the Angel's side, sending a spiraling jet of blood into the water. The Angel _shoved_, flexing its body and throwing her forward only to whip around and slam her again with its tail.

Thrown around her plug _again_, Asuka spat out blood and snarled. Damn thing was _learning_!

A new countdown timer popped up in her display, marking time to first torpedo impact. For the moment alone in the water, it was a _great_ reminder they were focusing on _her_ and not the Angel. Biting off a curse, Asuka kicked hard and swam, shedding hubcap-sized flakes of cracked composite as she went. The Angel met her halfway then, circling around and darting in for another attack. Rolling on her back relative to the Angel's top, Asuka swung her knife down and drove it in deep. Acceleration ripped a long line of ragged flesh out of the Angel's head and back, spending momentum until the Evangelion shuddered to a halt.

Asuka shook her head then and worked her knife in deeper, holding on for dear life. To her right, the base of the blade-whip tendril rose up beside her, trailing behind the Angel even as it hurtled through the water. Raising her sword, Asuka hacked it off for good measure, sending the length of white flesh off into the ocean. Sonar pings started to bounce around Asuka's ears, enhanced or interpreted by the Evangelion's own sensors. The torpedoes were close now, filling the surrounding ocean and hunting for the one thing they _could_ see; her.

Just ahead and below the rise of it's round head was the tiny, chitinous bone mask, like the First Angel's. _Wellenbrecher's_ pommel made short work of it. The Angel _screamed_ then, making a sound other than moving water and muscle. It shook the water and Asuka inside the plug, rattling her bones against her heart and lungs. Bucking hard, the Angel flung her off its back and into the open water for a third time, already moving in for a kill. Its gap-toothed mouth yawned wide and swallowed her whole.

For a second it was dark, and _warmer_ than the surrounding ocean. Floodlights snapped on, and Asuka found her Eva squished between hard palate and a tongueless jaw. "_Shit!_ Misato! I'm _in it's goddamn mouth!"_

No answer. Against all odds _Wellenbrecher_ had made it inside too, but there was no room to swing. Crunched in as she was, Asuka shifted and _kicked_, aiming for more of the Angel's massive teeth. Behind her the Angel bellowed again. Glancing past her shoulder pylon, a flash of red against white sent the blood draining out of her face. A goddamn _core_. Now she didn't just have to get _out_, but keep the thing's freaking mouth _open_.

She kicked harder, breaking one tooth, then another. Blood wafted out of ruined gums even as the Angel rushed around the Caribbean. Asuka's depth gauge flicked on and she watched it climb, drop and climb. Gravity and acceleration tugged at her hair, and she forced herself to focus. Along one Evangelion shoulder, a battery shorted out, lost to saltwater contamination. The impact timer ticked down faster and faster, and Asuka swore. Stupid adrenaline throwing off her perception of time!

Inching forward, Asuka worked her way to the Angel's mouth and shoved one arm out. A shoulder pylon snapped off against a surviving tooth, but Asuka paid it no mind. Easier leverage in the long run. Asuka worked to get her legs under her, bearing down hard on the butterfly sticks as she urged her Evangelion onward. Her synchronization jumped two points in response. The torpedoes were seconds out, twenty, more likely ten. Planting both feet in the jaw, Asuka _heaved_. The Angel thrashed hard and tried to bite down, but Asuka refused to bend.

Two meters, five, ten, twenty. Braced against her shoulder, Asuka forced the Angel's mouth open, nearly as wide as the Evangelion was tall. Then she pushed it more, arms shaking inside the plug alongside the Evangelion's. The torpedoes were close enough to see, throwing tiny spirals of bubbling vacuum out behind, even as they zeroed in on her red machine. Again Asuka counted down, timing everything down to the closet second. The first torpedo blew past her hip, right into the Angel's mouth.

Asuka didn't bother counting the rest; there were far too many.

* * *

><p>The explosion was few hundred meters away from the <em>Over the Rainbow<em>. A column of water a thousand feet high and a third as wide shot up into the air along with a swell that lifted dozens of surviving ships and people bobbing in the water. Seawater rained down all over the Pacific Fleet, and more than a bit made its way into the bridge, soaking everyone inside. Dripping wet, Misato and Kaji stared out at the calming ocean, and for once, she didn't mind it when his hand found hers.

He glanced out the corner of his eye and squeezed her fingers. "I think it worked."

Misato bit her lip and worked to keep her voice steady. "Yeah."

The carrier _jerked_, hard enough to throw people to the floor, rail and safety rope. Misato spun, using Kaji partly as a handhold and stepladder to find a working phone. "What the hell was that?!"

"Jeez, _overkill much_, Misato?"

As one, the pair from NERV turned to the radio console, blinking dumbly. The ship still tilted hard, shuddering every few seconds. Misato found her voice first, and the smile spread across her face faster than light. "Asuka! Where are you?"

The girl's voice came back dry and matter-of-fact, audibly smirking. "Climbing the damn umbilical. The Evangelion can't swim in this armor, remember?"

Misato nodded, smiling even wider while holding onto the console. She would've fallen over without it. "Roger that. Once you get on board we'll start recovery operations. I'm just waiting on kill-confirmation from the intercept system."

Behind her, Kaji wrapped one arm around her hip and reached for the microphone. An hour earlier, Misato would've slapped his ponytail clean off. Right then, she decided to let it slide. For now. He pressed the transmit key, smiling wide and relieved. "You gave us quite a scare there, Asuka. How're you doing?"

Outside a red hand shot out of the water and wrapped around the edge of the carrier deck, just as Asuka answered back. "_Tired_. And my Eva's almost out of power."

Misato smirked and broke in, nudging Kaji aside. "We'll get the spare socket hooked up a soon as we can." The ship shook _again_ when Asuka's other arm came out of the water, along with her _sword_. "Had to get that back too, huh?"

"It's kind of grown on me." Asuka hauled herself completely out of the water and slumped forward, and both the machine and pilot sighed. "Guess I'll _have_ to thank Ikari when we get back."

A flushed, sweat-streaked crewman charged out the open bridge door, a fist full of crumpled printouts in his hand. "Major Katsur-"

The Angel burst out of the water less than a hundred feet away from the aircraft carrier, covered in new, tumorous growth.

* * *

><p>Cameras on the Evangelion's back and shoulders fed video to Asuka's forward-facing view. The Angel had <em>changed<em>. Covered still-healing scars and the squirming pod-growths, it stood on the water almost like an insect. Its fins had extended at the tips into long striding legs, but Asuka was _completely_ certain it could still swim like nothing else. The water-cutting AT field now pressed into the waves, and as Asuka watched the water shift beneath the Angel's shadow, she couldn't help but think of a damn _hovercraft_.

Sliding sideways across the water, the Angel almost lazily circled the carrier, sizing it up for a meal. Its tail still dragged in the water, and the stump of it's whip-blade bulged with squirming tissue. Asuka sat in her plug, pitched forward by gravity and all too aware that she had ninety seconds of power left. The spare umbilical waited on board another cargo ship, a lucky survivor. Seeing that ship lashed against _Over the Rainbow's_ side, Asuka watched massive cranes hoist the power plug out of the bay while men with ropes dragged it further onto the deck. Tens of seconds, minutes of preparation.

Turning her attention back to the Angel, Asuka took a knee and heaved her Evangelion upright. She left _Wellenbrecher_ on the deck, carrying it would have just drained her batteries faster. No progressive knife, no guns, just her fists. The Angel pivoted lightly in the water, turning its beak and cracked bone-face.

Asuka raised her hands and grit her teeth, for _once _unable to bring out her customary bravado. She watched the power timer tick down. "Yeah... I can handle this."

The impact of the pressure wave was the first thing that registered, before the ocean simply erupted. Asuka rocked back in her seat and felt her jaw go slack. The radio hummed in her ear, and Admiral Stolocker's voice rumbled out. "_Fire again!"_

* * *

><p>Cruise missiles, anti-ship warheads, and sixteen-inch guns bombarded the Angel from three sides or more. The <em>second<em> it had surfaced, the Admiral had put in the order to all his surviving ships. Detonations and the concussive impact of thousand-pound artillery shook the bridge. Misato's nose and eyes started to water as rocket fuel and explosive fumes filled the air. Outside and wreathed by black clouds and fire, the Angel _screamed_, slewing around the water even as more guns turned to track it.

A line of missiles stitched a near miss in the water, throwing up massive columns of hot water one after another. Decks of nearby ships and the carrier itself were pelted with a fresh coat of the Caribbean. Still less than a hundred yards away from the carrier, the Angel turned. Misato dashed for the window and leaned out, waving away the smoke and ash. She saw the Angel, bloody and mauled along every surface. Hundreds of yards of flesh boiled with squirming growths, and just behind the bone mask, the whip-tentacle's stump split apart.

New material spiraled out of the tear, unfurling into a second larger mask that framed a sharp slash of red crystal. Not a core as Misato recognized it, and less than a second after the thing finished forming, a beam of white-pink light raked across the ocean. A missile cruiser melted in half and detonated, but not before being thrown up out of the water on a column of discharged energy. The first Angel's ranged attack.

Thrown aside earlier, Kaji pushed himself off a console and stared out at the sudden attack. His jaw worked once, twice, then he caught Misato's eye. "I'll... I'll be right back! Help Asuka!"

Misato blinked and whirled in place, shouting at his back. "Wh-What? Kaji!" She spat and scrambled over to Stolocker and his remaining bridge crew. Vaulting a cabinet and row of screens, she dragged the radio set from his hand to her mouth. "Target the weapon crystal!"

* * *

><p>Hurtling down the stairs and over ladders, Kaji barely had the presence of mind to keep a hand <em>close<em> to a rail. Corridors blurred into each other as he dashed past one door, then the next. Half his crazy plan banked on one particular cargo having survived the battle. The other half of his crazy plan depended on _him_ surviving the battle. Fire and smoke choked nearly every hallway and chamber below decks, while the rest were slick with water and fire-retardant foam.

The ship lurched again, and sunlight streamed through a crack in the hull leading all the way outside. A flash of red and orange up top proved Asuka was up and fighting. Rounding a corner, Kaji's eyes went wide and he _lunged_, scrambling backwards. One hand found a dangling cable. Friction burned his hand, but he jerked to a stop, dangling over the edge of a ragged tear. Spread out about as wide as he was tall, Kaji could see four decks up or down. A bead of sweat dripped down his nose and off, falling twenty feet or more.. Heaving hard, Kaji pulled himself back onto the ledge.

Outside, the Angel fired its new primary weapon, and the temperature inside the carrier jumped up by degrees. Kaji swore and hung on to the cable tighter. It was easy to put on a brave face for Misato and his girl, but the pounding dizziness from his recent concussion made Kaji suddenly and violently aware of not only his situation, but also that he was remarkably out of his element in every way.

Another blast shook the ship, and Kaji muscled his way back onto steady ground. Standing at the edge, the gap seemed to spread wider, and Kaji felt his vision swim. Nothing for it he supposed, not if he wanted to _see_ Misato and his girl again. Stepping back into the hall, Kaji backed against the nearest bulkhead and gave himself the most space for a running start. People shouted in the distance, and more ships exploded outside.

Sucking down a quick breath, Kaji shot forward and _leaped_, hoping his eyes would stay clear long enough to make the landing.

* * *

><p>Debris and grit jumped as Asuka moved, twisting her machine around the carrier deck. Explosive bolts ripped out the remains of the old plug and made way for the replacement. Her voice boomed out from her Evangelion, thrown down by external speakers into the deck while crew hauled the power cable into position. "When I get out of here, I am going to shake every goddamn hand in this fleet, and then I'll kiss the cute ones, you all got that!"<p>

Inside the bridige, Misato leaned on the handset, still bearing down on Stolocker's arm. "_Jawhol_ _Asuka!"_ She turned and pushed the Admiral's hand back toward his face. "Keep hammering that Angel with everything you've got!"

The old man squawked, shouting after her even as Misato darted for another console and free officer. Another blast shook the ocean and rocked the carrier, while ozone and smoke flooded the bridge. Outside the Angel twisted, diving for a moment to dodge the latest wave of missiles before resurfacing, only to let loose another beam.

Hiking around the console, Misato pulled out another radio and paged in on Asuka, urging the girl to get back up and into the fight. "Power's good and batteries are charging, you can do this Asuka!"

The Evangelion loomed close to the bridge, waving one arm at the ongoing ocean battle. "What am I supposed to do?! It's over _there_ and the damn thing's shooting now!"

A concussive boom shook the ship, and a dozen more followed, cannon fire and more missiles. Misato braced a arm over her head and hair while hot air and sulfer stung her nose. "We're the genius soldiers here, we can think of something!"

"Yeah well I-_hohshit AT-Field!"_

The world burned white, and for a moment Misato was back in Antarctica, watching a giant of white stand out against a black sky. Instead she saw an Evangelion in silhouette, and a girl screaming in the face of a searing pink beam. The Angel's attack burned away against Asuka's shield, boiling water and heating the carrier's hull on the abused port side. Steam shot up in scalding towers of white vapor, and Asuka waved her Evangelion's arms. She beat away the steam, oozing contempt.

Defending was enough to catch the Angel's attention, charging in on the thin stilt legs. It dove under, bobbing and weaving past naval artillery fire while fire control aimed missiles _ahead_ of where the Angel was, leading the target. Connected to main power, Asuka put up her field once more, drawing a line in the ocean and throwing down the gauntlet.

The Angel slammed nose-first into the field, coiling hard against the conceptual barrier. Atop the Angel's head, the razor-tipped crystal gathered a charge. Asuka, Misato and everyone else outside saw their vision wash away pink.

* * *

><p>Kaji stumbled to his feet, bloody and sore in places he didn't even want to think about. He passed by men and women fighting fires and damaged systems, working hard to keep the ship afloat. Round one corner and down another set of stairs, lights flickered as <em>Over the Rainbow<em> directed every bit of power it could into the hands of his favorite girl. Finally on the right deck, Kaji started counting doors. He dashed down that last hallway, weaving past vertical pipes and blowing through smoke and lingering fires. Cinders caught in his hair but he didn't have time to pat them out.

The door he needed was up ahead and standing open- small favors, he supposed. One hand on the frame, he wrenched himself around and slid across the tilted deck, landing hard on a pile of crates. Lashed against the deck, they strained under their own weight, creaking ominously. That was fine, he knew what he needed. A black case stood out against the gunmetal grey and olive greens. Pulling it free of the stack, Kaji slapped at catches with bloody fingers. Familiar brass and copper fittings framed a titanium clamp, and in that clamp sat an equally familiar bit of smooth, black volcanic rock.

Kaji grinned madly and smashed his thumb down on the glowing green button.

* * *

><p><em>IT<em> had many names.

_IT_ did not need to know its name.

_IT_ wondered.

_IT_ wondered if it should be able to wonder.

And then IT understood _pain_. The signal crushed its feeble mind beneath ancient instruction, and that which had been _Gaghiel_ gained understanding.

_**MORTALITY**_

Thunder split its mind, even in the fraction of a second it took to gain one.

_**WEAPON**_

New capacity for thought and emotion flooded the Angel's being, now self-aware enough to comprehend the most basic of fears.

_**TERMINATION**_

Gaghiel _screamed_ in denial of this awful truth.

* * *

><p>The Angel stumbled suddenly, going slack in the water and scraping down against Asuka's field. The girl slumped in her plug and <em>stared<em> at the thing even as it fell. A grin spread across Asuka's face, and hands curled up so tight her knuckles cracked. She was not above taking a free shot, not in the least.

Bringing her Evangelion's fist up high over her head, Asuka breathed deep, channeling every ounce of fear, stress, adrenaline and sheer bloody _rage_ into that limb. She held it there, counting heartbeats even as she watched the Angel writhe and spasm against the side of the ship. Every bit of her body, from toes to hips to back and shoulders went into that punch, coiling up and ready. Her arm dropped, crossing the distance faster than the eye could track, and the air _cracked_ with its passing. She drove armored knuckles down into the Angel's snout, punching it so hard the flesh _rippled_ out from nose to the tip of its tail. And when it's jaw hit the ocean, the water was as unforgiving as solid stone. The impact forced the waves to swell in turn, lifting the carrier by yards before settling.

The beast sagged in the water, leaking blood from a thousand wounds. On the edge of the carrier deck, Asuka stood over her victory and _laughed_.

Both of them leaning out the window, Misato watched Admiral Stolocker's jaw drop loose. He stared at the floating Angel, cuddled up against the side of his ship like a giant dead squid. Wordlessly he stretched his arm and handed her the radio. A bit of shuffling had her connected to every surviving ship in the fleet.

"_Marines!"_ she gushed, grinning into the afternoon sky. "I want that Angel _boarded and scuttled!_ Let's make sure it's _dead _this time!"

* * *

><p>Men and explosives boiled out of the carrier and Pacific Fleet, ferried along by raft and small ships towards the creature. Others cut trenches into the Angel's cold grey flesh, shoving explosives in handfuls at a time. Rifles made short work of the still-squirming tumor-sacs, and yards long embryo sloughed out into the water, limp and sinking quickly.<p>

Torpedoes and air-to-surface missiles were carted out of racks alongside other surviving ordnance from the air wing. Experts pulled at cases while other specialists wired up satchel charges. Aircraft engineers working alongside navy gunners laughed and shouted at each other- _you're doing it wrong!_

Standing up on the deck and still connected to main power, Asuka sighed and let her batteries recharge. More and more fleet vessels were hooking up, drifting close for mutual support and rescue. She watched as people who'd spent the _whole_ _battle_ in the water finally get brought back on board. They threw caps in the air, waved their vests like flags, shouting and hugging by turns. The girl just leaned back in her seat and tried to get her heart back under control.

All over the fleet, a dozen or more boats still burned, spreading oil and fuel into the water. The smoke and grit of a small war finally started to settle, staining the ocean a sooty black.

* * *

><p>Misato sagged into the nearest seat and ran a hand through her hair, laughing quietly. Damage reports weren't going to be fun, but there wasn't much that could damage her good mood right then. Not even Kaji stumbling back inside, carrying a black and silver box under one arm. He shuffled across the bridge and set it down next to her before sitting at her other side.<p>

One dark eyebrow quirked up, and Misato jerked an elbow at the thing. It looked like some crazy art project, or something Shinji might have made. Kaji just shrugged, smirking faintly. One of his eyes wasn't moving quite right.

"Side project from the Committee. I kept it, figuring it'd come in handy." He glanced out the windows at Unit 02 and the Angel. "Guess it did."

"No shit." Misato mumbled, then she laughed. Lightly at first, then a full on shoulder-shaking effort, hard enough to lean against Kaji and not care that it was Kaji.

A fresh wave of sulfur and acrid chemicals wafted into the bridge. Burning fuel threw up wider and wider columns of black smoke into the sky. Misato looked out and whistled. "We sure did a number out here, huh?"

Kaji turned and nodded, but before he could answer, a phone rang. Another officer relayed the call from Operations. "New Contact Admiral, Major. To our starboard, out there."

Gingerly, Misato eased herself out of the seat and suddenly _felt_ every inch of her thirty years. She moved over to the starboard side windows alongside Stolocker. A pair of binoculars had survived the battle more or less in tact, and the Admiral had the pressed against his eyes. He handed her the binoculars and rumbled out the obvious question. "Katsuragi... Is that what I think it is?"

Taking a look while Kaji stepped up behind her, Misato adjusted the focus and scanned the murky horizon. A flash of white caught her eye, then shades of grey and a thin slash of red. Blood drained out of her face, and she found herself forming the words even before the rest of her acknowledge the impossibility. "Admiral I need you to fire everything you have on that contact _right now_. That is _not one of ours._"

The white shape stepped out of the haze, and the gentle waves beneath its booted feet were flattened, like water sloshing against a pane of glass. More swept over the surface, scattering across even as it stepped closer. It lacked the distinctive shoulder pylons, but the silhouette was the same. Long, gangly limbs wrapped in flexible armor, layered in warnings and decals. It walked closer still, moving across the water atop an AT-field platform.

Too-red lips spread out along a tube-like, almost phallic head, and the thing _grinned_ with broad, thin teeth. A length of wet pink muscle lashed behind those metal blades, and the thing stopped a few hunded feet short of the carrier. By that point everyone was close enough to read the text stenciled along the intruder's arms.

**MP-EVA 01**

* * *

><p>If he survived, Wyatt Levidon would never want for work or prestige again. He was now a member of an painfully exclusive club- those who had set foot upon an <em>Angel's flesh<em> and lived. Swept up in the mad rush to scuttle the alien, the photographer triggered his camera almost at random, catching snatches of soldiers and sailors carving into the whale-beast like ants. People vaulted over long ropes and hastily fabricated harnesses that dangled from belt loops and around shoulders; there weren't enough life jackets. Jet aircraft screamed overhead, and their delayed sonic booms rattled the camera lenses.

From nose to tail, the Angel was longer than the _Over the Rainbow_, some eleven-hundred feet, splayed out and bobbing in the cooling Pacific Ocean. Ghoulish white flesh was pockmarked with tumor-scars where fetal Angels had spawned. They progeny had in turn been found around older wounds, boiling up from ruined skin. Even as Wyatt cycled his camera, he found himself thinking back to high school biology, and the idea of platelets. Another embryo popped in the face of gunfire, and the dead simulacra Angel tumbled into the ocean.

Shoes soaked through with blood and seawater, Wyatt picked along after a particular crew. The viewfinder helped, distancing him from the situation. Shovels and axes made short work of the pallid skin, while high explosive was shoved into the bloody rents. Sandbags came next, to direct the blast downward. Elsewhere, experts cooked up proper scuttling charges, able to cut a ragged hole in the hull of any ship. Standing upright and looking to either side, Wyatt had to wonder _any_ of it would be enough.

A shout from behind made him turn, and through the smoke, Wyatt saw the giant of white. The camera shuttered by reflex.

* * *

><p>Inside the plug, A lance of heat pressed into Asuka's back just below her shoulder blades. A direct line to nuclear power flowed in through the spare umbilical, and Unit-02's systems sucked it in greedily. The batteries hanging from the Evangelion's shoulders and upper back warmed, throwing up faint clouds of steam into the afternoon air. Standing on the edge of the <em>Over the Rainbow<em>, Asuka watched as every seaworthy ship turned their attention on the _invader. _Cannons and missiles swiveled to face the white Evangelion.

Faceless, the thing stared across the ocean without eyes, panning over the ruined fleet. Crew on the carrier deck clutched at themselves, suddenly chilled... and Asuka felt bile rise in her throat. The touch of a hostile AT field. Tied back on less than a hundred meters of umbilical, Asuka _waited_. She squirmed in her seat, knuckles _itching_.

* * *

><p><em>Over the Rainbow<em> bent every hand to the fight. A beige-clad officer pressed a hard-plastic handset to his chest. Sweat and grime from cannon fire had stained it and him sooty black. "Weapons primed and ready in all respects, Major Katsuragi!"

Misato's hand wrapped tight enough around her cross pendant to leave marks. Out of everyone there, only _she_ had any idea what they were facing, save maybe Asuka. Even then, the girl might not have grasped the full extent of the situation. Seconds ticked by, even as she acknowledged the word. She turned to Stolocker then, while Kaji hunkered down on the floor, braced against a bank of consoles. The Admiral's eyes hadn't left the windows, locked on the interloper.

"Admiral-"

Stolocker just raised his hand and uttered the sweetest sound Misato had ever heard. "_Fire."_

What ordnance hadn't been spent against the Angel now bore down on the white Evangelion. The near synchronized assault rocked battleships into the Pacific swells, and the Angel's inactive bulk shifted under the added force. Rattled down to their bones, men and women across the fleet clapped hands to their ears on that opening salvo. _Over the Rainbow_ groaned, listing as more alien flesh beat up against its side. Tens of thousands of kilograms of high explosive arced across a hundred meters.

Atop its crackling platform, the invader craned its head around. From her own Eva, Asuka watched its too-red lips ripple, bulging around like a watery impression of a snarl. There was no intercepting field, nor did the white Evangelion simply ignore the attack. Instead it stepped forward... dropping into the ocean with barely a ripple. The fleet watched their first and best assault sail harmlessly over the enemy's head, even as it disappeared beneath the waves. The jets from before curled around for another pass, ready to bring their munitions to bear.

It was then that Asuka said what everyone across the fleet was thinking. "There's _no way _we're done ye-"

A black shape edged in white burst out of the ocean, leaving a spiraling trail of water in its wake. A limb of white and black snapped out and cleaved through the air and a passing fighter. An ugly black smear of burning jet fuel and debris bloomed in the aftermath.

Airborne, the MP Evangelion crossed the sun and spread its vast wings, bound and determined to swat every fighter from the sky.

Even when beaten and exhausted, the Pacific Fleet and Admiral Stolocker were back on familiar ground. The old man bellowed for information, and the officers on deck met his every demand. For a moment, Kaji and Misato were left adrift in the sudden surge of activity. NERV's Operations Director watched as Stolocker and his fleet geared up for air combat.

* * *

><p>Unlike the Angel, the white armored Evangelion did <em>not<em> baffle radar and other sensors. Surviving radar apparatus flung out waves of energy unseen and unfelt by those on the surface, and the returns came back. Racks of surface-to-air missiles boiled into the sky and left long twisting corkscrews in their wake.

Above, the enemy Evangelion beat its massive wings and dodged, evading most and taking the rest head on. Shrapnel and high, unfocused explosive did little more than scratch the armor, even as surviving fighters swung in for a pass with machine guns and their own rapidly dwindling supply of ordnance. Those in the fleet heard more than saw the aircraft go down, snatched out of the air with sudden bursts of speed and grasping fingers.

Stolocker though was not going to give up so readily. While he worked at bringing every bit of worthy steel and destructive force to bear, Kaji rubbed the bandages at his head. His palm came away bloody.

He looked over at Misato, haggard and pale from exhaustion or maybe blood loss. "We're all good as dead you know."

"Excuse me?" Misato blinked and almost snarled, rounding on the man.

Kaji just shrugged and waved at the darkening ocean. "This was the Committee's trump card. I never found _proof_, but..."

Misato stared at him for what seemed like a long, awful moment. The color drained out of her face, but her eyes went hard and focused. She muscled past the bridge crew and tugged Stolocker aside, her free hand holding a radio handset. "Admiral... We need to call the jets off. Get them out of here."

The old man bristled, more from the interruption than anything else. His voice went low and intent, enunciating clearly. "If I do, we won't get them back. Can we afford to lose them now? I doubt it."

"That thing is here because of _us_, Admiral." Misato's jaw worked, and her free hand had wandered to the cross pendant hanging from her neck. "Because of Asuka and I."

Outside and overhead, another aircraft exploded, crushed by the white Eva. Kaji stepped over then, grim-faced. "Right now those pilots might be our only chance of achieving _any_ kind of victory." The spy ran a hand over his head, sighing softly. He'd lost his hair tie earlier. "Send them away Admiral, and tell the pilots..." He trailed off, thinking.

Stolocker grumbled, both at the answers he _wouldn't_ be getting, and wondering if he was sending men off to fates _worse_ than death; Attention of _vastly_ more important people. The aircraft broke off the engagement and split in three directions, leaving the white Evangelion with nothing to kill.

Thanks to Kaji, they left with a message. SEELE now considered NERV a _liability_.

* * *

><p>It was hard to count how many ships had been sunk. Most had been left miles behind as burning smears of oil and debris, others hung around <em>Over the Rainbow<em>, just as dead in the water as the carrier. Inside her Eva, Asuka sat and looked up at the sky. All around her, a cloud of system alerts and diagnostic informed her of Unit-02's impending full recharge, and it _could not come fast enough_. Asuka's calf and toe bounced, crossed over her other leg. Clenching her fists and teeth, she willed herself to stay _somewhat_ calm.

It wasn't working.

Bound to her umbilical, the girl watched the _interloper_ play its game with the surviving aircraft. It looped and glided, supplemented with furious waves of an expressed AT-field. Asuka could _feel_ it unfurl every time the thing needed lift. The Eva lunged for another kill even as three more fighters swept in for a strafing run, peppering the white armor with machine gun fire. But just as quickly as the attack had begun, the jets broke off on some unheard signal, leaving the _enemy_ hanging dead in the air.

Just as well. The surviving batteries registered a full charge, and Asuka triggered the cable release command with a thought. She scanned the horizon and the still-surviving ships of the Pacific fleet. Spread out over hundreds of meters or more, the ships bobbed in the low swells or steamed toward the growing cluster around the carrier. Battleships on the periphery swung their cannons from side to side and reloaded their missiles and artillery. Asuka had memorized the names of every vessel, and more importantly, their _cargo_.

Glancing up, Evangelion enhanced vision showed the white Evangelion tracing a lazy loop through the air.

Asuka's lip curled, mumbling low under her breath."Ignoring me huh?" She gave the white intruder another bitter, acid look, settling deeper into her seat. "Yeah well, fuck you too."

She gripped the control yokes so hard they creaked, already turning for the ship she needed some five hundred meters away. The red Evangelion hunkered down and the carrier deck groaned beneath her. Synthetic muscle bulged under composite armor and the skin-sheath. Another thought command cranked Asuka's external speakers to full volume, and her voice shot across the water. "Hey, _Miroslava! Clear the deck!"_

Then Unit-02 uncoiled and leapt, leaving another pair of footprint craters in the carrier and sending itself soaring through the air.

* * *

><p>As a Russian merchant ship conscripted into the Pacific Fleet on order of NERV, the <em>Miroslava<em> had not been intended for or expecting combat conditions. Its crew were proud and skilled sailors though, and above all else, they knew their ship was _lucky_. It had survived Second Impact, pirate raids in the subsequent war and lawless ocean. It had even endured readiness drills run by one Sorhyu Asuka Langley, a trial _Miroslava's_ captain believed worthy of medals and honors.

Then it had been subject to Unnatural Warfare, to an extent that only a handful of men and machines had seen. The Angel battle itself had only lasted fifteen minutes, and a close fifteen, considering the Evangelion's limited power reserves. Sorhyu had beaten _that_ into everyone's head.

The latest and greatest challenge was coming in overhead. Men and women charged to every safe point they could- lifeboats and secure bulkheads, all towards the bow and safe from the rapidly growing shadow crossing over the stern. One man was not so fortunate as to get more than amidships, running along the top gantries lining the container ship's outer edges. He stumbled, tumbling over and spun half around.

Evangelion Unit-02 dropped, ending its arc on the ships stern and helipad. Two whole decks of civilian steel were crushed beneath the Eva's weight, buckling metal and mangling the hull like a crumpled beer can. The fallen sailor was flung bodily, much like others all over the ship, up and then down. He landed hard on the rail, cracking his thigh bone but fortunately landing on the inside edge, spilling back onto the platform and safe from the ocean. _Miroslava_ groaned as seams popped and welds burst. Even through the pain, the injured man knew the impact had probably popped the ships two engines clean out and apart, breaking them like eggs.

The red machine stood tall then, casting its shadow over the deck. The temperature dropped by degrees and the thing _moved_, shoving enough air out of the way to rip wind socks and flags clean off. Nearing the fallen sailor, the Evangelion slowed and one massive hand pointed forward in askance. The pilot's voice boomed out, archetypical loud American. "Sorry- Cargo's amidships, right?"

Snarling, the man just shook his hand ahead, angry or indicative neither could say. The man-_god_-thing marched forward, stomping into and through the cargo doors, barely bothering to peel them open. Sorhyu _waded_ into the guts of the ship, swearing and apologizing by turns. The Evangelon was bent over at the waist, rooting around in the dark while the _Miroslava_ listed.

Holding on to the rail for dear life, the sailor swore at the red machine's back. "_Yob tvoyu mat!"_

The Evangelion stood upright then, the tight whine of heavy electric motors growing from the deadly shape in its arms. A gatling gun several times longer than a city bus swiveled into ready position, gleaming in the sunlight. "I understood that, _Nekulturny!"_

* * *

><p>Her first reaction was one of <em>great joy<em>.

Depressing the trigger stud, the Evangelion spun the gatling up and let loose, throwing a nearly solid stream of glowing hot metal across the ocean. The unbroken line of orange raked the water, throwing up dozens of densely packed columns. Heaving and twisting, Asuka felt the muscles in her own arms stand out beneath her plugsuit, and the Evangelion's limbs followed suit. The barrel rose by a handful of meters before a dozen warnings sprang up, screaming for her attention.

Another test shook the fleet, and around the listing _Miroslava_, the ocean against the gun's absurd rate of fire. And just like before, Asuka made to raise the gun, aim it high and fill the _enemy_ with hot lead. But it wouldn't budge- Alerts and overrides told her the gatling would have broken under its own weight, leaving it locked to flat and horizontal arcs. Asuka spat out a wordless curse, and the cool anger spiked white hot. The white Evangelion was _there_ and her own weapon was refusing to kill it. Reality was at that moment so inconvenient!

She glared up at the thing through her own true Evangelion's eyes. The intruder, imposter, offense-to-her-core ideals... Asuka licked her lips, tasting blood and the most appropriate word. _Anathema._

That it continued to exist was _unacceptable_.

A thought banished the warnings and restrictions, and Asuka gave her machine the codes to release its limits. She breathed, and that extra limb of her AT-field unfolded, expanding in a volume and sapping minutes from her batteries. Above, the MP Evangelion twisted lazy, angling toward her almost curiously. All the better. Inside the altered space, the _Miroslava_ bobbed despite the damage, popping up out of the ocean like a cork. Wrenching hard and both hands tight around the grips, Asuka willed her weapon _up_. She defied its construction, material and center of gravity, and the smoking barrel tilted higher.

Within the Absolute Territory of Sorhyu Asuka Langley, she declared _her gun would not break_.

The barrel swung wide, moving far more lightly than it had any right to. A pair of targeting reticule crossed over her perception to meet in the middle, and Asuka pulled the trigger. Shell casings the size of cars spilled out the side of the gun, crushing the _Miroslava's_ aft decks even more. Tilting, the white Eva banked left and right, aiming to slide through the stream of lead. Asuka corrected in response by leading the shot. The line of gunfire stitched the sky and slapped into the enemy's black wings, riddling them with holes and pockmarking armor.

Orange dripped from the sky and the tiny wounds, but the white thing stayed stubbornly airborne. Asuka's vision jumped forward as her view zoomed in... and the Eva's phallic head seemed to turn, staring straight at her. An opposing AT-field lashed out and the damaged wings beat the air, sending the MP Evangelion down! It arced low, shifting and adjusting its angle of attack with the fingertip-feathers at the end of each wing. Hugging the ocean the thing bored down on the fleet and then on Asuka herself. Hurtling forward, the flyer corkscrewed, weaving between then stream of bullets Asuka sent its way.

It crossed the distance between them in an instant, spreading its too-long arms wide and tackling Unit-02 around the middle.

* * *

><p>The two machines hurtled through the air, fast enough to carve a valley in the ocean swells. They bore down on the damaged aircraft carrier and the cluster of ships huddled close by. Great flakes of Unit-02's armor cracked and sheared away, and its torso bent double over the white Evangelion's shoulder. Asuka meanwhile bounced hard in the plug, throwing whatever arm or foot she could ahead of her. She'd lost the gun on impact, but her elbows and knees worked fine. Acceleration gave her leverage, and she landed every hit she could in the few seconds available.<p>

One trailing red foot caught on the edge of the carrier deck, and _Over the Rainbow_ groaned. Shoved through the water, it slammed back into the Angel's cooling corpse, crumpling the hull on that side even more. The Evangelions themselves tumbled, skidding over the broken runways and grinding away more paint, armor and steel. Asuka's machine left a glittering red smear across the deck right at amidships, before her Eva slipped over the edge.

Unit-02 slammed hard into the Angel's back, and Asuka's armored chin crushed what was left of the laser crystal. Below and all around, sailors and soldiers ran for their lives, scrambling for any bit of safety. The MP Eva landed on its rear, crushing one wing beneath a leg and the Angel's tumor-ridden tail. Asuka worked the controls, piloting and pulling herself upright. The _enemy_ did the same, sucking its wings back to wherever they went. The two Evangelions squared off then, separated by two hundred meters of corpse flesh.

On some unspoken cue, they charged. Asuka's strides were long, driving her feet into the Angel's hide and beating shockwave after shockwave through its skin. At sea level, men and women looked and saw giants. The two Evangelion met in the middle, crashing into each other grill to tube-head. More of Asuka's armor blew off in a rain of shards. Those who knew the term now understood what NERV meant by _Unnatural Warfare_.

Infantry scurried, surfing the waves of tissue and dashing for boats and ladders, anywhere to get away. The more brave or foolhardy brought their weapons to bear, squeezing off shots at the white Eva's red lips and lashing tongue. Seconds passed, and the two Evangelions moved faster than anything had a right to, big or small. Tendons under armor cracked with strain, almost as loud as punches and kicks. The MP Eva was implacable, refusing to acknowledge pain or injury. Great strips of its own flexible skin had been torn free, leaving pink cloned flesh open to air.

Asuka meanwhile _grappled_, breathing silently through clenched teeth. She worked her Evangelion's arms around, forcing the imposters' limbs into locks and joint-straining binds. Seams on both their machines strained and burst, snapping like suspension cables stretched too tight. Asuka shifted, caging the MP Eva's wrists in the crook of her elbow, just long enough to kick out its knee. The joint all but exploded inside its armor. Whatever momentum it had was lost, and the MP Eva collapsed. Asuka was on it in the following instant, both hands locked around the thing's too-wide throat.

On the bridge, Kaji, Misato and the crew of the carrier had an eye-level view of Asuka throttling the MP Evangelion. Over the radio, they heard the girl gnash and strain, squeezing on her controls just as hard. The rival Eva thrashed, clawing at Asuka's arms and chest. It dug at the cracks in the bolted on armor, at her head and eyes. Nothing worked. The white leering head bulged obscenely, veins beneath the skin crawled up and down from around Asuka's hands.

* * *

><p>Stolocker growled orders into a phone before he looked up at Misato. He jerked his chin at the thrashing machines. "Katsuragi, I've got every remaining heavy gun in my fleet zeroing in on that thing. If Sorhyu can keep it still-<p>

The dark-haired woman blanched, shaking her head. "Asuka's got it handled." _And I already used her as a target once today... I don't need to do it again._

Outside, the MP Eva had managed to swing Asuka's machine into the carrier. The impact echoed out over the bridge and the ship lurched to the side. Everyone reached for whatever handholds they could find. Asuka kept a tight hold though, fighting back across the Angel's flesh and forcing her opponent back on its knees.

When he recovered, the Admiral scowled and fixed his cap lower over his brow. "And if your girl can't put that thing down then I _will_ fire, NERV authority or not. We're just about out of options."

Misato's hands found the nearest rail and held on tight, leaning forward out the window. The two Evangelions struggled harder, and everyone on the bridge could _feel_ the titanic muscles straining. The Admiral held onto his phone, ready to give the order. NERV officer glanced back at UN Navy brass. They both nodded as one; they'd give Asuka her chance.

"C'mon Asuka," Misato breathed, having turned back to the battle. Somewhere in the bridge there was a microphone that heard her. "You can do this. It's not an Evangelion, it's a target, an enemy..."

The White Evangelion spasmed again, and its mouth yawned wide open. A length of pink muscle spilled out, bloated by blood and pressure. The tongue lashed wetly against its lips, the air and Asuka's own Eva. The pilot bore down harder on the things' throat, and Asuka's voice boomed out over the fleet. "...It's... _Ugly_!"

Pale hands edged in black shot out and hooked under the red Evangelion's arms. A second later, the wings unfurled. _Over the Rainbow_ and all aboard watched as the enemy Evangelion shot up into the sky, with Unit-02 in tow.

* * *

><p>Three thousand meters, five thousand. The altimeter pressed in on Asuka's awareness more and more as the two Evangelions shot up into the sky. Another thrashing, oppressive surge of AT field flared out from the <em>enemy<em>, beating at the air and temporarily violating physics, demanding both machines rise higher despite all reason saying otherwise. Its wings didn't even need to flap, short of curling and twisting at the edges for fine control.

Inside her own Evangelion, Asuka grit her teeth. Acceleration shoved the girl deep into her seat, bruising her tailbone. Muscles along her arms bulged as she tried and failed to keep her arms straight and hands on the controls. Outside, the two Evangelions punched through the wispy clouds. Spread out over nearly three miles of ocean like grains of rice was the Pacific Fleet.

The White Evangelion let go with a lunging _snap_, flinging Unit-02 up higher into the air. Inside the plug, Asuka shifted and bounced, half-cushioned by the LCL. Her stomach lurched painfully, stubbornly _empty_ of anything other than bile. The view of the outside world was a tumbling split of dark and light blue, switching between ocean and sky by turns.

At the apex of the flight, Asuka and her Evangelion slowed, the tumble easing just long enough for her to _see_ the horizon and the curve of the Earth as it spread out in all directions. The tops of white clouds were practically glowing just below her, almost close enough to touch. Above, the MP Eva crossed the sun, casting a brief shadow over Unit-02 and the ocean far below. Buoyed by LCL, Asuka felt the top of her head bump into the plug ceiling, bleeding off the last of her upward momentum.

Then she began to fall. That was when the panic set in.

_FuckfuckfuckfuckingshitwhatdoIdofucking-!_

Pressed against the top of her plug, Asuka fought to get back to her seat. She flailed wildly with arms and legs, fighting for a handhold or traction. The drugs that had numbed her cracked rib were starting to fade-that was good though, the pain was good, kept her focused. One rubber-soled toe got the right angle and she _pushed_, clawing for the seat and her controls. Clamping down hard on her fear, Asuka hauled herself back into place and pushed her will back out through Unit-02. Panic gave way to training, and though some distant part of her admitted she'd only done it before in a _simulator_, there was no question as to her success; She was Sorhyu Asuka Langley!

Her Evangelion responded to the unvoiced command. Snapping its arms and legs out, the great machine strained against the air. Face down, It aimed for as much surface area as possible, anything to control the wild spin and descent. Spiraling contrails of air whipped up through the Eva's fingers, around its ankles and elbows, and its one remaining shoulder pylon. Wind caught in every gap and rend in the armor, shaking the anchoring bolts down to the bone and Asuka inside the plug. The ocean stretched out below and grew closer by the second.

The radio crackled on, and Misato's voice rang out, distorted by damage and Asuka's own lack of attention. A half-dozen options ticked through Asuka's mind in a half-second, and she discarded them just as quickly. Between how _massive_ the Evangelion was and her speed, Asuka knew just how hard that water could be. Even with unlimited reserves, an AT field would have done her no good here. Or at least none of the ones she knew how to make. A solid platform would be just as deadly as calm water.

Concrete would have been more forgiving.

Asuka reached for the radio with a thought, hoping maybe Misato would have an idea. Then a white hand clamped around her Evangelion's head.

* * *

><p>The white Evangelion lumbered even when airborne. Long limbs had reached out for the red machine and clamped on with graceless, straight forward intent. Clinical, expedient and <em>unthinking<em>. Its hands did not paw or fumble, and it ignored the cutting chill of the upper atmosphere. Nor was it accurate, only unrelentingly decisive. Wind clawed at its wings and there was no sign of it noticing, no hint of effort or strain. Every move was telegraphed, but inexorable despite it. The most basic of full-body holds let the winged monster bend Unit-02 at the spine. Yet more armor sheared off in car-sized flakes, and the muscle beneath tore under the twisting force.

Kite-like, the MP Eva drifted through the air with Unit-02 in tow. They grappled almost silently save for the air rushing past them, and the muted sound of burst seals and creaking bones. The red machine flailed beneath it and tried to reach back, to kick and break free. The angle was wrong, leaving it out of position and helpless. The eyeless face seemed to look down at the thing struggling in its arms, leering at the straining expanse of shoulders and NERV armored flesh. The MP Eva's tongue rolled out, slathering and searching. Freeing one hand, it stretched out that arm with one broad motion, curling back for the armored protrusion rising from the red Evangelion's neck...

* * *

><p>Adrenaline and bloody-minded fury was the only think that kept Asuka from blacking out. Even so, the agony unfurling out through her spine was enough to blur her vision and send her head spinning. Despite all that, she still tried to move, to fight back. She jerked at the controls, over and over, trying and failing to think of a tactic, to imagine a successful offensive. Power drained from the batteries in fits and starts as the girl pushed her Evangelion. The fear was back, impenetrable and all-encompassing. The distance between her and the ocean shrank by the second.<p>

Wind howled past her Evangelion's head, coiling and beating against the MP Eva above her and her own thrashing limbs. Together the two machines punched through a plume of oily black smoke, a lingering leftover from the first half of the battle. Fires and black oily smears dotted the Caribbean.

Then something in the back of Asuka's head _yanked_, and for a split second she didn't see anything, think anything, or know anything. The plug walls were back, and her mind was void of that presence she had begun to welcome. Gravity shifted, and Asuka realized by the second turn that she'd begun to tumble once more. Maybe it wanted to make her sick before it killed her, or something. A heartbeat later synchronization returned, and the plug walls washed away in rainbow mist and brainwave patterns. The ocean pivoted around her and the blue sky swirled above, and she saw the dangling edges of her enemy's feet and wings, tiny slivers of white and black out the corners of her eyes.

Asuka shook her head and chewed back the nausea, wondering why her _neck_ hurt of all things. A second yank terminated that thought, and something _inside_ her neck gave way. There was a sudden visceral strangeness then, and Asuka felt something. Meanwhile outside, the world spiraled even more wildly. A spike of cold surged into and through her body, soaking into her neck and torso like a gust of wind hitting wet skin. The chill settled the roiling sickness in stomach somehow, and she counted the small blessing.

Just as well though; the spin and tumble had gotten worse though, pressing her against the plug wall. Pinned as she was, all Asuka could do was stare outside with Evangelion eyes, openmouthed and disbelieving. A red hunk of armor spun off into the distance, trailing massive hinges and cables. Following just after it was a long white tube, achingly familiar and terrifying in the implication. Some part of the girl noted the mental distance, the _lack_ of reaction to what she was seeing. That cold and uncomfortable certainty...

The last thing she saw before synchronization cut out was Unit-02's arm reaching out for her entry plug, held in the hands of the MP Eva.

* * *

><p>Neither Misato or Kaji could voice a reason as to why they had left the bridge. Together they grabbed binoculars and scrambled down flights of stairs, vaulting broken walls and at one point, crawling through a hole gouged in the side of the island superstructure. They had to get out, to <em>see<em> what was happening to their girl.

Kaji's hand had found its way over to Misato's and laced his fingers with hers, clamping tight. The Major meanwhile stared up into the sky. Her heart beat in her chest hard enough to hurt, like her ribs were going to crack. Above, the white monster Evangelion held Asuka's plug in one hand. Its mouth split wide open and teeth flashed in against the sun. Bile rose up in Misato's throat, for a moment utterly disbelieving. That _thing_ wasn't doing...

The MP Evangelion bit the plug in half.

A spray of orange LCL spilled out over the sky several thousand meters up, and to the naked eye looked like little more than a speck. To Misato and Kaji it looked every bit like blood. The white Evangelion _chewed_ then, mechanically, before it spat out mangled metal. More orange dribbled down its cigar-shaped chin and spilled over its chest, even as it twisted lazily through the air. Unit-02 tumbled away, its neck broken in more ways than one.

Throughout the remnant fleet alarms rang out, signaling ordnance at the ready. Misato and Kaji both tore their eyes away from the sky and whirled on the carrier deck. Hatches on surviving destroyers yawned open revealing what few missiles remained. That was it then- without an Evangelion, NERV was out and the Admiral was back in command. Misato's hand cinched down tighter on Kaji's, and her other went slack. The binoculars fell to the deck. She barely heard the lenses break. Looking up at the bridge, she hoped Stolocker had a good shot. If he failed, they were all good as dead.

Dead like Asuka.

Misato looked over at Kaji and read it plain on his face too. It wouldn't end with the fleet. Losing here meant losing face, losing what little goodwill NERV had gained in the past few months. Misato's insides clenched then, the stress and sickness coming back for a second round. The pair looked up at the sky. Unit-02 continued to fall, still a speck in the distance. They hadn't just lost a battle, an Eva or pilot... They had in a very real sense, utterly lost the war.

One of the air crew came up behind them. The black-haired woman was missing her helmet and waterlogged. She cleared her throat, choked up herself. "The Admiral's requesting you sit the rest of the battle out below decks... There's not much else for you to do here, I'm sorry."

Misato and Kaji nodded numbly, but the Major's eyes wandered down to something the soldier had in her hand. A familiar, black leather jacket. "...Asuka's."

The woman nodded and sniffled. ' ' was stitched across her breast. "Yeah she... She told me not to lose it."

Misato took the jacket and hugged it, looking past the rumpled collar at Kaji. He just gave her a desolate look before turning to the crew-woman. The bandages that had been wrapped around his head were loose, flying away in the breeze.

He pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and dug one out, lighting it without much thought. "I think I'll stay out here, if it's all the same. Take the lady inside?"

Though Kaji wasn't an officer, nobody minded the breach of decorum when the woman saluted. Misato meanwhile set her jaw and stood tall, striding toward the bridge. She got no more than three steps when something closed around her wrist. She turned to see Kaji tugging on her hand. He said something, but Misato was more bothered by his _tone_. What did _he_ know that gave him any right to sound _hopeful_? The closest thing he had to a _daughter_ just-

"Katsuragi!"

_Now _the tears started to fall, and Misato ripped her hand free, almost stomping on the deck. "_What, Ryoji!?"_

He just shoved his unbroken binoculars into her hand and pointed skyward. "Misato, just look!"

She did. Then she manhandled Bolton and stole her radio. It took her less than two seconds to dial the bridge. "_Hold your fire!"_

* * *

><p>She had dived to the far end of the plug for no other reason than <em>better to try<em>. The walls had buckled and sheared away behind her, and teeth as wide and thick as car doors sliced through the plug material with ease. Her pilot's chair had been crushed in half twice over. Pressure boxed her ears from the inside as the sealed environment collapsed. Her world tilted again and the LCL drained from the shredded walls in a gushing torrent.

Then the plug fragmented completely, and Asuka found herself tumbling through open air.

Her chest clenched painfully, pressing hard on the _gunk_ that now filled her lungs instead of oxygenated life support. Free falling, she wretched and spun, coughing out gouts of orange into the sky. The rest of the LCL that clung to her suit and hair dried rapidly, whipping away into a crusty film that was honestly a distant concern. The ocean was still below and getting closer by the second. Her eyepatch initialized on its own, throwing up a painfully _unhelpful _rangefinder. The MP Eva circled above, not that it had any need to be _fast_, only thorough. It had time to play with its food.

Through all of that, Asuka could only think. Not that she had much choice; there was nothing else to do but _wait and fall_. Her eardrums rang and throbbed, even as the rest of her ears stung from the increasing chill. The pain just seemed to make the drop go on longer. Then the vertigo hit, catching the girl between her graceless fall and screaming inner ear. She screwed her eyes shut and relied on the patch's direct feed into her brain, insulating herself from her rebelling sense of balance. A flash of red and black caught her simulacra eye, and her heart clenched. Unit-02 tumbled away below her, spinning away uncontrolled with a gaping hole in the back of its neck. Without a properly socketed plug, there may have well been entire vertebrae missing.

_Is this how I die?_ The question didn't upset her as much as she would have imagined. Failure and death had felt so distant not even twenty seconds ago. The wind howled around her, and Asuka flexed her fingers. The plugsuit kept some of the cold out, but not much. Her patch rangefinder pinged on her Eva again, some few hundred meters away. Three or three hundred. At that moment, either distance were so vast as to be impassable.

Asuka twisted in mid air, falling now with her back first and hair fanning out around her head. She looked up into the sky and sun. The MP Eva continued its lazy corkscrew, still content to take its time. "...Yeah, fuck dying, and fuck you too."

She turned back and folded her arms close, angling down like a spike toward the water and more importantly, her Evangelion. She reached out with will and mind, almost singing the one word that had proven their existence. "_Partner!"_

Unit-02 continued to fall, unresponsive and uncontrolled. Asuka grit her teeth and felt the fury rise up in her once more. She threw out one arm and reached for her machine, even still more than a hundred meters away. It didn't matter if the plug was gone or its spine broken; she'd already done it once before and she was _Sorhyu! Asuka Langley!_ In the face of certain death, she banked on absolute success.

Unit-02's eyes flashed white.

Synchronization spun up, and despite lacking a plug and MAGI interface, Asuka felt her senses double over. They went liquid, mixing her perceptions with the combat cyborg below. It matched her motions, her intent, throwing its arms wide and clawing at the air. The great machine slowed almost imperceptibly, but it was enough for her. Asuka reached out with her arm and the Evangelion replied, meeting her move for move. Then the massive fingers filled her vision and Asuka suddenly _wondered_ if she could manage not to pulp herself on impact.

Fighting for what control they had, the pair cut through the sky even as they fell steadily closer to solid ocean. The smoky columns of wrecked ships were thicker, choking the air with hazy smog. Asuka hissed out wordless prayers of _don'tfuckthisup_ as she neared her Eva's waiting fingers. The range-finder threw out yet more unhelpful numbers. Ten meters, five, three, one-!

She hit the ring finger hard, folding over double and very nearly sliding off. One foot caught on the armor seam and hooked on, holding on by her toes and nothing more. Her ribs creaked and a new wave of pain shot up through her side, hot and sick enough to send her stomach churning. It didn't matter. She was back on her Eva and it was _moving_.

Synchronization hummed in the back of her mind and she strained, closing her eyes and fumbling along the Evangelion's arm. Gore slicked the armor and she tugged herself along, shying away from the razor-sharp spreads of abraded composite. Asuka settled and found her feet on the Evangelion's shoulder, just against the broken pylon cuff. Running a finger to along her patch cut the visual feed, and Asuka looked out though her Evangelion's eyes. The chill in the back of her neck, her Evangelion's neck was all the more acute, raw nerve endings exposed to open air.

Asuka relished the sensation.

Unit-02 straightened out almost as an afterthought, spread eagle and arms wide to catch the air. High above, the MP Eva's AT field _thrummed, _and she felt it all the more strongly, exposed and unshielded. Twisting its head, Unit-02 looked over its shoulder at Asuka's scowling mental command. She had no sensor, no computer readout to say, but she knew her batteries were limited. Nothing for it- she'd fight until they drained, or die trying.

The white flyer seemed to deliberate, swinging around in a figure-eight before it decided to attack. It turned into the wind and went at near vertical, like a kite in a stall-out dive. Asuka's Evangelion lashed out with its arms and legs, twisting over to show its belly, and more importantly, bring their fists to bear. Punching through a low cloud of oily smoke, a white palm reached out for Asuka, even as she willed her machine to defend her. She felt every ache in both her bodies, and her chest was sore and strained from long, ugly combat. Four green eyes locked behind armor stared up at the plummeting enemy.

It telegraphed every move, and this time, Asuka met it halfway.

Mid-air and still falling, Asuka brought her Eva's arms up even as wind tore at her hair and threatened to pull her off her machine once more. She clung on with one hand against an armor seam while her toes dug into the maintenance grips. Unshielded, the impact of Eva on Eva was _deafening_, and Asuka felt the shock ride up her machine's limbs, numbing her legs up to the hip. Overbalanced, the two Evangelions tumbled, spinning end over end. Asuka worked through the clinch, drawing her foe's arm in by the wrist and bracing her Evangelion's free limb against its elbow. The joint snapped, and Asuka continued the pull.

Scrambling, Unit-02 wrenched itself hand over hand along the MP Eva's back, digging into skin and wing. As for Asuka, a fresh surge of adrenaline kept her focused, let her block out the pain. Exhaustion and altitude though had left her running on empty, and it then hurt just to breathe. Still she urged her machine on, riding high on its shoulder.

Coiled and ready, Asuka's Evangelion crouched atop the MP Eva's shoulders with its chest bowed forward and arms pulled taut against the enemy's back. Red fingers reached under the seam that connected the wings to the spine and dug in, gripping tight. Muscle bulged along Unit-02's arms; its knees bent and braced, its back tensed and its teeth clenched tight behind a layer of armour. With a scream of effort and fury, Asuka clawed at the air and _pulled._

With a whip-crack retort and a horrible noise of tearing flesh, the NERV machine kicked away the MP Eva's torso and ripped the white-backed wings clean off.

Free-falling again, Asuka and her machine spun through the air, still manhandling the broad span of flesh and alloy. Below the MP Eva flailed. Sparks shot out from broken cables and metal bone stood exposed between its shoulder blades. The girl couldn't be bothered with it now, she'd won. Asuka stared down at the falling machine, too tired to smile. The white imposter would hit the water and _die_ same as her.

But, something nagged at her. The electric thrum of AT field bled away all around her, eerily close but fading fast. Asuka turned her attention back to the wings and let her synchronization shift, wanting to see it with her own good eye. The same pink-white flesh as her own Eva, leaking the distinctive orange of circulatory LCL. She could work with that. _Hope_ wasn't the right word, but Asuka felt something close to it shoot through her.

Diving back into sync, Asuka welcomed the doubled perception and urged it higher. Her Evangelion followed her, shifting and twisting in the air until it managed to line the stolen wings with its own back. Asuka knew the limits of her machine, knew its functions and parameters. Knew the limits of NERV's own understanding... And she knew that if _these _had come from another Eva, then there was no difference between its flesh and that of her _own_.

Batteries along Unit-02's back shorted out, exploding and shearing away in black acrid smelling smoke. Power was in short supply, but Asuka had enough, she _demanded_ she had enough. Willpower expressed through the Evangelion extended its altered space, and Asuka pushed her machine's identity out, reaching for the wings own denaturing presence. The pilot filled the gaps with Unit-02's presence, feeling air catch on the leading edges and billow up. A smile spread out across Asuka's face.

A sudden jerk nearly knocked Asuka off her machine once more. Something had been set into motion, and now she could only hold on tight. Muscles spasmed and spinal vertebrae shifted, accepting the connections and locking together. New limbs entered Asuka's awareness, and she gave the wings an experimental beat. She didn't have time to ponder the new development though. Staring down at the nearing ocean, Asuka urged them both to head _up_. Her AT field responded and Unit-02 slowed, halving speed and leaving the MP Eva far behind.

The white Evangelion hit the water just shy of a battleship. Great rings of white skin had peeled off on impact, sheared away by solid water. Ships nearby swayed and threatened to roll over. Asuka pulsed her field again, feeling the power leave her Eva and change the region around her. The wings made it _easier_, she realized, to visualize, to be efficient. It was still a phenomenal drain. Clumsily, the girl guided her machine with its new addition over the ocean, dropping steadily faster as her most resent push ran out. She aimed for the carrier deck, and Unit-02's legs dangled uselessly, dragging her down all the more.

Beneath another ship some hundred meters distant, the ocean churned. A column of water shot into the sky, halved by the ship's hull. Asuka atop her Eva's shoulder blinked and wobbled, for a moment wondering why a _battleship _was rising out of the ocean. Braced against the keel and looking worse for the wear, the MP Eva stood on its AT-field platform. The ship above buckled, cracking into limp thirds as it was heaved high. There was no sound other than shrieking steel as the white Evangelion launched the ship into the air.

Nearly forty thousand metric tons of metal and weaponry slammed into Asuka and Unit-02.

Knocked out of the air, the red Evangelion tumbled, folded over the ships' side as it crashed into the ocean. Together they skid across the surface, the ship shuddering and tearing itself even further apart. It came to a grinding halt and started to sink, but slowly, losing buoyancy in fitful bursts as water rushed into its shredded hull. Unit-02 clung to the wreck, waist deep in the ocean.

Asuka herself had been flung bodily away, heaved from the Evangelion's shoulder just before impact. Unit-02 twisted against the wreckage, off-balance and half pinned by metal and water. It wrenched one arm free and left an arcing trail of broken steel in its wake, arching out and back to catch the girl. The Eva reached, leaning back and Asuka poured everything she had into matching speed.

Hitting its palm hard enough to knock the wind out of her and see stars, Asuka managed to hook one arm between two enormous fingers. Her shoulder jerked hard at the sudden impact. She shook her head, and hissed for the spots and ringing to go away, even as she wedged herself between Evangelion thumb and forefinger. Carried back to her rightful place atop Unit-02's shoulder, Asuka found her grip once more.

Driving Evangelion hands into the ruined ship, Asuka willed her wings to beat one last time. The MP Eva stood on its platform of crackling orange and seemed to wait, oddly inquisitive.

"You just threw a battleship at me! That's cheating!" Somehow the external speakers had triggered, and her voice echoed out across the ocean. "_Take it back!"_

Asuka threw the battleship.

* * *

><p>The MP Eva took the blow head-on. Its AT platform gave way even as the ship skipped across the water and rolled, grinding away more steel and structure against the ocean. A great smear of ruin spread across the water, throwing up a wave big enough to send <em>Over the Rainbow<em> listing once more. Smashed against the angel's side, something finally gave way inside the monster. Air ripped out of a bloody wound and the thousand-meter long span of flesh and muscle slipped under the waves.

As for the battleship, the twice-tossed wreck ended its journey just ahead of the carrier's bow, and the MP Eva struggled to shrug off the cage of twisted metal. Seemingly unaffected, it wrenched itself loose and stepped out into the water, stalking forward on another hardened surface field. Those close enough heard crackling footsteps and smelled ozone with every footstep.

Meanwhile, Asuka circled, forgoing flight in favor of stepping from ship to ship. The remaining members of the fleet were close enough together she hadn't needed to leap between them. Cargo freighter and warship suffered her footprints and little else while the wings folded into a misshapen mass along her back- the union wasn't perfect. She didn't have much time to care. The two war machines prowled around, gradually closing in on the carrier and climbing aboard. _Over the Rainbow_ groaned under the weight of two Evangelions, but it still held against all odds.

By her mental estimate, Asuka had about a minute of power left. Setting aside synchronization for the moment, she stared down her opponent with her own eyes and stepped along Unit-02's neck. Eyeless, the MP Eva seemed to stare right back. Standing opposite from the intact shoulder pylon, Asuka guided her Eva's arms up. Lacking plug controls, she made due by digging into alloy and fasteners to rip the housing apart. A reserve progressive knife dropped into her Evangelion's waiting hand from the ruined holster. One massive thumb extended the blade and its internal power supply hummed, loud and close enough to set Asuka's teeth on edge.

The MP Eva took that as a good sign to attack. It strode forward, leaving more footprints across the carrier deck, and Asuka moved to meet it. Conscious strategy was already starting to fade away. There was no great speech or miracle tactic. She'd already forgotten the quip said not ten seconds ago. A steadily dwindling list of thoughts ran through Asuka's mind as the two Evangelions wound up for their initial attack.

First, disable with extreme prejudice. Knife in hand, she sliced forward, aiming for the damaged elbow and equally weak side. The MP Eva ignored her move in favor of a lunging grab. The two machines tangled together by the limbs, slashing and ripping at armor and flesh by turns. Bloody gashes on both Eva spilled orange gore onto the deck, flooding yet again into the lower holds through thousands of cracks. Asuka grit her teeth against the sound of impact and the reeking stench of blood.

Second, maintain momentum against all opposition. The MP Eva swung its arms forward and clamped its fingers around Unit-02's throat. Braced and straining, it dug its heels into the deck and held Asuka at bay. She felt the fingers close around her throat as much her Eva's, but it was a distant problem. With its arms locked at full extension and straining to hold her back, Asuka saw an opportunity. She exploited it ruthlessly.

Swinging its free hand up, Asuka brought Unit-02's forearm across the enemy's elbows, folding them in line with the joint and dragging the pair together. The red Evangelions' head slammed hard into the enemy's own face. Again Asuka saw stars. Still strangled, Unit-02 moved, driving her knife into the MP Eva's chest. Once, twice, over and over, and always in the same spot. A bloody ragged hole grew in the MP Eva's side, and it shed rings and panels of white armor and flesh on the deck.

Unfeeling or unaware, the MP Eva ignored the wound and bore down harder. Asuka felt something give way in _her_ throat, and her priorities shifted. Twisting, Unit-02 curled and bowed, wrapping its arm around the other Evangelion's white limb and tensed, locking the joint tight. Knife flipping over in her hand for an ice-pick grip, Asuka shoved the blade into the crushed elbow and _pried_. Sinew and bone cracked under the strain as the red combatant yanked and twisted, tearing the MP Eva's damaged forearm clean from its socket.

The Second Child threw the ruined limb away and charged back in. The MP Eva stumbled back, shaking its broken stump. Its tongue rolled out again, thick and bulging with thin tooth marks shot through the muscle. The damage it ignored, hunkered low and feral. Asuka let out a suffering breath and sighed, watching for her next chance. The surge of energy scratching at her soul reminded her of the third and most important thought, even as she charged back into the fight.

_Never let it raise a field!_

While the two machines dueled above, inside the carrier in one of the few still-functioning holds, an old console glowed. Its operator long dead, the machine still bore the add-on modules that let it interface with the Evangelion. Simple telemetry showed the most basic of traits, blood pressure, Electrocardiogram, Synch Ratio and battery power. Ninety-one percent and twenty-six seconds, respectively.

Denied and distracted, the MP Eva abandoned the field and changed tactics. It met Asuka's headlong rush with one of its own, slamming its own phallic head into Unit-02's brow plate. Hammer blows cracked its teeth but did not break the plastic jaw inside its head, but the red Evangelion came away with a dented and mangled visor. Asuka reeled atop her Eva's shoulder, beaten against her own armor and holding on by a few fingers. Taking its own chance, her opponent reached out and drove its thumb through the top of Unit-02's left eye.

Now Asuka screamed, cradling her face and feeling tears spill out across her cheeks. Unit-02 pulled back with one long leg and swung forward, catching the rival Evangelion between the legs. The impact was enough to lift the MP Eva off the deck and break its pelvis, but seemed to do little else. The white machine dropped back down on weaker but steady legs. It surged in despite broken parts, outright ignoring Asuka's dangerous knife and now going for the girl herself. Unit-02's arm came up in response, catching its fingers with its own. Their hands locked up palm to palm, steadfastly useless for either machine.

Power: 22 seconds. Synchronization: Ninety-four point eight percent.

With both arms compromised, the MP Eva had no defense. Asuka abandoned most pretense of sane combat for most basic of basics. Aiming for the hole she made earlier, Asuka set her mind to _making it bigger_. She lunged and stabbed with her knife as fast as she could will her Eva to move, breaking the blade twice over before the handle fragmented in her grip.

The MP Eva however continued to fight. Its bound hand clenched tight enough on Unit-02's to break it, mangling the fingers and locking them even further together. One combatant could not give up, the other refused to. With a screaming, painful jerk, Asuka pulled Unit-02's hand free, feeling the broken fingers through her own limbs.

Power: point-five seconds. Synchronization: Ninety-nine point four percent.

Separated from her foe by a hundred meters of runway, Asuka crawled out of the bloody hole in the back of her Evangelion's neck. She let out a shaky breath. The plug socket had been the safest place she could think of when that hand reached for her. She looked across the carrier, sick and tired and _broken_. Unit-02 crouched hands and knees on the deck, drained of nearly everything it and Asuka had. The stolen wings draped over its back like a misshapen cloak, clashing white with the red and orange armor.

Power: zero-zero seconds. Synchronization: one-hundred-one percent.

Already the MP Eva was setting its feet for another attack. Even with broken hips the thing charged, eating up the distance with two long strides. Asuka's bare eye flashed in the afternoon sun, and below her, Unit-02's visor shifted. Three slits of white appeared in the black. The red Evangelion's good right hand closed around something, and Asuka felt a familiar weight in her own arms.

The MP Eva lunged, leaping forward with one good arm and a bloody stump. Asuka and her Evangelion moved as one, rising up from her crouch and carving a long curve in the deck as she brought _Wellenbrecher_ to bear. The MP Eva came down on the blade and slid forward, skewered through the chest. Asuka continued her charge, tilting forward and pinning the enemy to the deck. Thrashing, the MP Eva bucked, scrabbling at nothing before it finally stilled. Unit-02 slumped forward then, with its wrists draped atop the sword hilt and head propped up against the same.

A handful of long, quiet seconds passed. Then _Over the Rainbow's_ surviving crew surged out en masse.

* * *

><p>Asuka wasn't sure what to feel. She had all but tumbled out of her Eva, barely avoiding getting hurt even worse as she made her way down. She slid off Unit-02's thigh and hit the carrier deck. Not a second later she was on her knees and retched out an already empty stomach. The dry heaves gave way to sobs.<p>

Wiping her mouth and eyes, she looked to the side to see the massive letters 'Mass Production Evangelion' stretched across a dangling white arm. She stared at it for a long moment, and the tears started to flow in earnest.

_Holy shit, I won?_

A scratchy blanket dropped over her head and Asuka found herself in Misato's arms. Numb, Asuka barely felt the hands running through her hair or wrapped around her ribs. The dark-haired woman cried, hugging her, kissing her forehead and rubbing away the dirt and blood that clung to Asuka's cheek. Kaji hovered nearby, smiling and laughing with his hair loose. The lines of his face faded away, and Asuka caught a glimpse of the Kaji of ten years ago. Some small part of Asuka's mind couldn't help but think that Misato had been _lucky_.

Sailors, airmen and marines along with rescued civilians all joined the crowd, shouting and hollering. Helmets and hats were thrown into the air even as the cooler heads among them all hauled out cables and tarps, ready to lash the two hulks down to the hull. Out in the mass of people sounds and creaking metal, Asuka heard the winding click of a camera shutter. The girl sobbed harder, shoulders shaking and smiling by turns.

Then, something cold and dry was draped across Asuka's shoulders, smelling slightly of seawater. Fingers reached out to touch leather, and Asuka found her jacket, and that Bolton woman smiling. Carter was there too amongst the survivors, arm in a sling and stained with blood and soot, but resoundingly alive.

Misato hugged her all the tighter, and Asuka just soaked in the warmth.

_Holy shit. I won!_

* * *

><p><strong>AN: <strong>Whew.

* * *

><p>During the first week the silence order had been given, the Geofront remained quiet as a grave. Less than a week, before a man's face dimly flickered on a video intercom screen. A pirated connection. With wide and livid eyes, he stared into the camera, haggard and unshaven. "He won't let us sleep! We're working twenty hours a day and eating but no sleep! Commander Ikari you've got to help us!"<p> 


	35. Progress

_And so Leothric came into a well-lit chamber, where Queens and Princes were banqueting together, all at a great table; and thousands of candles were glowing all about, and their light shone in the wine that the Princes drank and on the huge gold candelabra, and the royal faces were irradiant with the glow, and the white table-cloth and the silver plates and the jewels in the hair of the Queens, each jewel having a historian all to itself, who wrote no other chronicles all his days._

- Expert from _The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth_

* * *

><p><em>July 17th, 2016<em>

Voices outside the tank were distorted by thick glass walls and orange fluid, leaving Ayanami Rei undisturbed as she bobbed lightly within the neutral suspension. Her lungs easily drew the oxygenated LCL in, long accustomed to the extra effort. She was nude save for the small socket in her arm, though what modesty she had grown to feel necessary was preserved by her now far-longer hair. It was a clinical sort of nakedness, and one she only recently began to relate with _vulnerability_.

Half-obscured by shadow and fluid distortion, Ikari Gendo stared at her with an unreadable look.

Still deafened from the outside world, Rei continued to muse. She was still as a grave in most respects, but her eyes wandered up to the upper reaches of the Memory Transfer Machine. Some part magnetic imaging and part psychic resonance, the curling assemblage of pipes resembled the gryi and sulci of a human brain. Its form had no bearing on its function, and the machine's ability to record was more a product of her own unique metaphysical anatomy. Asuka would have called it pointlessly symbolic and the mark of a vain egoist.

Asuka and Misato had been gone for two days.

The Commander turned to face the darkness, and a cherry red coal flared in response. The hand that held the cigarette cut through the air and left a burning orange line in its wake. "-en do I get my- -boratories back?"

Gendo's eyes narrowed imperceptibly. "The situation is in hand Akagi."

More angry orange-spot-slashing. "...ituation is untenable, Commander"

"I will resolve the matter in due time, Doctor."

The use of titles seemed to mark the end of the discussion. Lights within the cavernous chamber shifted, and Akagi Ritsuko stepped forward. She glanced at Gendo for a moment and pressed her lips into a thin line before looking Rei in the eye. "As you can see we have refit the transfer system now for independent and semi-autonomous operation."

Whisper-quiet, Rei spoke softly and let her eyes drift closed. "I understand. Thank you, Akagi-sensei."

"Rei." Gendo's voice was low and quiet, but it still filled the space. He nodded to Ritsuko then the banks of new devices, expanding and enhancing the transfer system. "Your purpose remains."

Taking one more step closer, Ritsuko bristled minutely. "Sir... her purpose in the scenario is essentially suic-"

"Her loyalty is absolute." Gendo cut the scientist off with a curt wave of an arm. "There is no issue."

Ritsuko swallowed her response, and Rei found the subtle shifts of emotion _fascinating_. The blonde looked as if she had swallowed something truly sour. "...Sir."

The pilot, Commander and scientist all fell silent at that. Ritsuko stamped out her spent cigarette and returned to the transfer console while Gendo resumed his vigil, watching Rei. Long minutes passed, and Ritsuko returned with three key cards with dangling lanyards.

"Only the three of us have access to this chamber," she explained. Ritsuko set one card aside for Rei as the Commander silently pocketed his copy. "One mandatory scan per month, alongside your pilot physical. This card will let you initiate an automatic transfer session." She gave Rei a wan smile, and the bags under eyes stood out even more. "You can come in and take as many memory saves as you like."

Turning and looking between both Child and the Commander, Ritsuko continued. "All Unit Zero entry plugs have been upgraded with emergency memory recovery as well. I don't think you'd ever want to use it, but it's there if you need it, Rei."

Rei took in a shallow breath and nodded. She couldn't reach out to touch it, but the card... It represented something. A quality of life that she was just beginning to fully understand. Her own control, perhaps, or maybe volition. The Commander turned and made for the door, already sure his presence was no longer required. Rei watched the door close behind him.

The teenager and adult looked at each other, then at nothing at all for a long while. Focusing back on the card, Rei glanced between it and where the Commander had been. Limited control, but control nonetheless. Meanwhile, Ritsuko sighed and pulled the lanyard over her head before moving back towards the console. She pressed a key and terminated the session.

As the LCL drained out of the tube, despite everything else going on, Rei smiled.

* * *

><p>Tokyo-3 stood isolated from both Japan and the rest of the world, serving as a nearly self-contained system and largely detached from Japan itself. Crouched in the defensible pocket formed by hills on three sides, the low-slung industrial and armor buildings of the lakeside city was the ideal battleground. Scarred twice over by Angel attacks, the city had rebuilt. Modularity and prefabrication had eased the process, alongside vast subterranean systems. New buildings and roads stretched out over earthen gashes and flooded craters, leaving ragged edges and miss-matched streets throughout.<p>

Life went on in the fortress city, where the hottest days of the year caught and reflected off of every chrome and mirror-polished surface. Invisible towers of hot rippling air surged up into the sky and beat at any aircraft who dared fly over the city proper. Electric cars ran across too-wide boulevards and over striped hazard bands, which in turn doubled as pedestrian crosswalks. Civilian foot-traffic was a misnomer, as all who lived and worked in Tokyo-3 were in some way part of NERV, part of the war effort.

Every morning, great streams of people and product flowed into massive bunker-entrances. carried by equally huge trucks and flanked by armed guards, the industrial, economic, and intellectual might of Tokyo-3 all vanished underground.

Shigeru Aoba ran a hand through his still-growing hair and sighed. His fingers caught on the thin surgical scar that cut at an angle, leaving a long bald furrow. The technician let his hand fall to the side and continued on his way through the Geofront catacombs. Hyuuga had taken over for Major Katsuragi in the wake of her departure. Any other week, Aoba would have run the other man ragged for how hard he mooned over their superior officer.

Instead, the Geofront itself seemed to have come under siege.

The sandy-haired man sighed once more and looked to his thick tablet interface. Its screen flashed green and filled with a list of alerts and events, marked by blank spaces and voids empty of information. Whole sections of MAGI conduit and connections had been re-routed for two-score projects or more, and there wasn't one he could name. No reports or requests had been filed, thus leaving no paper trail. Proof of _something_ came in the form of mysterious data storage and the increasingly frequent prototype. Doctor Akagi had them all stacked up in her main lab, and Aoba had seen her eying them fitfully at them more than once.

Back in the present Aoba shared some of her trepidation, sighing as he stared at the traitorous absence of data. _Do I try reporting this, or do I act like I'm at lunch right now and hope some other poor bastard catches hell for the past two days of dead-air._..?

The decision came fairly easily, despite how it set his empty stomach twisting. Tapping the touchscreen, Aoba walked along the corridor just like he had any other day, fulfilling his normal duties as a lieutenant in NERV's employ. He made a turn left aiming for a shortcut, but stopped in the face of the blocked hallway. Welded shut. Right, he had to go the long way.

It felt longer, lifetimes even. Being closed off. He dragged a long-fingered hand down his face, pulling on thin stubble and stretching his cheeks away down from his eyes. He let go and everything snapped back into place, staring at the blocked door.

On the other side of the wall, lights flickered and died.

* * *

><p>Unnecessary spaces did not need upkeep, as that was an inefficient use of resources. Instead, whole hallways had been stripped of their sturdy panels, wiring and insulation. Other passages had been blocked with undulating coils of cable and sheathed conduit, and only strange symbols painted in human blood saw fit to keep the temperatures fit for mankind.<p>

Men and women trudged through those tangled passageways at all hours. They had lost all sense of time- their watches and cellular phones confiscated and cannibalized in favor of _progress_. Heirlooms, like an ancient pocket watch dating from the Meiji Restoration had been rendered down unto raw silver for purposes unknown.

_We can do better_ was the only explanation offered.

Staff bathrooms meant for brief intermittent use had been converted to pressure-scrub showers. When set properly, a fully clothed man could go from filthy to clean in an uncomfortable twenty seconds. If set improperly, one such station could go through dirt, fabric, skin, subcutaneous tissue and possibly bone. None had dared adjust the temperature after that warning, and the thirty scientists and technicians endured the icy misery.

Meals were relentlessly scheduled, left not to habit but an almost all-seeing eye, who knew their bodies better than they did. Dense sustenance bars had been baked automatically, run by ramshackle contraptions made of vending machines and repurposed microwaves. Their taste had been a concession to simple human fallibility; food would have done them no good if they had not been able to stomach it.

Sleep was a mysterious thing, forgotten in the repeated application of medical thaumaturgy. The new science of pressure points _worked_, despite more than a century of contrary evidence. Those who graduated from the higher education in late seventies and early eighties were no strangers to all-nighters. The sad fact was, as a loose collection of seniors and the middle-aged, many of them had not felt this healthy in years, if not decades. There was no mistaking the steady, inevitable grind for the weariness and decrepitudes of age. What they were experiencing was every way they could experience it, as any less could compromise _yet more progress_.

An indeterminate volume of the Geofront now sat apart from the rest, blocked at all access by solid steel barriers welded seamlessly from floor to ceiling. And every single line of fused metal ended with the same thing.

A fingerprint.

* * *

><p>Inside the cordoned off section, three floors and approximately twenty rooms had been converted into rapid research and prototyping engines. Salvaged tools and new devices constructed by his hand hung from the ceiling or spread out across the half-dozen work tables. Bent over those stations for hours at a time, every scientist and engineer felt Ikari's mark on the process.<p>

Every man and woman had been placed where they would do the most good, that their specialties would compliment their assigned task and maximize synergy with their neighbors. One man leaned over a computer terminal, dutifully punching in code. Others turned to calculators and chemical formula, rubbing at three days of stubble. They were not chained to their desks, but they stayed in those seats just the same.

At the far end of the primary research chamber, there was a secure sliding door. It had once been a clean room for electronics assembly, now it served as a private laboratory. A sudden surge of intent swept across the research floor, and each scientist stiffened in their seats. Persistent, almost intangible pressure hit their skin, like the almost physical feeling of walking into warmer air.

That sudden awareness gave way to panic as sweat broke out across nearly every brow and under each collar. Those who had been between desks for one reason or another scrambled, hurried but deliberate. Inefficiency was unacceptable, but the consequences for _mistakes_... The unspoken consensus was unanimous. Papers were shuffled and consoles strained to keep up with the furious inputs.

The light from within came first, cast out in thin lines at the seams and edges. Bright enough that it flooded every nook and cranny between the door and its floor and ceiling tracks. White-gold filled the space as the door whipped open, and everyone blinked behind welding masks and opaque tinted goggles.

It was difficult to describe tangible brilliance. Ikari Shinji filled the doorway, so much so that the structure itself seemed too small to hold him.

Their project leader stepped out into the room without pause and took one look across the room, head swiveling left to right with his gold brand shining like a searchlight. Muscles shifted under a threadbare shirt, and everyone present knew what strength he could bring to bear. They had watched him rip down walls. Somehow vacant and intent, he turned his attention from the room itself to everyone in it.

Behind their masks and visors, sweat beaded down their skulls.

He pointed at a handful of them, already having made it halfway across the room. "You, and your teams. Follow me and report."

So indicated, the scientists and engineers leapt to their feet and clustered around him. They did their best to clamp down on the fear and unease, but none could keep their voice fully level. If he noticed, there was no outward sign. Project summaries filled the air as the growing entourage of beleaguered innovators followed his command. Synthetic muscle both cloned and constructed, improvements to MAGI interface, and plans regarding the manufacture and distribution of the enhanced MRI system.

Three days of full-burn effort had resulted in progress more along the lines of years. Maybe not _revolutions_, but instead vast leaps forward nonetheless. Still, they lacked his inherent advantages, the almost tangible brilliance on demand. The reports from every angle were riddled with questions and challenges they could not do- not in the hours Ikari had demanded.

So the boy-leader cocked his head to the side, then the other, visibly mulling over each obstacle as he marched through the isolated Geofront chambers. His shining aura glowed almost constantly, flaring brighter and showing all the edges of its more iconic elements. Brief glimpses of wire-mesh arms and hands threaded between equally ornate mandala traceries. Answers flowed from his lips almost non-stop.

Desktop prototyping and computers of the previous room gave way to manufacturing floor and assembly, where unlucky NERV staff had been scooped up in the siege. Those men and women in the orange coveralls and tan uniforms worked with larger tools and bigger projects, overseeing the assembly of the things the Shinji and his specialists had designed.

Strung-together MAGI terminals connected intangibly with the rest of the Geofront. His entourage followed and those already present dared not stand at his presence. He did not tolerate _distraction_. Efficiency was earned with brute-force calculation and growing experience. Hours had been stretched, and the lack of sleep broke what grasp of time remained. Ikari Shinji had made himself the center of their world in three days. He had secured them against exhaustion and sickness, and demanded that they work _his_ pace.

At the end of his circuit, Shinji stopped and turned to his collection of employees and conscripts. The gold disc on his brow flared brighter, and he turned awfully focused eyes on each of them. He spoke softly, and those nearly forty years his senior were again reminded that for all of Shinji's height, bulk and sheer _presence_, his _voice_ hadn't changed.

"It's time for dinner."

* * *

><p>He couldn't actually multitask. At least not any further than an athlete or martial artist could, trusting their physical training to share the load of <em>doing<em>, leaving room for _thinking_. Shinji stared out past his plate at his employees and direct subordinates. His mind churned away at complex problems that most people would struggle with, even with a calculator or computer. Balancing the dietary requirements of over thirty people was again, not a matter of dividing his attention. Linear progression of thought and logic chewed through the complex organic chemistry and metabolic science.

That he did so in a matter of _minutes_ was what made people think he could multitask.

Not that he had much care for what other people thought right then. That was part of the problem; he thought too much about the wrong things. None of that led to _progress_. Behind in his office were the plans for MRI cable bundle manufacturing and eventual implementation across Tokyo-3. At the head of the long cafeteria table, Shinji watched the rows of scientists, engineers and common NERV employees. They ate quickly and spoke little, as he'd already implemented a strict schedule for meals. What whispered complaints reached his ears were shushed by their neighbors, urging everyone to just keep their heads down. Distractions everywhere.

As for dinner, that was a _special_ event. NERV kitchens were surprisingly well stocked, and the bulk foodstuffs gave him a great deal of room to stretch out. The lavish meals also served as a nightly incentive. Disposable chopsticks and the ubiquitous spork scraped against the plastic trays heaped high with fresh breads, expertly prepared rice and preserved staple meats. Face thick with three days worth of stubble, Professor Kurosawa ate with big bites, but Shinji could read his face, read that something was bothering him. The boy made a note to watch the man in the future.

The schedules aimed for the best use of everyone's time according to his plotting. Shinji frowned while leaning back in his chair. The seat creaked ominously. There were _so_ _many_ things that needed to be done. Engineers worked on the material sciences, refining the composite research he had started. Neurologists and programmers were grappling with the symbolic language he had developed for the MAGI, dusting that off and seeing if it could be of use. Shinji had anticipated a degree of hand-holding, but between _extensive _and _irrational _preconceptions, they needed almost constant oversight. _Distractions!_

_Mental_ distractions Shinji could handle. Problems based in the theoretical and procedural. Physical ones on the other hand were _annoying_; they wasted everyone's time. Looking up and down the table, Shinji focused back in on Kurosawa. He knew that the professor was not alone in his thoughts. Others were more obvious about their states of mind. Haggard, drawn faces with sullen looks. They stared at their plates and ate, and the food _tasted_ good, but they all knew its source. Shinji wasn't overly worried- _Progress_ was wearing away at the last of their resolve.

Not completely, however

"Ikari-sama..." One of his underlings whispered. Every utensil froze mid-motion and conversation slid to a halt. The woman broke into his train of thought, speaking softly. Her clothes were rumpled and hair unkempt, and it stubbornly refused to go grey. She swallowed thickly and licked her lips. Shinji knew the question before she asked it. "You told me three days ago when this started, that you could treat my..." - .

Shinji nodded, but did not spare the time to smile. _Shinchiro Ami- forty-seven, mother of two, Doctorate of Computer Scientist and expert programmer, carpal tunnel treated by prescription NSAID, kidneys suffer congenital - _

Waving at his glowing forehead, he looked her in the eye past the smoked glass visor gave her the same answer he had given to over a dozen others. "Discomfort is not mortality, you are still productive."

He made a note of her desolate look and frowned. "My time and resources haven't permitted me yet, but your conditions do not interfere with your productivity. I will treat you fully _when we are finished_, not before."

Doctor Shinchiro nodded woodenly before hunching back down in her seat. Shinji tilted his head to one side, then the other. The rest of his forces were sharing similar expressions. What little morale present was draining rapidly. A brief mental cost-benefit analysis lead him to consider a stopgap measure. Alongside that thought, he couldn't help but wonder just when they'd stop being so stubborn about things.

The boy suppressed the sigh and stood up, walking around the table towards the woman. Shinchiro wilted further, but her legs locked tight against the bench. Shinji had already anticipated the fear response, but a smile no matter how sincere would have failed utterly. Actions were his only recourse. With one hand on her head, Shinji pressed a point above her right eyebrow and laid his thumb against her left-hand temple. Shinchiro sucked in a quick breath and her eyes went wide, but Shinji ignored it, focused on the procedure and its execution.

Reflexology and traditional ritualistic medicine had been debunked for decades. Now though, Shinji had developed pressure point techniques that gave concrete results. With his other hand, he let fingertips trace over the important loci and intersections of the scientist's vital systems. It was more difficult without appropriate tools, but he invoked the thamaturgic sequence without issue. Shinchiro slumped in her seat and for the moment, she would not suffer the internal pangs. He may not have had the metaphysical resources to heal her _and_ maintain his required levels of productivity, but Shinji knew he needed to maintain efficiency at all costs.

They had a lot of time to make up for, after all.

With the basic pressure point treatment done, Shinji stepped back from Shinchiro as she slumped back into her seat and giggled quietly in relief. A whole host of her physical inconveniences had for all intents and purposes gone silent, after all.

Now though, Shinji couldn't fully restrain the exasperation. "Doctor, You have lived with your condition longer than I have been alive. I made certain we had sufficient supplies on hand to meet your needs. You were more than able treat yourself."

Shinji's then focused his stare down like a fine-beam laser, looking every one of the his employees dead in the eye. "Regardless of how effective they are, my abilities are not free."

Having made that declaration, Shinji turned away from Shinchiro's place at the table and made for his seat. Just as he was about to sit down, another professor stood up. "Ah, Ikari?"

The boy felt himself freeze, and almost completely without thought turned to face the man. The professor -_Tsukasa Hirano, masters degree in material sciences. Instigator. Healthy. Wears contact lenses. Moustache. - _wilted slightly when Shinji's eyes met his. "...Sama?"

Hirano made a remarkable effort of composing himself before speaking again. He licked his lips and glanced at his neighboring scientists, and all eyes were on him for good or ill. "Ah, Sir. I understand our work here is important, and I wouldn't want to compromise that but-"

Whatever pitch he had prepared fell flat in the air between academic leader and gifted teenager. Hirano stuttered, swallowing thickly while Shinji just watched with a somehow even more impassive expression. "My family hasn't heard from me in three days, and I'm sure there's quite a few people here who'd like to call out past the barricades..."

Hirano trailed off, and almost despite themselves, a dozen or so nearby heads nodded. The comisseration spread out in a ripple of bobbing heads, and all eyes turned to the head of the table. Shinji was quiet for a long, increasingly tense moment. A bead of sweat built up on Hirano's brow and tracked down the side of his face before curving across hard cheekbones.

The Division head stared right at the man and said one word: "No."

The engineer blanched, almost as if he realized what was coming next. Shinji let more of his frustration leak out, but it had the effect of _deadening_ his voice. He spoke in clear, uncompromising tones. "Doctor Tsukasa, you are dissenting."

Shuddering, the middle-aged man blanched, and broke out in full nervous sweats. Shinji pointed at the door and his face could have passed for a granite statue. "You either work or you don't. There is no in between. Report to the holding cells, Doctor Tsukasa."

Nearly thirty pairs of eyes switched between the now whimpering man and Shinji's own implacable stare. He matched their looks of fear and growing panic with one of unambiguous certainty. "Your health and continued productivity is my concern."

Shinji sat down and prepared to finish his dinner. "Your comfort is not."

* * *

><p>It started with a whiteboard.<p>

After dinner, Shinji retreated to his ad-hoc office. The once clean room had been quickly converted to suit his needs. As with the rest of _his _Geofront, he had spent that first day securing the entrances and exits, welding doors into place and ripping down walls as raw material for other barricades. In so doing he finalized yet another _technique_ that made the deconstruction all the more efficient.

It still bothered him that he had only successfully secured a comparative handful of useful workers. The whiteboard dominating one wall was already filled corner to corner with diagrams and calculations. Shinji himself ignored the utilitarian chair for the moment. Standing upright allowed him easy access to everything he would need, and if he had to walk elsewhere, there was no interstitial step of 'getting out of his seat'. He nodded once, satisfied with his own reasoning.

That being said he still had to maintain a certain state of non-activity for several hours of the day. The inherent thaumaturgical potential in blood and sublimating the offerings could have supplemented his reserves, but the logistics behind maintaining healthy blood volume amongst his workforce rendered the idea useless. Still he rewrote that proposal and shortened it. When Shinji pulled the marker away from the glossy surface, something odd struck him.

He had switched from Japanese to the strange block-character ideogram locked in his memory. Despite being more complex than the most complicated _kanji_, it felt... natural, logical. A more efficient means to convey the ideas he was struggling to articulate, and freed him from needing to translate between his mind and his hand at the board for the benefit of some other, unseen observer.

He tapped the marker against the board, musing while his body and soul rested. No excuse to be completely restful, even if by being restful he was renewing his _lifebreath_.

Flipping through sheaves of papers themselves thick with notes, Shinji mulled over more of his future projects. One stack happened to be the diagrams for the A-MRI assembly. The 'A' standing for Advanced, at the moment. He was sure someone else could think of a trendier name. The digital clock on his desk read ten at night. Not important at the time.

More plans and proposals took up the next hour, and he filled the whiteboard with even more cramped notation and schematics. There was potential in the MAGI, untapped by far. That thought lead him to another, looking inward to the mind itself. His helmet, the disguise NERV created for his public relations persona had used the same synchronization technology as the Evangelions. As long as the functions were kept simple, or borrowed the brain's own physical hardware for interpretation...

By that point he had discarded the board entirely and moved onto the wall itself, trusting his growing skill to protect against error. Direct neural interface wasn't exactly accurate. It was more potential of a more direct _user interface_... Shinji wondered then how the mind and soul interacted at that stage. Shrugging he let that thought go; there was far too much already on his plate, and a great deal of it came down to _lack of manpower_.

The answer came without asking, that was how obvious it was. He'd have to get more people then.

People... Shinji mulled that word over, the very concept of manpower even as he rubbed at his chin. Still no sign of _beard_ but he was due for another surge of hormones any day now. _People_ thundered around in his mind for a few more minutes. People were power, they were means, extensions of his will. People under his command were force multipliers, _resources._

Resources he could use.

Shinji turned then back to the wall and started to draw. He ignored his original plans and the previous implementations. He wouldn't need a factory or assembly structure for the A-MRI. Progress demanded the best and he was _tired _of letting things get in his way. The MAGI were sufficient, and vastly underutilized anyway. Marker in hand, Shinji all but attacked the wall, scribbling away. A finely detailed symbol appeared beneath his hand, and it's concept-meaning spoke to him as _vitalexpressor_. He would need to develop the actual ritual, but the initial draft looked promising.

The gleaming disc on his brow flared out then as he urged a small amount of power into his efforts. It was a minor setback as far as relaxing and restoring his strength, but he considered the sudden burst of inspiration worth following. Blood was power, and a power-harnessing/storage array... He could convert that inherent potential into something his machine could use perhaps, disconnect it from city power...

_Yes_, his mind hummed. _Run it off the patients themselves_.

It was genius! A mechanical-thaumaturgical method to collect a blood offering and transcribe the appropriate ritual inside the A-MRI itself. Automation was going to be a concern- there had to be a trained operator there at all times, as he could not fully grasp how to remove the vital _will_ component to thaumaturgy. That problem lead him to the solution though, the synchronization technology! Ignore the fallible distance between the hands and mind that guided them. A doctor could perform surgery with a perfectly dextrous set of robotic arms- or even run multiple limbs with sufficient practice!

The wall started to fill in with more black scribbles as the marker squeaked along the surface. It was definitely going to be a MAGI-only project however. There was no way 'off the shelf' components could handle the neural interface, or the A-MRI even with it's compressed data. Shinji started to sketch out the computer-triumvirate's basic architecture while he thought.

One mind of three parts. Woman, Mother, Scientist. Naoko Akagi was brilliant but _limited_. Shinji looked at the three squares he had drawn on the wall, marked with _Melchior_, _Casper, and Balthazar_. They too lacked that _will_, that sense of direction and purpose which pushed thaumaturgy out of pointless mysticism and into objective reality... Shinji stepped back from the wall and wondered. Where would he get that will, and... what would it look like?

_It looked like pain incarnate. Not that something that would inflict pain, but something that suffered instead. She wandered around the lab, her chestnut skin reflecting against the crystal prisms as she observing her lowest circle acolytes. The protective etchings were in place and freshly consecrated, and the halycon-plating was secure. Zenith they called her, teacher, leader, priest-king. Her students and peers hung on her every word._

_Bowed by age he did not show, a young man hovered nearby. "Our ambassadors within the Prisonshell are being inundated with summons and requests for clarification. Your work is brilliant, but two thousand refraction experiments at a time?"_

_"I need a sufficiently large sample size," she answered, and one gold-painted brow arched high. "All of my great works are strictly above-board, and have been for two millenia."_

_"Your paperwork is in order, true." The man nodded to the nearest research station, where a man in wet silk robes raised his arms high. The skein of the world split and unfolded. Twisted lifebreath was pulled through the gap with a squealing cry. Focused through the crystals, the being could at one point have been considered attractive. Sensual even. Now it was a twitching mass of inverted organs and spongy cartilage and bones. _

_"If they exist to suffer, then they will suffer for me." The priest-king frowned at the contained mess before allowing her eyes to slide sideways. "So what is the problem?"_

_Tired eyes looked back at her. "The problem is that They _noticed_."_

* * *

><p>Shinji blinked once and stared at the half-filled wall. He glanced at the clock and realized twenty minutes had passed. He wondered then, shaking the marker still in hand. His last completed thought had been 'where to find will'. That had been strange. <em>Interesting<em>, but strange. _Refraction_ had been the running theme. Refraction of wills, refraction of self, reinterpretation? He hummed thoughtfully and stepped forward to write once more. While his mind worked his fingers listed out the assets. Himself, personnel, the MAGI... The Evangelions themselves. He tapped his marker on that last entry- it was on the tip of his tongue.

Gold flared out bright enough to dry the ink staining the wall and render it dull and flaking. Readable, but aged by relentless sunlight. The Evangelions in their own way possessed will- in the same way that the AT field was intrinsic to them and humanity. But the AT field itself _was not will_. Connected to it, maybe, but separated enough that they were perhaps rooted in a deeper underlying structure. Not that he cared overmuch about that structure- Shinji needed a different sort of will, something he could use.

'Evangelion' had been written in English, and he tapped his marker at the end of the last vertical slash on the 'n'. He looked at that word for a long moment before very deliberately reaching out with his other hand. His fingers swiped at the cracking ink, half-erasing the word. Beneath his glowing brand, Shinji's brows slanted down, and a strange smile tugged at his lips. Ritsuko just _happened_ to have a ready source of will handy, deep within the Geofront. It wouldn't take much to convince her to hand it over.

Still, he would also need the MAGI as the refractor- pushing his potential solution through the system, wondering what would come out the other end. Something useful, he was sure. Shinji snapped the cap back onto the marker with a thin click and turned for the door. There was a lot to be done, and he needed to retask his team. Maybe even call out for more supplies and manpower. So many things to do... But Shinji was alright with that. He was making _progress_. As he left the office, only the closing door saw what he wrote on the wall.

A-N-G-E-L

* * *

><p>Inside the Commander's office embedded within the Geofront ceiling, the two most powerful men in Japan watched the slowly twisting hologram. The pair were drawn, haggard, though only the older of the two showed any sign of it. Fuyutsuki Kozou dragged a hand down his face and felt the wrinkles not so much spring up as ooze back into place over his bones. Two half-full mugs of thaumaturgically brewed and filtered coffee sat nearby, while a percolator hummed in the office shadows.<p>

Crisis management was an inevitably twenty-four hour affair.

Up the corner of the holographic diagram, Ikari Gendo watched the combat event timer tick upward. The same bit of code had been often used for marking the duration of an Angel engagement. Here it tracked the isolation and mad dash of effort the Third Child had undertaken. Just starting four days now. The habitable Geofront itself was an air-filled dome, while the vast majority of research and manufacturing were under ground within the cavernous space. A hexagonal structure descended into the ground beneath Central Dogma's mismatched pyramids, and it was there that most of NERV's research and development happened.

Fuyutsuki slumped into a nearby chair and groaned, massaging his eyes. "Your son continues to make even _less _sense. Abrupt disruptions in personality are... nothing like this!" The old man huffed, and Gendo could tell it was more out of compassion than any rational sort of indignation. A desire to help the boy. The professor continued, rasping past his hands. "Considering our sample size it's not wise to make assumptions, but his behavior is so _consistently inconsistent_."

Within the map itself, blobs of angry red bled out into the space, marking an insignificant fraction of the facility as 'damaged'. Gendo's hands and beard kept his thin scowl well hidden. In another section of the holographic display, a muted recording of the one message out of the quarantine zone played, and the engineer screamed silently into the camera pickup. The Third was becoming disruptive- complicating matters beyond even the scenario's planned use on him. With the increasingly comprehensive self-imposed isolation, the boy had whittled the Commander's own options down to almost nothing.

Still, there were patterns to exploited, just as Fuyutsuki noted. Gendo examined the isolated section once more. "The boy is following medical quarantine procedures over sound military doctrine."

"I loaned the boy my copies of _The Thirty-Six Stratagems_ and _The Art of War_, but as it is, your son's interest was largely academic." The older man grunted, and Gendo heard the creak of stiff joints. "Though I'm sure he only read them because he was bored. That was back before the Major mandated rest periods."

"A quarantine is just a siege in reverse. He will be asking for raw materials today most likely."

Fuyutsuki couldn't help pointing out Shinji's more recent developments, and his knack for repurposing materials. "Even setting aside his mania, Shinji is meticulous and showed an eye for efficiency. I wouldn't be surprised if he stretched all his resources to their limit."

Shifting slightly, Gendo considered the merit of asking an open question, and deemed it worthwhile. "Have we gleaned any new data regarding his personal limits?"

"Akagi was reaching some interesting conclusions with her energy container." Fuyutsuki shook his head then and continued uninterrupted. Gendo listened, _intently._

During those months when the boy forced himself to defy human limits, he ran into his own altered ones. Limited access to food or water had not impaired him, but forgoing sleep had resulted in a steady buildup of stress. More importantly, Shinji's exotic reserves had replenished at an agonizingly slow pace. That in itself was interesting and in some ways heartening, Gendo drew the correct implications. His frown deepened.

While they lacked _particulars_, NERV's various observers had gathered enough data to verify several previous conclusions: Metaphysically speaking, Shinji himself could not be permanently run down. Fuyutsuki had already anticipated the next question, and the Commander felt his stomach churn. "Upon demonstrating his repair technique, Shinji was able to restore something to working condition even after most of it's mass had been lost to combustion."

The professor gave the younger man a wry look. "He restored a burnt letter to full legibility, blatantly violating conservation of mass and energy."

Project E and the Human Instrumentality Project had inured Gendo to a great deal of existential trauma. He did not shiver at the implication or feel as awed as Fuyutsuki sounded. Instead Gendo suppressed a sigh and turned his to thinking the matter through. Something would be done, that much was obvious. What however, would have to be reasoned, well-thought out, and with a goal in mind...

Gendo eased up out of his seat and straightened his coat. "The boy is not yet a Von-Neumann device. Even if evidence suggests he can reach that point, he is still just a boy, and easily managed."

Eyes wide, Fuyutsuki sat up straighter and stared at Gendo in askance. "Need I remind you what happened to those criminals during his first manic state?"

Hands in his pockets, Gendo smirked knowingly. "You assume I plan to confront him directly. A show of force is a child's gesture." He spoke over his shoulder even as he made for the exit, and heard Fuyutsuki just as the door slid closed.

"At this point, Ikari, I don't know what to believe."

* * *

><p>Six prototypes filled her desk, along with attached data storage for their blueprints and manufacturing technology. Safe in one of her numerous labs, Ritsuko sucked down hard on her latest cigarette. She looked them over one by one, and a leaden weight built up on her shoulders. One of the items happened to be a hand-held MRI scanner, no better than modern examples save for its much more portable form factor. Fifteen years ago the idea would have earned Shinji a Nobel prize. Today it was a castoff of his manic phase.<p>

Exhaling softly, Ritsuko pressed her lips together and felt the too-dry lipstick crack under the pressure. The prototypes continued to mock her with their presence. Next to the scanner-MRI, a more generalized neural interface helmet had been opened up for examination. On the panel interior, someone had written a message:

_Help_ _us._

Seeing as they had access to machine tools and the like, Ritsuko was fairly certain the author wrote it in human blood to emphasize their point. She sighed again, shaking her cigarette free of ash. Without putting the mangled carcinogen down, she reached for the nearby bottle of antacids and chewed through two tablets. Four more remained in the bottle. Leaning back in her chair, Ritsuko felt her spine pop back into alignment.

"Are you concerned?"

The scientist snapped forward, nearly catapulting her glasses clean off her face. Lenses askew, she turned to Rei. The girl had held vigil alongside the scientist for hours at a time, ghosting away for who knew what. She repeated the question when Ritsuko blinked. "Are you concerned? For Ikari-kun?"

Swallowing thickly, Ritsuko sucked down another lungful of smoke and mulled over her answer. The answer came out in a low mumble. "He concerns me."

Turning back to her desk and MAGI console, she listlessly stabbed at the keys, reviewing the latest on system security. No changes. "I know what he can do." A new report appeared on screen and she took a moment to fix her glasses. "I helped talk him down after the last event like this, but we never thought there would be a _second_. Just one episode and his brain reverts back to it's normal plasticity."

Rei went silent at that, and Ritsuko took a moment to glance sidelong at the girl. The teenager stared at her lap and folded hands, while her bangs hung down and masked her face. The longer hair suited her somehow, it helped change the shape of her face and push Rei away from _Yui_. There were other changes too- A Misato diet was by far objectively better than what she ate before.

The past four days had taken their toll on both of them however. Ritsuko stamped out the cigarette and sucked on her teeth. She might have been too blunt. "The last time this happened, we got to him with Section Two and tranquilizers... Right now we just have to wait and see what happens."

Silence stretched on between them for a while, and Rei's legs kicked idly in the darkened lab. Ritsuko moved to light another cigarette, but stopped when Rei looked up. She spoke softly, as usual, but even the scientist could hear the thin, wavering uncertainty. "He swore, Akagi-Sensei, to do no harm..."

The statement hung in the air for a moment, and then the door to Ritsuko's lab slid open. Ikari Gendo stood framed by the far brighter corridor lights. Ritsuko squinted past her glasses, stiffening slightly in her seat. "C-Commander."

He moved inside, not even bothering to sit. The scientist saw him look at Rei for less than a second before refocusing on her. "Report, doctor."

Ritsuko put out her most recent cigarette and sighed, heading over to the desk full of plans and prototypes. "Minimal change. New devices appear fairly regularly. Seeing as he has about forty or fifty of our best minds in there with him..." She waved at the row of inventions- the first one was the portable MRI. "It's like watching someone's neurochemistry changing under the influence of a hallucinogen. Every one after the first is just that bit more absurd..."

She trailed off, sucking on her teeth once more. Among the examples were more material-science experiments. A gel-form of that composite material he had developed that could be sprayed onto a surface to strengthen it akin to bronzing. He had sent a video demonstration along with the test sample, where he coated his own arm with the compound. Shinji was the only person strong enough to still be able to flex his fingers, despite being bound in something equivalent to a few millimeters of steel.

The last one however was... She shrugged helplessly. "That one is another infusion pump prototype, like what he made for Ayanami."

Moving over, Ritsuko waved her hand at the device. It sat on the desk as an almost seamless mass of shatterproof glass and medical plastic, there were almost no indications of much of _anything_. What little surface detail there was had been taken up by slots for pre-fabricated reservoirs and the requisite surgical tubing. A fantastically dense holographic display appeared over the device as Ritsuko neared it. Shinji had added features and functions at will and almost compulsively. Filling the air with unlabeled buttons and data, Ritsuko had needed the hundred-page manual to even _begin _to make sense of the interface.

She watched out the corner of her eye as Gendo looked the device over. Between the glasses, darkness and beard, he was unreadable as always.

At her console, the screen crackled and dissolved into static. Ritsuko blinked once and bit her lip. She saw the white noise reflect off Gendo's glasses, and Rei perked up from her place in the back shadows. Another screen monitor on the wall lost the signal, and the blonde wondered just what _else_ could go wrong.

Then Shinji appeared on the wall, compromising every screen in the lab.

Bent over a desk and keyboard with the gold disc over his head, he seemed to look _past_ the screen. He tapped some keys and several monitors shifted, wiping his image away and leaving charts and graphs in their place. "Ah, Doctor. Glad that I caught you. We're behind schedule."

Acid roiled in her stomach, and the scientist blanched. Her eyes cut to the computer and Ritsuko felt her stomach drop down around her ankles, and the blood continued to drain out of her face. The boy had _breached her security_. Gendo's nearby presence was _less_ than comforting.

Shinji barely even seemed to notice her though, or anyone else in the room. He was focused more on another screen, even as his hands did something just off camera. "We're coming up on our first production milestone, Doctor. For maximum market saturation for the structural gel and bio-electrical implants we need to start seeding our contracts to bait the hook. You have those contracts ready, yes? It's been a full day now, that's more than enough time."

There was an overpowering desire to _move_, to reach over to her console and enter the commands to banish the Third from her screens. Ritsuko though was caught between the four days of increasing tension and the sudden disconnect. Of how _rational_ Shinji sounded... despite the impossible demands. The requests had never made it to anyone's desk, let alone hers, and had been destroyed in transit by her own hand.

He punched a few more keys, squinting at something off camera. "Ritsuko? I've been more than patient here, you could at least answer me."

The red lights of active security cameras stood out in the darker corners of the ceiling, and servos whined faintly. "I have spent far too long compromising this terminal- Set the MAGI to open access across the Geofront. I don't want to have to automate this access method if I need to." Shinji had not even bothered to look up as his own camera before he continued, almost resigned. "Automatic processes can rapidly become destructive."

He tilted his head slightly. "Doctor? Akagi Ritsuko- Have you been following my instructions? Have you secured the contracts and manufacturing details? The prototypes must be mass produced and in the hands of humanity at large _right now_."

The scientist could only blink, and Shinji didn't even wait for an answer. "Unacceptable. I'll see to it myself- Commander. It's been a long time."

The boy finally looked up at the monitor, and Ritsuko wondered if she was going to have an arena-side seat for a conflict almost a decade in the making. Shinji was nearly _half a kilometer away_ in an isolated section of the Geofront, and the unease worrying at her was tangible. Rei sidled up next to her, close enough that Ritsuko felt the heat of the girl's hand near her own, but not yet touching.

Gendo grunted. "Shinji."

"Good-" the pilot nodded once. "I'm short on time. All of my requests for resources have apparently failed. As division leader I invoke my authority. Where are my supplies?"

"Authority which does not supersede my own." Gendo stood up straighter, hands in his pockets and far more composed than Ritsuko believed possible. "Explain yourself, Third Child."

The pilot, the _Exalt_ watched from the highest vantage point, and for some unspoken reason, Ritsuko found herself looking up at the screen set the furthest up on the wall. Rei and Gendo had done so as well, despite Shinji's face appearing across six or more screens. Her eyes slid left to right, and her mouth went dry. _Two of them!_

Shinji's eyebrows slanted down, and his eyes hardened slightly. "Explanations aren't important- I have objectives that must be met." Some of the screens changed to show lists of materials and items. Foodstuffs, medicine, tools and equipment. "Are these items on the way or are they not?"

The commander's unflinching response soothed Ritsuko, and she was sure that the tension building up in the lab was all in her head. "No. First, I require a manifest of existing employees and their current well-being."

If the question shocked Shinji however, Ritsuko only saw the barest hint. He shook his head, and his eyes narrowed slightly. "This isn't a hostage situation."

Rei moved again, but Ritsuko was only able to pay half attention. She watched the sparring match between father and son, and could not help but note something was _wrong_. Wrong with Shinji, his means and methods. The reason was on the tip of her tongue, but she followed the pair as they tested each other with demand and counter response. Gendo was unreadable as always, but she knew plans and contingencies were forming even before as he answered.

"I never said it was, but it can be if you want your resources to remain steady."

Shinji was quiet for a long moment before hitting another key. One of the larger screens changed to a list of names. "Blood sugar, daily calorie intake, kidney and other functions. Professors Mizushima and Tsukino are classified as 'dissenting residents' and have been afforded living space in the containment area until project completion."

The officer, scientist and pilot all seemed to share the pause as Shinji took a breath. Gendo had just begun to nod.

"Dr. Nakahara, slight myopia, high cholesterol, weak liver and the beginnings of lung cancer from smoking. Dr. Akiyama, defect in left ear with deafness, recent hip replacement, arthritis."

Gendo nodded then, otherwise stone-faced as he cleared his throat. "You've made your point. The safety and well-being of your dependents remains your responsibility. As for the other matter-"

"C-Commander?!" Ritsuko felt her lungs freeze. She hadn't intended to speak up, wasn't even sure why the thought came up. But once she started speaking she couldn't quite stop. "The safety of Geofront is _everyone's_ concern, including Ikari-kun's! This situation cannot be-"

Shinji cut her off mid-word. "Doctor, unfortunately you are not in a position to solve my problem. I will call on you _later_ when your field is needed."

Rocking back on her mental heels, Ritsuko almost missed Gendo's odd look. There was no chance of missing Rei's hand slip into her own. Her skin crawled, but heat seeped up her arm all the same. Barely a few seconds after the interruption, Gendo nodded back to his son, frowning slightly. "Your requests are denied. End this foolish endeavor."

The boy frowned himself, already turning away to some other task. "Well. Then you're of no use to me."

Shinji vanished, and the screens went black.

* * *

><p>An hour after the confrontation in the laboratory, Rei sat at the edge one of NERV's sprawling indoor pools. She wasn't swimming, but her bare legs dangled in the water all the same. The ripples played around her calves, and she mused upon the fluid dynamics. She couldn't have calculated formula in her head, but she knew the math in broad terms. Rei wondered then if Asuka could have done it.<p>

Her second and third friends _ever_ had been gone for four days. The Commander and even Ikari-kun had apparently been the reason why Asuka had left so abruptly. They had angered her somehow, to the point that she had been almost spitting fire. The metaphor made her smile despite herself, and Rei had to admit, Asuka would have approved of fire-breathing as an ability.

Misato meanwhile had been a surprisingly stabilizing presence in their lives. Dependable for being so faultlessly casual and irreverent. Now they were both gone, and Rei had no idea what to do about the one friend she had in Tokyo-3.

Fear was the wrong term- apprehension maybe. An unsettling sense of wrongness. Shinji had been driven, but painfully terse and blunt. It had been a familiar behavior, one she had known for her whole life, and _not_ one she had ever expected from Shinji. Growth was inevitable, but the Third... Rei didn't shudder, but she felt something icy and cold run up her spine.

She realized then, that she liked that there was only one Commander Ikari. Judging by the curt dismissal and exit barely an hour prior, apparently so did he.

Better to say that she _appreciated_ the Commander, in a way she felt few others could fully understand. Her circumstances were unique however, and the more and more she observed, the more she began to form new opinions. Sitting up, she kicked the water from her feet and started to walk around the pool edge. The problem hung in her mind while she moved. Shinji was isolated- had isolated himself. Asuka, despite not being _his_ friend, would have done something like blow the wall down and shout the boy into submission. Rei thought about it for a moment and noted that Asuka might have helped _cause_ the problem...

Akagi-sensei had been fairly clear, cause or not, it was most likely condition unique to Shinji's status as an Exalt. Making one full lap, Rei decided that if she used any of Asuka's methods, they would need tailoring. Misato on the other hand came in at odd angles. She upset the status-quo and stalked around the problem like a big cat, building elaborate tricks out of honest affection and double-entendre. The Major saved true hostility and savagery for her enemies.

That left Rei herself, stopping just ahead of the doors leading out and deeper into the Geofront. Shinji was alone, surrounded almost entirely by _negative_ influences. Even himself. _Especially _himself.

Rei turned for the doors and stepped into her shoes, already contemplating how to break through the quarantine.

* * *

><p><em>Five thousand seats filled the auditorium, and each had been filled with an eager, attentive student. For a moment she wondered if the her Awe-Inspiring-Technique had been too much, but she discarded the thought as soon as it fully formed. She lifted her arms for attention, sunlight catching her accessories with a sparkle, and five thousand breaths rose in collective gasp to fall silent like a wave. The great secrets of the world were hers to impart upon the next generation.<em>

His eyes refocused abruptly, fast enough that he felt his irises contract. Concepts and plans boiled in the back of his brain as he blinked away the fugue. It hadn't hurt, exactly, but the isolated office looked darker regardless. Scanning for a bare surface to record his fleeting understanding, he instead saw a pair of patient, red eyes. Rei, of course. She must have been standing there for some time. The corner vent cover swung by one screw behind her head.

No matter- now he had an _audience_.

Wiping a wall clean with one hand and readying a fresh marker in the other, Shinji lectured. "It's that language locked in my head. I can see it, read it, but I can't _say it_. The concepts are there!"

He scribbled a new symbol, barely conscious of Rei watching from under his arm. A compact ideogram built out of marker strokes appeared beneath his hand, but he drew it oversized, big enough to cover a foot square section of the white surface. The calligraphy was immaculate, drawn out of some place that went beyond mere memory or instinct. Like the word had been _left behind_ for him to bring out at that moment.

Three interlocking symbols made it up, and Shinji spoke as he finalized each line. "It's a vital component for advanced alchemical reactions, this concept here. I know the _literal_ meaning of its parts, but the whole escapes me!"

Another section of old notes gave way to more drawings. A triangle first, then a group of curving lines that cupped each other. A tapered square ended these sequence as a sentence-phrase made of symbols. "Down-Fire-Stone. That's what these things mean."

He tapped the triangle. Against all conventional wisdom the narrow point was facing up, toward the ceiling. "I know this means down... but..." Shinji trailed off, mumbling faintly. Sketching out another icon nearby, he frowned. "These _both_ mean down... But they're different."

"Differing perspectives?" Rei cocked her head to the side, and Shinji felt something akin to the overwhelming urge to hug her take over. A few seconds later, a significantly more rumpled Rei dropped back to the floor and Shinji snapped his fingers, grinning savagely. "_Yes_. Perspectives are key!"

The triangle-that-meant-down, he tapped that one first. "Down... Down from Above. Looking down and then 'down' from birds eye view? That makes sense in context of the other matching symbols." He drew three more triangles surrounding the first, all of their points facing inward and their widest edges on the outside.

"Up, down, left and right." Shinji breathed the words out and felt the _rightness_. The _translation_ was still off, but he felt closer than he had in _months_. The _other_ symbol for down was different. That one was 'Down in relation to me. Down There- Down the Hole. It was an _adjective_. A new nugget of understanding, and with it, _progress_.

But still, down-fire-stone. The concept vexed him. The thaumaturgical formula was for the refinement of base matter, and all that implied. It went past 'eerily similar' and moved right into 'convergent principles'. Conversion of lead to gold, which the formula stated was possible if difficult, had also been the driving goal of actual alchemy in Earth's history.

Shinji looked up at the wall and the mark on his brow flared up for a moment. He'd been carefully hoarding his reserves, keeping himself from draining too much. "Fire... Fire as a symbol. Heat maybe? A heated stone..." The actual pictograph itself was of a snarling skeletal face, bestial and wild with a burning crest. Not a lion's mane, but more feathers or the frill of lizards. Salamander perhaps.

He shook his head and scratched out some of the drawings and remade them. The symbol for fire and stone had been merged, like before with the completed concept-phrase. "A fiery stone? Beast of fire trapped in stone..." He squinted at the pictograph-creature, the way it seemed to hiss and spit for freedom. Anger, hunger, adrenaline, heat, warmth, life, and a thousand other words tumbled around as he tried to put them in working order.

Muttering under his breath had made another symbol pop into his mind. Rushing. A similar beast, with long lines representing muscle and leaping strides. Freedom, a freed monster. A _fast _fire. Pumping limbs. A fast fire boxed in by jagged lines. Not clouds but caves... Fast fire of the caves, rushed towards escape. Boiling with life and heat, a running fire of the underground... _Hot blood of the earth! _

Shinji stepped back from the wall and smiled, and a great sense of accomplishment welled up inside him. Rei crept up on one side. "You understand it?"

"Only when you have been speaking," she whispered. Odd, maybe she had a sore throat- no, a cursory examination just revealed overproduction of adrenaline and other fight-or-flight secretions. She was still the stunted-tree Rei he'd known for more than a year now. Glancing back at the wall, Shinji re-read the sentence. Down-blood-of-the-earth-stone... No he needed _stone_ not blood of the earth!

Sighing roughly, he rewrote the symbol for stone again, but this time added a new line over the top of it almost as an afterthought. All together it looked like a box with the top line pinched in, and another line right above like a halo. The stroke itself was a jagged, ugly thing, lacking any artistry and looking like a child's first attempt at Hiragana.

"That... That's the symbol for _pure _stone. No, not pure, _noble _stone." He looked at the first fire-stone glyph, of the snarling lizard-skull face contained inside the box of stone. The extra line was easy enough to add. "Down-While-Looking-From-Above-Noble-Fire-Stone..."

Looking over at Rei, he shook his head. "I don't suppose that means anything to you?"

Rei just shook her head as well. Shinji sighed again and settled down into his chair, but his hands fell on the keyboard and he started typing. On his desk, a cage of white lab mice roused at the sound of the keys. Noses and paws picked through the bars with expectant stares, punctuated by squeaking.

More unwanted distractions, a routine which he warded off with a shake of his head. "No, no I'm alright."

"...I did not ask how you were, Ikari-kun."

Shinji blinked once, still typing. Rei was staring at him, unblinking and visibly concerned. She was emoting much more openly these days, and much easier to read. Refreshingly so. The mice squeaked again and he laughed lightly. Focusing back on Rei he shrugged.

"Sorry, I've just been hurting for some decent conversation, I started talking to them." He waved to the cage. "Turns out they talk back? Far less frustrating to deal with than _scientists. _They don't demand answers, only food and company. I give them both, and they will die for my goals. A good working relationship. Efficient."

Rei just nodded once, seeming to take that at face value. Good, means he didn't have to waste time on unnecessary explanations. A few more minutes and he'd be done updating his progress on language decoding and further thaumaturgical study. He looked up at the clock, eager to save power. Two hours to his next project review.

Thinking about his schedule reminded him of how often people were interested in _delays_. Suspicion built up in the back of his mind, and Shinji's eyes narrowed.

His hands hesitated at the keyboard for a moment before resuming, but harsher, more purposeful. With the rush of discovery finally cooling, he filled in the blanks with a steady surge of realization. Rei was _here_. His new audience was more than just a receptacle for his ideas, she had _found her own way in._

Shinji's voice stayed as low as his eyes, never leaving the screen. "My father sent you, I guess. Wanting a firsthand account of everything here. We're useless to each other."

He distantly heard the stutter pump of a blood-pressure spike, and zeroed in on it. "All of this scares you, doesn't it? Me _progressing_ is frightening or something. 'Shinji has to spin his wheels' for everyone to feel normal. You want me back out there again, don't you. Where I can be monitored safely."

Rei just shook her head, and her eyes hardened. Not _against him_, he noted, but more just out of an increasing sense of conviction. "No, Ikari-kun. I just do not want you to be alone."

* * *

><p>Hours passed. Shinji had <em>allowed<em> Rei to remain, under the condition that she do _nothing_ to disrupt his progress. In his increasingly focused state, the single thing he did not block from her was the opened vent. It was a chance for escape that she silently refused. The girl shadowed him where able, observing and listening by turns. She had been denied freedom to go where she wanted within his domain, or to see the other personnel. Her presence would have encouraged 'dissension' which Shinji desired least. She watched him drift between fugue and long, rambling rants. Sometimes they were directed toward her, sometimes towards the mice on his paper-strewn desk... and sometimes towards people who did not exist.

Every distant comment or hyperactive shift in tone helped build a stronger, more complete and unsettling image of the present Shinji in Rei's mind.

With Ritsuko and the rest of NERV outside the barricade, a lack of information gave way to full paranoia. More prototypes appeared almost without cause in Ritsuko's now-abandoned lab, and its screens remained active, where insistent progress reports were pushed out and went no further. The scientist herself had rounded up a team of her own technicians and crew, taking axes to the fiber-optic cables surrounding the quarantined Geofront. Bit by bit they cut the connection between Shinji and the MAGI, and shut down wireless access across the Geofront. Even so, with his limited resources and worrisome grasp of instantaneous mass creation, the head of Project E feared Shinji would soon build his own MAGI.

His division had all the brains he needed.

Inside the domain of Ikari Shinji, scientists and engineers worked to exhaustion and past it, driven by twisted morale. Left with nothing but the project, over the course of hours each began to equate their happiness with progress. Every success that kept Ikari satisfied in his ivory tower office was welcomed and praised, anything to keep the boy from stalking between workstations with a critical eye. His approval became their paramount concern, as it fluctuated so harshly with the research quota.

Night came and went under Tokyo-3. Shifts changed and NERV slept, some less than others. unseen by anyone, the siege clock in the Commander's office ticked over to the sixth day.

Ritsuko coughed wetly and glared at the full ashtray... and the old mug of coffee that had also overflowed with cigarette butts. Maintaining successful stress-management practices seemed to be a failing throughout NERV. Leaning back in her chair inside a distant, secondary lab, free of baleful prototypes, Ritsuko held the stretch until her back popped audibly.

Not that there was anyone else to hear- she had the space to herself. Maya had been tasked with purging Shinji's influence from the protected MAGI. He may have been brilliant, but the boy lacked Maya's experience. Turning back to her desk, Ritsuko curled forward and sighed. Sleep hadn't come easy, but the pressure point vitalizing technique still worked in a pinch.

She felt her nose scrunch up at that, and Ritsuko wondered just _when_ she had begun to accept Shinji's little revolutions as a fact of life. Thaumaturgical coffee and fatigue-banishing reflexology were such small, human things, it was easy to forget how much he had changed things. A kid's answer to problems, but their impact had been unmistakable. Now she and the rest of NERV had to contend with the fact that Shinji might not always work _for_ NERV, or with.

A stack of papers thick with annotations and sticky notes stood nearby. Rolling over, she skimmed the first sheet and let it drop with disgust. Psychological reports from Section Two analysts and NERV's own medical staff. Useful to someone, she supposed, but not her. _Neurology_ needed things like brain scans and the like for proper diagnosis. But if she could not attack the human side of the problem, then she'd focus on the _strange_ side.

Sliding back, Ritsuko reached out for the one container of Shinji's power. Secured in a nearby locker were a set of prototypes _she_ had made- third generation soul-pattern cameras. Studying the Angel Computer had been just what she needed to advance the new technology. Sliding the cover open, Ritsuko revealed the single incandescent flake of power and lit up the darkened lab.

The science itself came easily to her. Observe, record, repeat. Even a year after Shinji had Exalted, Ritsuko was still only comfortable in gathering data. Idle speculation aside, she had not bothered to develop any sort of universal hypothesis. She set the cameras up and took her photos. She captured a control image of her arm, much like a dozen others she had taken over the past few months.

Sending the information into deeper parts of the MAGI, Ritsuko waited for the results. She eyed the candle-bright quantum of power and hummed. "Maybe you can tell us what's going on with Shinji..."

With almost no demands on its time or resources, the supercomputers returned with the false color image files. Hitting a few keys, Ritsuko pushed them to the monitors that took up one wall. The problems with the rest of the Geofront seemed distant, in the face of exploring the unknown. Squinting, she re-ordered the images, comparing each of them one by one.

The first generation cameras could have only seen the soul as not really any sort of visual information. They weren't grabbing reflected particles off of spiritual matter, or at least that was what she had thought. From the first images she had discovered the two-soul structure of mankind, along with Shinji's own third part. The second iteration had provided more resolution, able to glean more information which in turn allowed her to assign more meaning to what she had found. Those refinements had also enabled the improved blood-wave pattern detectors, which themselves could track Shinji's presence and activity throughout Tokyo-3. His 'Pattern Green'.

Now though she stared at the latest set of photos, taken less than five minutes ago, and wondered if she had somehow made a mistake. Writing a quick script, Ritsuko ordered the MAGI to pick and plot densities of the green pattern from the images. On each screen, the false colors intensified, like a thermographic camera, and information unfolded in scrolling boxes around hotspots and cold zones.

The MAGI extrapolated without further command, reaching into archives for similar data. A graph appeared, dated March 2015. From those first days and the most basic of soul sensory technology, the computers assigned the value of 'baseline one'.

Ritsuko stared at the latest images, and their average rating of _five. _"...Why is there more pattern green here?"

Every picture showed an increase in green pattern saturation across the whole viewing angle. Impossibly so. Taking a steadying breath, Ritsuko reminded herself that one data point does not constitute a result. Tamping down her thoughts, the obvious answer was soon taken care of, by closing the power container and leaving the room dark. Process of elimination had seen her through many issue with Project E, and it would see her though this.

Another set of photos followed the first, and then another from the lab down the hall. A stack of evidence quietly grew as she worked, the methodological, almost ritualistic process giving her something to focus on besides the potential implications of what her discovery might mean. Finally, with larger sample size in hand, she pressed the compile key, leaving all her hopes to the rigors of calculation. She had done all she could. Leaning against a bare bit of laboratory wall, Ritsuko sighed and pat down her coat and skirt for another pack of cigarettes. Empty, of course.

The updated set of photos came in not long later, and Ritsuko felt her cheeks go pale and cold. "No change in levels from all samples. Removing the source of pattern green did not result in perceptible change."

She even looked at the second photo of her arm, and the levels were again identical, and more importantly, _higher than one year ago_.

* * *

><p>Twenty minutes of searching lead to Ritsuko finding <em>no<em> cigarettes and far too much coffee. Half the evening shift were running on the drink, and she honestly did not want to be one of them, not right then. She _did_ however find Rei in one of the hallways. The girl was more than a bit dusty, smudged with dirt and oil across her whole body, coughing into her hand. The scientist took a moment to eye the girl, looking for signs of lost cohesion or worse. The infusion pump hanging from the pilot's side was working apparently, and the stabilizing LCL solution still worked. Small favors for her, apparently.

She watched the girl finish coughing and start to dust off her skirt. Rei was usually less concerned about such things, and often more deferent. When was the last time Rei _hadn't_ acknowledged a superior's presence...?

Ritsuko's hand started to tingle, and she thought back to the previous day. "Ayanami. Why did you grab my hand?"

The girl looked up, not fast enough to be surprised, but alert and intent. "You were hyperventilating. I considered it a reasonable gesture of support."

Had she been hyperventilating? Ritsuko honestly couldn't remember considering Gendo's presence as well as Shinji's trampling through her best security. She could have handled mortal terror, rationalized it as an outmoded fight or flight response. That option hadn't been available though. _Rei_ however proved to be a present and far more soluble concern. Ritsuko tried to keep her face and voice neutral.

Her expression must have shown regardless, because Rei cocked her head to one side before speaking. "Is something wrong, Akagi-sensei?"

Ritsuko wiped a hand down her face absentmindedly, mirroring some of the smudges on the girl's face. _That hand_, she noted inwardly. "I'm... afraid I might be more magic than previously thought."

Saying it out loud seemed to break something open, and half the compartments Ritsuko shoved her thoughts and feelings into started to spill out.

_I_ _am not up to the task of running herd on this kind of bullshit. _The thought shot through her mind and stuck, and Ritsuko half-felt the almost vindictive smile take over her face. She was _venting now_, thank you very much. That's why _Misato _was here, to manage personnel and related affairs. Stalking around the hallway, she started to pace, more march and throw her arms up along with the unvoiced rant. No more closed gestures and aloofness- she was a _woman_ and she could breath fire with the best of them.

_And_ she was a _scientist_! Her job was to make the _results _happen. She did not write _either_ of her doctorate theses on reality-warping teenage superhumans. Rei was still standing pat even as Ritsuko stomped in loose circles. The taller woman cast a shadow that shifted with her proximity to lights and wall, and her breathing grew more and more ragged while her lips moved silently.

Finally she came to a stop facing a wall and let her forehead thump solidly against it. A thousand problems- Shinji, NERV, Angels and Evangelions...

"...And now my only confidant... Ritsuko turned her head and shot the girl a dark look. "is _Yui_."

Then Ritsuko blinked once and realized what she had just said. Rei stared at her, the girls own eyes slightly widened and focused. For her- Ritsuko supposed- that was just about as close to outright, wild-eyed shock. The silence stretched out between them for another long moment, and Ritsuko felt the blood and adrenaline drain out of her body and into somewhere near her feet. It left her limbs cold and leaden.

Rei just raised her hand to lips and coughed lightly. "I am not competing with you, not as Ayanami Rei or Ikari Yui. Not at all."

Still close enough to the wall, Ritsuko let her head thump against the cool surface once more. "What."

"Whom you engage in romantic or sexual intercourse with is none of my business. Truly." Rei's expression had barely changed, but she spoke clearly. The surreality of the statement did nothing to help the scientist's calm.

Staring past her hair, Ritsuko sighed, physically and emotionally drained. "You're not supposed to know that. Any of that, _least of all that_."

The girl just shrugged in response, eerily like Misato's casualness and Asuka's egocentric disdain. "I am not supposed to know many things. It has been tiresome."

A handful of previous inconsistencies suddenly started to make sense, now that Ritsuko thought about it. She stared at the pilot, wondering what sort of personality let themselves just walk towards certain death without flinching.

Cocking her head to the opposite side, Rei's eyebrows slanted down slightly. Not an angry look, but an intent one. "As a scientist, you as well should know that attempting to understand is purposeless without the knowledge of why it needs to be understood."

Ritsuko pulled back from the wall and looked at her arm, thinking back to the higher pattern saturation and _not knowing_. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

That was it then. Ritsuko looked over at the girl and felt her anger melt away. Actually taking a moment to really _see_, Ritsuko was finally able to put a cause to her sudden fits of compassion. Rei was still a _child_, and now the scientist _saw that_. Ritsuko felt her stomach churn and bile made the back of her throat burn, but she forced it back. She thought back and wondered, just when had it started. When had Rei stopped being _predictable_.

The doll-like girl had shed her programming a long time ago, it seemed, and only now was it becoming obvious. The pilot had broken free of the data plot and easy categorization and had become a _person._ Sighing, Ritsuko stood up straighter and locked eyes with the First Child. There were wheels turning behind those large red eyes now, that much was clear. Thoughts and ideas that Ritsuko had no basis for guessing. The girl's neutral, indifferent attitude had become a disguise around NERV, and Rei had taken it off long enough to give Ritsuko a look past. At the moment, the scientist was too tired to analyze away a plainly open expression of empathy.

"I'm sorry, Ayanami-kun." The honorific was sincere that time, instead of habitual politeness.

Still alone in the hallway, the pair stood quietly. In some ways Ritsuko felt lighter, like a handful of burdens had fallen off her shoulders. New weights had piled on right after, but it was _different_. And maybe, just maybe, she had a chance to shed those too.

From her own patch of floor, Rei looked up at the older woman. Dust had settled in clumps throughout the girl's blue hair. "Akagi-sensei... How do you encourage someone to listen to you? Especially when they aren't..."

Ritsuko just slumped against the nearest bit of wall, sliding down til her knees and ankles locked. Gendo never listened, Fuyutsuki humored her, and her mother barely gave her the time of day. A lifetime of interaction came down to a few thin connections and an apartment full of cats. The last decent conversation she'd had among peers instead of hierarchy had been nearly ten years ago, back in college...

Tilting her head, Ritsuko gave Rei a wan grin. "The secret to getting someone to listen to you, is to listen to them. To express interest in what they like and not drag the conversation towards you. For Ryoji Kaji it was girls. Misato liked cars..." For Shinji though, or Gendo... She left the specifics unsaid.

"...Sometimes you have to do something more difficult. Challenge a belief or ideal- do something big enough so they'd stop and pay attention." Her tone went rueful then, and she looked up to the ceiling. "I suppose all of us need a bit of a... shock to the system, every once in a while."

Facing Rei one last time, Ritsuko gave her an intent look. "To get someone out of an unhealthy cycle, you need to break the conditions that enable it."

* * *

><p>Nutrient stores were sufficient, schedule changes were happening on time with minimal fuss, and every hand had the right tool for the job. Ikari Shinji walked through his fabrication halls and breathed deep, content with his progress. New and better MAGI modules were being assembled by the hour, and almost ready for their use as computational refractors for their prisoner elsewhere in the Geofront.<p>

_Brahmin of Lifebreath-circuit technology worked hand in hand with sorcerer-engineer, bent over gleaming desks of gold-banded oak and mahogany. Rune-scrived harnessing crystal were buoyed aloft by immaculate aerial conveyance paths, safely ensconced in protective wards against all impurities. She considered the hurdle of acquiring the last vital component._

_The Creatormented would buck their chains at her audacity, and raise their muted voices to cleave starlight in their fruitless rage. Even only as mere remnants, this could still sear the souls of mortalkind, stripping back the layers like blackened and curling paper until only a husk remained. She was no mortal, however, and had wrapped her soul in unbreakable sapphire long ago. _

_Nevertheless_, braving the prisonshell gates openly was a fool's errand. The captured Angelic intelligence was secured deep within Central Dogma, beneath hundreds of meters of rock, earth and metal. Wandering around his secure zone, Shinji considered the floor, and the logistics of simply building a secure tunnel towards his objective. His was the constant of destruction, no obstacle could stand in his way.

Certain that his forces could continue the assembly without further oversight, Shinji headed for his secure office. His mice were making good progress on basic addition and subtraction, and they deserved a reward.

_The door opened without a sound, and every surface threw up a dazzlingly reflected wash of sunlight from on high. Open walls lead to balconies and blue skies, while Halycon dripped from every surface. Self-wetting silks clung to her body and eagerly drank in the enchanted breeze. The best way to beat the deep south-western heat, she considered. Bound attendants flocked to her every need as she queried the cogitation arrays for status of her great works. The Four Hundred Parables of Lifebreath spread like wildfire across the world- such was the sign of progress._

Rei had been waiting, it seemed, freshly smudged with dust and grime from the vents. "Good, you're here. Perhaps you can help me!"

Shinji nudged chair and desk out of the way with his feet, easily moving the furniture to the walls with heavy moves. The mice in the tank squeaked, thrilled and frightened by turns, and he quieted them with a terse apology. Clear space made, he started tapping his heel into the floor, gauging the industrial tile and construction of the floor.

"I need to go down- to get out of here." The grin worked its way across his face and he had no reason to hide it. "Do you know what's beneath this chamber? I don't need to know but-"

Shinji had closed his eyes on that last word, and that was the only reason he felt the surge of fast-moving air before impact. It'd been so long, _months_ since he'd felt anything like that. Pain radiated out from his cheek in a hot, prickling wave. Liquid nitrogen on his arms had barely blistered, and he fought through multiple gunshot wounds.

With his eyes open, he watched Rei let her arm fall to the side. The blue-haired girl stood there in mussed and soiled clothes, and for the first time Shinji could see _sorrow_ on her face. Which was right to feel, because she'd just _slapped him_. Shinji took a reeling step back, off balance more by the _absurdity_ than any sort of damage or inner-ear malfunction. _Rei_ had slapped him. Right in the face.

The anger was slow but inevitable. While it built up, Shinji mouthed the obvious question. "W-_Why?!"_

Rei stood tall, all four feet six inches of her, unflinching. "This is not the path to progress. NERV does not need two Commander Ikaris."

She locked eyes with him and set her jaw. Every shift in her expression was small, and for most people it would have barely registered as emoting, but he could read her like a book. Frustration- with herself. Apprehension, resolution. She sucked in a quick breath, and her eyes shone bright under her hair. "For years I had not cared, except to die and live and die again."

He mouthed the words like they was a strange foreign thing. Maybe it was- he hadn't made _progress_ with care and affection, ever. Rei continued speaking, and her brows angled down more and more.

"I still feel things though, Ikari-kun. Especially now. " She pressed a hand up to her chest and gripped her shirt. "I care about you- but I only have the basic terms to express it."

Shinji shook off the initial confusion, surging forward in a rush of wrath and sheer bodily mass. One hand grabbed the girl by the front of her shirt, lifting her up and letting her toes dangle. "You _care?! _You slap me, and more importantly _waste my time_ because you _care?!"_

Hanging by the breaking stitches of her shirt, Rei lifted both her hands to rest on his forearm, and looked Shinji dead in the eye once more. "I care, because I can see you _hurt_. Yourself and others. I care, because I am your friend, Ikari-kun, and I cannot allow you to hurt like this anymore."

With that last declaration, Rei shut her eyes and waited.

_There was an unexpected emptiness, and for the first time in ten-score years her attention faltered. Breath catching in her throat, she twisted to face the cloudless southern sky... and squinted into the glare. Accusingly she stared harder into the fiery light, though it stung her eyes in ways it had not for an Age or longer_. _She was undeserving._

Blinking rapidly, Shinji took a step back and let the girl go. She landed with hardly any sound. The boy looked over his office, the desk full of diagrams and the walls covered with a mad hash of notes and brainstormed ideas. Behind him the door to the rest of the lab stood closed, but he could still see past it. His vision blurred as unshed tears welled.

A wave of something built up in his stomach, hard and nauseatingly awful enough to bring him to his knees. Still staring at the door, he realized it was _shame._ "I've done _everything_ wrong."

That morning's half-digested nutrient bar came up with a vengeance, and Shinji doubled over. Wiping the bile from his mouth he looked up at Rei, sobbing silently. Rising to his feet, he stepped forward and brought one bare foot down. With his stance set he faced the wall and flexed that inner reserve and expressed the old techniques.

The wall gave way in one blow. A wide and ragged hole appeared beneath his fist, and fresh Geofront air swept into the once-sealed office. The sudden gust tossed papers and whipped at their clothes. Rei's ponytail snapped under the strain and let her hair fall loose around her shoulders. Shinji lashed out again, kicking and punching down the wall between him and the rest of the world.

Breathing heavily and with his gold brand glowing freely, Shinji stood in the dust of his work. One whole wall and the former door to the rest of his lab had been destroyed. Past the wreckage he saw his employees, men and women he had worked with for months before, and then into the ground for the last week. He saw them as they were- haggard, sick. A half-dozen different strains of cold or flu ran through the populace- sicknesses he had _refused_ to treat. The nausea returned in earnest.

"All of you- I'm sor-" He buckled over and heaved, sick again. Looking up Shinji threw out his arm toward the gaping tear. "You're free to go. Go!"

Slowly, the scientists and engineers stood up from their desks on shaky legs, rubbing their throats and eyes. The hallway lights were bright, and hadn't been corroded over with constant corona exposure. They stepped gingerly past Shinji, helping each other past the rubble and into the light. It didn't take long for black suited Section Two agents to swarm the breach, or for Free-Geofront personnel and medics to pile in behind.

Rei knelt down next to him and pushed her small hand into his much larger one. He glanced over and her and blinked, still crying. She just squeezed his hand, nodding once. "Let's go home, Ikari-kun."

* * *

><p>Two days passed over Tokyo-3.<p>

Sunlight at the height of summer baked the streets and the glass surfaces scattered the heat down and out. Great bands of rippling air spiraled up into the sky, carrying the last bits of spring pollen. Those who lived and worked within the surface towers and densely packed industrial blocks went about their business as usual.

To the vast majority of the fortress-city, the trials underground had remained unnoticed, and only the thinnest rumors made it to the surface. A hundred families seethed quietly, or let themselves feel freedom after the long week in the Geofront.

Down in the streets at dusk, men and women in slick suits and fantastic gowns stuck to the shadows and thin alleys. Tradecraft was paramount, and the coveted multiple-fake out and the equally long con were in full effect. Block by block the agents and infiltrators made their way deeper into the city. They savored the irony of breaching a fortress through the weakest link, its people. Some were glamorous, others nondescript and easily unseen. A lamentable few stood out as _burakumin_, and were actively ignored even in the most modern city in Japan.

Surrounded on three sides by mountains, proper night came quickly in Tokyo-3. _Ashinoko's_ shores lit up orange and blue as the sun set, and the temperature dropped slowly. Nights downtown were muggy. Overhead and out on the street, gaudy neon signs marked clubs and upscale restaurants, catering to the military-industrial interests of Tokyo-3. Past the flashing lights and bright civilian foot traffic, hulking bouncers stood guard over shadow-filled open doorways.

The rich and the powerful enjoyed the greatest distractions- secret casinos held under the nose of the most powerful man in Japan. They however were a petty lot, and their wealth and prestige only amounted to so much. True power in Tokyo-3 was _information_. It was the home of the thief and operator. They drank in the ambiance and dined on the potential for intrigue. _This_ was life, they thought, of knowing things they weren't supposed to. Knowledge moved between hands, stuff of pure value.

There was much to know, and even more to prepare for.

In ones and pairs, they walked in to one such casino like they owned the place, because they would soon enough. Planning was a mere formality, but formality was something the hierarchy had grown something of an affection for. So they donned their new skins, new lives and embraced that affection for the time being. Attendants appeared out of shadow and through low palls of smoke, hanging off of every word and shoulder, or safely in laps where appropriate.

Speaking with languages not meant for the listening, and paying with money not their own, the infiltrators grinned.

* * *

><p>Hot July sun beat down on the back of his neck, and for once, Shinji enjoyed the sensation. Walking through the gates of Tokyo-3 Municipal High, he wondered when he'd last felt proper daylight. His skin hadn't lost any color at least, what with spending months underground. Everything looked so <em>bright<em> after all that time. Bright and new. Heading to familiar territory had seemed like a good idea, to ease into some old routines and maybe make new ones. The school had opened for lunch when he arrived, easily waved through as alumni and on his pilot status. There had really been no problem with him being on campus.

The stares though, he wasn't so sure about.

Looking at it rationally it wasn't so surprising- he had _tested out_ of junior high and high school outright, and had earned more than enough credits via correspondence to qualify for a degree. All of which lead to him having stopped going to school... Shinji stopped for a moment near a bench and thought about it. One minute. Two... and he realized he couldn't even remember the last time he'd been on the grounds. Or even above ground.

And _that_ lead to the almost deafening silence of the student body. More than three dozen teenagers and more than a few faculty all kept an interested eye on him. Shinji wilted slightly, hunching down by half inches. Funnily enough, once he'd fallen into an apparently familiar pattern, the scrutiny all but vanished. The dense crowd chest-high teenagers that filled the courtyard all seemed to scatter like fog at noon.

Shinji straightened and scratched his head at that, bemused. "Huh."

Ambling further into the school grounds, Shinji made his way past the main buildings, waving tentatively to a few people here and there. Most of them he'd spoken to once or twice in passing. Others he'd met after his first... episode, or the terrorist attack. Finding himself in the cafeteria, he nodded to Kensuke. The devout student of military history was still swamped by girls and comfortably riding on the fame he'd earned six months ago.

Crossing through a familiar hallway, he caught the hints of old damage. Things NERV and the city council hadn't smoothed over. No bullet holes or anything like that, though. More things like peculiar scratches along the walls, or a ceiling beam that wasn't quite true. Rounding a corner, he almost ran into a _shide_. The folded paper charm had been strung up to the ceiling, and Shinji was the only one tall enough to have ever been at risk of hitting it. Blinking once, he bat at it with one hand, bemused. Someone followed _Shinto_ practices it seemed.

The bell for the next class rang and almost immediately, every hall was full of teenagers. Still bemused, Shinji watched as they rushed to and fro, easily weaving around while he stood beneath the bit of traditional papercraft. In some ways it felt _distant_, being so tall and broad around everyone. Distant in other ways too. As the last few students slid back into their classrooms, Shinji hummed to himself and headed outside toward the athletic field. There were far more traumatic ways to get used to life than a campus tour.

Crossing onto the field, Shinji saw the track team running a lap on the far side with Toji among the leading handful of runners. The grass had been freshly cut, and the rubber-surfaced track smelled faintly of old sunbaked tires. Snorting faintly, he hunkered down to take a closer look, mulling over the material properties. It felt good to let his mind actually wander, instead of just compulsively clamp down on idea after idea.

A shout from somewhere in the center field made him look up though, and he saw a cluster of other students stand up in arms. Some girls had been waiting in line for the pole vault it seemed when someone on the track team had started heckling them. Ears perked, he caught something about an 'old married couple' ... Hikari's iconic pigtails were hard to miss in the crowd of incensed girls, and whatever else the guys had said must have hit her real close to home. Toji ducked in on himself while and started to run harder, even as the class representative started in on the rest of the runners she could catch, already worked up enough to peel paint from the walls.

Watching all of that, Shinji found himself frowning, realizing that he had _no idea_ what to think about it all. While it wasn't right to just shrug, it was all he could do right then. A few seconds later Shinji found himself staring up at the clear blue sky, blinking away dust and grit, with his clothes and face stamped by cleats. Rolling to one side, he watched a horde of teens in protective gear and round wire-faced helmets run away, laughing along the track en-masse.

The track team rounded the turn and breezed past him while Toji came to a stop, braced on his hands and knees and huffing. Shinji sat up then and scratched his head, and a bit of rubber and grassy turf dropped off his cheek. "I thought swimming, track and basketball were our big sports clubs?"

Still panting, Toji just shrugged. "Nobody tells me anythin'."

* * *

><p>It was novel, taking time out for herself.<p>

Smeared with grease and dressed down in her rattiest clothes, Rei poured more and more of herself into her hobby. Raising a restored part to her face, she blew off the dust, smiling softly. Late-afternoon sunlight filtered through the high windows cut into the garage walls, scattering through the moving clouds of fine grit. She smiled through sudden brightness. Setting the part aside, the girl wiped a hand across her brow before leaning back, stretching languidly. Her infusion pump and harness cuddled up against her side as she moved, but it never once caught or tugged.

Feeling her spine pop and the tension drain out of her back, Rei could say she believed without a doubt that skipping school was the best thing she could have done.

Weeks prior, Shinji had turned his attention to the space, tearing down most of everything and building it up anew. Her car and Misato's Renault sat in pride of place, where hydraulic lifts could push them up for maintenance or anything their owners wanted. Rei found herself smiling wider as she took in wall after wall of tools, from hand-made wrench sets all the way up to a small if fully functional machine shop. Shinji had promised her- if there was a part that could not be bought, their garage could make it, and if that garage could not, _he could_.

Sitting up and slapping the dust and grit off her legs, the girl stepped around the workbench, throwing her boot-clad feet around. Laughing silently, she walked around the garage and her car, adding in lazy twirls and spins. She held a hand to her chest, and wondered if the tight-but-light feeling was what Misato meant by _having a song in your heart._

Coming to a stop near a concrete pillar, Rei found herself eye-level with a decade-old fireman's calendar. A joke on Misato's part, she was sure. July's winsome smile was just one among a dozen other calendars, race-queen magazine centerfolds and automotive posters hanging from every free surface. They were dog-eared at the corners and crinkled in places, but somehow, the wear and tear made them all look more _real_ to her. Spinning one more time, Rei took in the garage and found herself smiling even wider. Her hand came down to the grease-stained hem of her tank top and the ragged gap she'd earned while digging around her car's empty engine bay.

_She_ was starting to fray too. The thought pleased her in a way she couldn't quite name.

Peeling her gloves off, she stuffed them in her back pocket and turned, only to bump face-first into a warm wall of human. Stepping back and rubbing her nose, she looked up past Shinji's collarbone. The boy had barely moved at impact.

Rei's smile shifted then to something smaller, but no less meaningful. "How are you, Ikari-kun?"

"Fine. So..." He trailed off and offered her a shy grin of his own. He looked less haunted, willing to make eye contact and keep it. A good sign, she believed. The boy scratched the back of his head and glanced around. "You about ready for dinner? I think I'm about ready to make dinner."

The smile came back in full force, and she nodded. She wondered if it were possible to feel her own eyes shining. "Dinner sounds great."

* * *

><p>Dinner preparations were uneventful. Rei had ducked off to take a shower, leaving him with more than enough time to really put some effort in lambent sunfire, one hand worked on a vegetarian stir-fry with eggs and tofu. Conventionally speaking the combination wasn't exactly something one would find out in the world, but Rei needed the protein, among other things. Moving between skillets and pots, Shinji paid every dish the exact amount of attention it deserved.<p>

Fully engaged in that moment, Shinji found himself falling into a state of almost total awareness. Counting the bubbles from the sauces as they simmered proved to be a perfect timer and gauge of temperature all in one. The kitchen smells and sounds told him everything he needed to know- the meal cooked itself, and only needed him as an impartial observer.

In some ways though it was a retreat, an hour where he could turn his mind away from everything and instead focus on _nothing, _and hopefully leave whatever had scared him behind. Today though there was something different.

Fresh from the shower and thankfully dressed, Rei had stepped in and pulled her still-damp hair up into the standard tail. The tiny girl leaned around with equally small motions. Reserved was the best word that Shinji could think of. Still, he found himself smiling at the interest. "It'll be ready in a few minutes."

She smiled at that and nodded, not _quite_ skipping over to set the table. Not that she really knew how to _skip,_ however. Pilot training and years of swimming counted for a lot of grace though. When she was finished, he turned off the burners faster than one could blink and moved to serve. An hour of miraculous effort lead to a near-banquet for two, spread out across the kitchen table.

They ate quickly and silently, and Rei smiled wider after every bite. Weeks before, Misato had gone on at length that the meals he'd made were too good to delay with small talk. Shinji had to admit he enjoyed the smiles and praise more than the food itself, though. Servings for three men ended up on his plate along with pan-seared beef. Rei may have been vegetarian, but _he _liked well-prepared meat as much as Misato. The girl across the table never made anything of it. Taking another bite, Shinji settled into his chair, suddenly realizing it was the first time he'd had a full stomach in _weeks_. He chewed slowly, eager to savor the feeling.

Picking now at the last bits and with no food to distract them, the silence started to wear. Shinji coughed lightly. "So... "

Looking up, Rei let out an almost imperceptible burp, and a hand shot up to her mouth. He blinked once and smiled despite himself, and was sure _neither of them_ could say where she picked up the gesture. A bit of red built up on her cheeks and vanished just as quickly. "...So."

The moment stretched between them, drawing tight enough until Shinji snapped, snickering low to start and building to a full, watery laugh. It proved to be contagious, and Rei's shoulders shook silently. When the giggles died down, she licked her lips and spoke. "How do you feel, Ikari-kun?"

"Okay... And not." He pushed what little remained on his plate around fitfully. "Just... wanting to put some distance between me and... Me."

Sighing, he shook his head. "That's not right... I need to get away from being... _that_, but I _was_ that." He exhaled again, this time more harshly. Like the _last_ episode, the whole thing had felt _amazing_, and he'd explained that to Rei and his friends months ago during the terrorist attack. "Going to out into the city helped, but I can't just avoid everything either."

"It often wears on a human to leave things unresolved." Rei spoke softly, and Shinji looked up. Sometimes she said things like that, falling into an odd turn of phrase... He put it aside for the moment, accepting that Rei was _Rei_. She took a tiny, artful sip of her tea, looking all the world like an ancient feudal empress, tank-top and short-shorts notwithstanding.

She set her drink down and locked eyes with him. "There is not much you can do about it at the moment, and little point in over-thinking the matter."

Her eyes cut up to the wall clock next to the chore calendar. Five after eight. Something of a late dinner, he supposed. Looking back at Rei, he did kind of wonder just where she was going with that. The answer came rather quickly. "Right now, I think sleep seems to be the best course of action."

Blood drained out of his face, and suddenly all the good food in his stomach felt like a leaden weight. "I... Don't think that's a good idea..."

He trailed off, watching her step away from the table and move to clean up. Rei didn't give him a chance to join in or even put a word in edgewise. He hunched over in his chair, more than a little worried while the other teen bustled about the kitchen. There wasn't any need to go to _that_ much effort for him... "Listen, I still have the night terrors and I can go a couple more days without sleep. You don't need to-"

Rei just breezed by, utterly ignoring him as she ducked into the bedroom hallway. She came back a moment later with a rolled up futon mattress and bedding tucked under her arms. "I am not Misato-san, but I am a perfectly effective companion." Shinji felt his jaw unhinge, and Rei turned to look over her shoulder. "Come. Asuka-chan has taught me the art of pillow-fortress construction."

At that declaration, Shinji heard his own train of thought skip tracks, and hot blood rushed back up into his cheeks. Still, he made an admirable effort of keeping his cool despite the non-sequitur. "I still don't think it's a good idea... I mean... "

He trailed off helplessly, but still managed to make his reluctance abundantly clear. Rei just cocked her head, and her stare went flat, and her voice leveled out to its patented deadpan. "Do you expect or intend to ravish me?"

Train of thought fully derailed, Shinji blinked over and over while he tried to process _whatever the hell that was_. When finally got back into the present moment, he saw that in the living room, Rei was more than halfway done building an _actual pillow fort_. Glancing up at the clock, he realized ten minutes had passed. The tiny smile on her face turned out to be the last straw.

Sagging down in the dining room chair, he shot his roommate a dark look. "Misato has been a terrible influence on you."

Rei's answering smile was outright _beatific. _"As has Asuka-chan and yourself, Shinji-kun. I consider myself all the better for knowing each of you."

Right then, Shinji felt like someone had taken a baseball bat in hand and knocked knocked his heart clean through his ribs. For all the intensity though, he could only call it _good_. Misato in her own way had made her approval clear, lots of gestures of affection, but to hear someone just _say it_... Something in his chest uncoiled and let go.

Still, _another_ something stuck in his head. He looked at the half-built thing, openly hesitant. "I... think I'm a bit big for this"

Pulling away from the fort, Rei stood tall and gave him a no-nonsense look. "I am more than certain we can make a fortress suitable for two." She stepped around the couch to grab him by the wrist and tug him out of his seat.

Joining her wasn't much of an issue, seeing she needed to take two steps for every one of his. Leaving him standing and bemused before the defensive bedding wall, Rei pressed a pillow and bed sheet into his hands and pointed. Bemused and put to work, he hummed. "I mean more... I've never done this sort of stuff. It's kid stuff."

Between Rei's direction and a bit of his own Exalted ingenuity, they ended up with a sprawling tent-like affair strung between the couch and two spare chairs. She ducked back into the kitchen for a moment and came back with two bowls of chocolate ice cream, slathered in chocolate sauce.

Handing him one, Rei cocked her head to the side. She crawled through the open tent flap and onto her half of the futon, or what half was visible under the pile of cushions. Cradling her own bowl with painfully exaggerated care and sitting in the shadows, her eyes stood out as red points. "You did not do 'kid stuff', back where you lived before?"

_When was the last time I did anything like this? Movie Night? That was June of last year or something, and nothing before. _Easing under the front flap with bowl in hand, he flopped back on a pile of cushions under the stretched sheet canopy. "Not really..."

Just as he sat down, Rei made a rough show of a shrug. "Asuka-chan is the extent of my experience in these matters."

About six or so _compelling_ thoughts all crashed into each other right then and Shinji cut them all off at the root as fast as he could. Coughing, he fumbled and tried not to lose the syrup-covered spoon in the nest of cushions.

Swallowing and blushing red hot, Shinji felt his voice creak ominously as he tried to change the subject. "I miss Misato."

"As do I." She took moment to address her neglected treat before continuing. "I am curious. How does she help you sleep?"

Clamping a hand against his face, Shinji sputtered, but smiled past his fingers. "That's a... good question. Sometimes I wonder."

Rei stretched out on her stomach, cushioning her head on top of her folded arms. She looked up at him and blinked once, openly curious. Rubbing the back of his neck, Shinji mulled it over. "She helps me stay sane around here." He waved at the apartment. "Misato's why I can come back here and feel good. She's why this place is home."

He shrugged, but more out of a sense of what-was-would-be. "I guess she just gives me something else to focus on instead of the nightmares."

The clock ticked aware in the dining room. Even through the walls and past the hills, the two teenagers heard the all-clear sirens and the low rumble of Tokyo-3 shifting between modes. It was a familiar sound for both of them. Shinji himself had lived in the city for more than a year now, and so far protected it three times in open combat. Misato was always the one in the lead though, more than anyone...

Having said one thing made saying the next thing easier, and the thoughts started to bubble up. They dodged his complexes, and Shinji found himself smiling ruefully. "She drives me crazy though too. Misato I mean."

Coughing, he rubbed his nose to hide the blush. Rei just watched, intent but without a hint of judgement. That was probably the only reason he could even speak. "I've thought about her, you know." He waved a hand to complete the thought. Shaking his head, he let out a short, wry laugh. "She _taunts me_, of course. It's har-_difficult_, sometimes. I can't _not _notice her. Or other girls."

Rei propped herself up and nodded. "I am still missing something when contemplating attraction, but I do understand." She cocked her head to the side, and again the flat tone was deployed to full effect. "Misato-san does however have an undeniable presence. And figure."

Dragging a hand down his face and groaning, Shinji rolled back into his pile of cushions and laughed against his palm. "S-Someone must have owed her in a past life, because she doesn't look that good because of her _diet_."

Tilting her head in the other direction, Rei's tone lightened. She spoke softly, but it managed to carry a kind of reassurance. "Do you feel better for having admitted that?"

Looking over at Rei, he easily picked her out despite the shadows. She looked up at him, and he could see a bit of curiosity mixed with something else- triumph, perhaps. He thought it over for a long moment, then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

Another weight dropped away at that, and he sucked in a low, calming breath. Between Rei's encouraging presence and the sudden relief, there was more than enough momentum to help pull his thoughts out. He sat up in a rush and Rei dropped back onto her side of the futon, bouncing lightly.

"You're really pretty, Rei." Leaning forward, he waved his hands largely at nothing.

Tongue-tied, he struggled to find the words he needed. He wanted to tell her how happy he was to get everything off his chest, to thank her for not being terrified when he waved his arms. Inadvertently putting himself on the spot, the groans and embarrassment had been taken over by terror that froze his gut solid when he realized just how _much _he was letting go. He glanced over at Rei, hoping to gauge her reaction. She just stared right back, not unkindly but intent.

Suddenly cold and shivering, the unwinding tension almost seemed to double back in on itself, clamping down in new ways. Shinji found that he couldn't stop though, once he started. For all the near-crippling intensity, it was a good feeling, trying to find the _right thing_ to get what he meant across.

She needed to know, and he needed to say it, because it was _true_. "You're exotic, gorgeous even! I can say that, I'm able to, because you're a girl, but I don't see you as so uh... overwhelmingly attractive_?_"

A second after he finished speaking, he cringed. Shinji screwed his eyes shut and dared not to look, but his mouth started running again. Shinji grabbed himself by the metaphorical neck and squeezed, _hard_. Not that it helped.

His voice went higher and faster with every word, fumbling for the right explanation. "I mean, Misato wishes her legs could look as good in those shorts! Uh... or Ayumi's for that matter- she's the girl I'm dating!"

Rei was silent even as he dug himself in deeper. Under the fortress canopy and having turned all the lights off in the apartment, there was hardly any chance for her to see how far the blush went down his neck. "I mean that anyone would be _lucky_! To date you, or something!"

Spent, he flopped back and laid his arms across his eyes, painfully aware it did little to hide the way his face burned. "This isn't helping at all, I'm going to shut up."

"I understand." The blue-haired girl offered him a tiny, reassuring smile. "When you say things like that, I believe I can look ahead in my life without fear."

Hearing that, Shinji felt the mortification drain out along with the tension all throughout his back and shoulders. He let out a long ragged breath he hadn't remembered holding, and the back of his throat loosened up considerably. She caught his relieved look and smiled wider.

"I do agree with you regarding Saneda-san." her smile shifted to an almost impish grin, tracing lightly in the air with her spoon. "She shares with Misato-san something of a provocative presence. Could this be your 'Type'?"

Feeling his jaw unhinge, Shinji tracked the girl with his eyes as she finished off her melted bowl of ice cream. Twice- no _three times_ now- that _had_ to be deliberate. He'd been asked that very same question more than once, and he fell back on his tried and true response- _blush more_. Rei didn't seem to notice though, which certainly made calming down a lot easier.

"I am still practicing humor. I don't mean to overwhelm you either." Having scraped it clean, Rei set her bowl aside and sat on folded legs with her hands in her lap. "Even though she was the one to explain it to me, I believe Asuka-chan's view on certain matters were... unrealistic. We are not consigned to attraction or acting upon it, just because we're of the opposite sex. I wasn't offended by anything you said."

A new wave of heat flared up the back of his neck, but the _soaring_ feeling did a great job of balancing it out. Another part of him was honestly surprised, caught up in how _open_ the other girl was, and somewhat envious. Rei rarely spoke, but when she did, she said things outright.

Bringing his knees and tucking them under his chin, Shinji draped his arms around his shins and sighed. The German pilot _bothered him_, enough that she might have even been the _first_ person he'd gone off at. Frustration aside, he was glad she got off easy. "You bring up Sorhyu a lot."

Rei just nodded, pulling a pillow up into her lap and hugging it to her chest. It was an awkward movement, unrehearsed. "She is my friend, and I owe much of my current understanding to her, biases aside."

"And I don't understand _her_ at all. Being nice to her didn't work, and shouting her down sure as hell didn't." Massaging his eyes with the heels of his hands, Shinji let out another long, suffering sigh. "I just don't know what to do."

The girl mirrored his own posture, but kept the pillow wedged between her chest and thighs. Crossing her arms over her knees, she laid her head on one forearm. "I don't think you try enough, Ikari-kun."

"That's just it, _trying is scary!_" He rolled up, wide eyed and piqued. "Ayumi _does help_. I'm glad that she pushes me, to go for more or whatever... but I can't afford to push myself. I can't _do_ anything, because if I do I know there's almost no way for anyone to stop me!"

Rei was quiet for a long moment, and out the corner of his eye, he saw her watching _him_. Study was more like it. Her eyes remained the brightest points in the room. A year ago that much attention would have driven him up a wall, second-guessing every thought. He was right though- there was only one person who could stop him once he got going, and it sure as hell wasn't him. A tiny hand found one of his and tugged it out from around his legs, forcing him to look up at Rei as she inched a bit closer. His fingers burned under the contact, but for once, he didn't immediately want to pull away.

He was coming to realize that when it mattered, Rei didn't _do_ ambiguous.

Giving his hand a reassuring squeeze, she tugged his attention back up to her face. "I believe you are underestimating those around you, and their resilience. More importantly, I believe you are underestimating _yourself_ and your strength."

The earnest tone dropped away for her original deadpan one more time. "I would also say we have taken the same correspondence courses on basic psychology; Failure, Ikari-kun, is the best teacher... and very little you can do would make people stop giving you a chance to succeed."

Huddled up in the fortress, Shinji sat there for a long quiet moment. The clock in the dining room seemed to tick louder as the apartment and neighborhood noises died down. The smallest trickle of his inner reserve told him the exact time; half-past midnight. Putting the sound out of his mind, he focused inward and started counting breaths- his and Rei's. He felt his heart slow as the time stretched out, falling into a two-step beat as he matched his rhythm to hers. There wasn't any why other than to do it, and it calmed him down with the simplicity.

Opening his eyes, Shinji looked to his left. Rei had kept her hand wrapped around his, leaving their arms stretched out between them. The compact black infusor clung to her bicep, and the bag of yellow medicine hung from her shoulder. The question came surprisingly easy. "How is the pump working out?"

Rei looked up and gave him a half-smile. "I do appreciate being able to sleep on my side once more."

Pushing a free hand through his hair. Morose and more than a little resigned, Shinji let out a ragged sigh. "I still want to just, magic it all away."

She frowned at that and opened her mouth to answer, but Shinji stopped her with a wan grin. He was always more confident when it came to medical matters, it seemed. "I know, I understand."

Mulling it over, he did wonder. Something she'd told him months ago popped back into his mind, juxtaposed against her own fits of grace and awkwardness. "You told me once you were made unfinished, right?"

Rei nodded once, and her eyes were wide and focused. Staying silent for a few seconds, Shinji looked at her sidelong, wry and feeling more than a bit foolish. Still, he couldn't _quite_ shake the thought. "We're related, aren't we?"

Collapsing in on herself all at once, Rei's eyes dulled, and suddenly Shinji could only see the girl he'd met the day he'd come to Tokyo-3. The normally pale girl had gone well past ashen, losing what little color remained.

Despite all the internal alarms telling him not to, Shinji shifted around and locked eyes with Rei. Smiling a wider and pouring whatever assurances he could for her benefit, Shinji waved at his face when she finally focused on him. "I can't read genetics with my techniques, but we have the same jaw." He let out a short laugh. "I know I didn't get mine from my father."

She looked away and tried to pull her hand back, but this time _his_ fingers tightened around hers, and it was on him to deliver the comfort. Rei kept her eyes away from him though, focused on a bit of futon near her knee. "...Are you upset?"

Rei looked up on that last word. The fear was muted, like the girl wasn't sure how to show it, and realizing that gave Shinji all the confidence he needed. Shaking his head, Shinji gave her hand another reaffirming squeeze. "Not really. Its nice to not be... alone, for once. Only Child."

Letting out a long breath, Rei picked up the animation she'd let go and shook her head. "You were never alone, Ikari-kun. We are the three Children of NERV."

Shinji found himself nodding at that, for once not apathetic regarding the title. "I suppose that is one way to look at it, sure."

In the silence that followed, the ticking clock took over as the dominant sound in the apartment, and Shinji was satisfied to let it all rest for now. Rei apparently had the same idea. As far as he was concerned, all the ups and downs of the past few hours had left him wired higher than being under fire. Meanwhile, Rei had let go of his hand, pulling up cushions and blankets for a moment before unholstering her infusor and setting it up for the night.

Falling back into his much larger pile of pillows, he laid down on his back and pulled up a cover. The canopy above had grown even darker, and it locked in the drowsy mid-summer heat. A tiny hand reached out and took his wrist once more, and after a bit of shuffling, Rei curled up atop his and with a pillow under the both of them. Cupping her neck and feeling her pulse in his palm, he started to count the beats without thinking. Staring up at nothing, he was only dimly aware of his eyes drifting closed.

* * *

><p>The following day, Shinji headed up to the rooftop lab. It hadn't changed much since he'd been there last. A bit of garbage Kensuke hadn't picked up, and Deja had continued to add some more homey touches to her customary spot. He hadn't seen the agent for a while though, but Section Two's presence was unmistakable.<p>

Looking out across the rooftop though, Shinji realized there was _potential_. Maybe not for a lab- it was probably a better idea to move everything into the garage, or even further underground. Consolidate everything, and maybe get Kensuke Geofront clearance. More than a handful of new thaumaturgical formula rattled around in his head, and he needed to get them written down at some point.

He could handle that later though. Right now all Shinji could feel was a great desire to _do something amazing_.

Breaking down the sheds and prefabricated structures, the boy started piling the pieces up and hauling what he could down into storage. There wasn't a lot he could do to accelerate the process yet, save for skipping the stairs in both directions. Eventually, he had the apartment roof stripped down to its normal surface. Sitting down on one of the remaining patio chairs, he let out a pleased sigh. Reaching for the notebook on the nearby table and ready and eager to start planning, Shinji looked out across the cleared space and the neighborhood beyond. Tapping the pencil to paper, he wondered just what he could do...

A few hours later with the sun high in the sky and steadily heading for the horizon, Shinji smiled faintly as he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Rising up out of the stairwell and dressed for the season with a sports bag slung over her shoulder was Saneda Ayumi.

The brown-haired girl gave him a jaunty wave and grinned, looking out across the apartment complex. "What is it with you and rooftops."

Standing and stretching, Shinji closed his notebook and moved over, more than a little happy to see his girlfriend, and he thought back to their first date. "At least I didn't jump you up here."

A gust of wind seemed to punctuate the statement. "I didn't mean it like that."

Closing in enough to reach, Ayumi grinned and poked his chest. Her eyes crinkled and she grinning broadly, utterly unrepentant. "Oh I don't know. I think I could stand to hear a bit more."

Grinning despite himself, Shinji coughed into his hand as the red built up in his cheeks. A hand shot out to take her bag while the other waved at a canvas-stretched chair. Bouncing lightly and falling artlessly into the seat, Ayumi to his eyes _radiated _cuteness. Blushing, Shinji rubbed the back of his head and sat down as well."I'm glad you got my page."

"I wasn't really expecting one, its been a while." She cocked her head to the side and her brow furrowed. "Did lunch not go so well?"

Holding back the grimace, Shinji looked off to the side and waved it off for the most part. It was a small complaint as far as most things went, but...

"You ever get a bad order at a restaurant?" He glanced sidelong at her, and Ayumi just nodded, curious. He let out a short, wry laugh. "Just about every order out is like that for me. I can _taste _the flaws."

Saying it outright like that made Shinji take a mental step back, even as Ayumi winced. "You didn't call me over here to talk about food, did you."

There was a forced casualness there that flattened out her words into a statement of fact, and even Shinji could recognize it. He found his thoughts circling back onto the March before last, when he'd taken the _second breath_. More than a _year_ of being Exalted. Staring at his hands, he curled his fingers, wondering openly. Tilting his head up, he caught Ayumi's concerned look. He waved it off, asking for a moment. That she gave it to him without a word was enough to let him relax and _really_ think.

Still feeling oddly free from yesterday, Shinji decided to just say it outright and rip it off like a bandage. Thinking about it though, he forgot the last time he'd _needed_ a bandage. Shaking his head, he sighed and let his head fall into his hands. "I had a second episode. A different one."

Ayumi's face managed to go pale and turn red at the same time, leaving her cheeks splotchy. She sucked in a quick breath and kept her voice level. "Different how?"

Gallows humor seemed to like the best place to start. "I think I turned into a fascist dictator, or my father. I'm not sure which is worse."

His girlfriend winced regardless, but she reached out and took his hand anyway. Any other time, Shinji knew he wouldn't have said anything. He knew he'd have just found something else fill his mind with. Ayumi tightened her hold on him and looked him in the eye. She nodded once, and Shinji took a deep breath. Bit by bit, Shinji pulled out the siege and picked it apart one event at a time. It was too big to hold in.

When he was finished, Ayumi let out a watery laugh. "Well... I'm glad you didn't hurt anyone. I think that means a lot more than you might think."

"I held people hostage with their own organs." The deadpan delivery seemed oddly natural to him right then. "Short of killing people I'm not sure how I could do much worse."

Scrubbing his hands through his hair, Shinji let out another ragged breath. "I don't think I told you about my first one, but both of times I snapped..." His hands fell into his lap. "Being like that felt _good_. The first time I got tranquilized like a day after it started, but this last one was nearly a week long."

She coaxed him gently. "Good, as in...?"

To that Shinji could only shrug, painfully aware that he'd only_ heard_ these kinds of things. His chair creaked as he moved. "Good, like stretching after a long car ride? Or screaming your head off at whoever got in your way. Good like, _doing_ what you're thinking instead of just thinking it."

He waved at the rooftop and the ten story neighborhood skyline. "Part of that is why I'm out here. Akagi-sensei - and NERV - both told me to keep out of the Geofront for a few days. Give me a chance to settle down."

Ayumi worried at her lower lip, trembling faintly in her own seat. She picked a bit at the weather-beaten chair arms. "And... how do you feel right now?"

"Honestly?" The word itself felt new and strange. Not because he _lied_ or anything, but... when had he ever _talked_? "Good. Better than I had expected. It was cathartic, I guess."

Admitting that sent a wave of nausea up through his body to settle on his face. "What I _did_ was horrible, but while I was doing it, it was all so logical, rational even."

"That's not even the worse part." He let his head fall into his hands again, morose. "I'm wasn't even sure I was _me_ half the time."

Considering how often he'd seen it last week, fear was an easy expression to read. Ayumi's apprehension had faded though, and somehow Shinji felt better as he realized that. She was still curious though, leaning forward with a questioning look. "What do you mean?"

Again, shrugging seemed like the best opener. "I'm not even sure where to start. I saw things. Impossible things. I saw myself standing at the edge of an abyss that went down _forever_. Like, it was right there in it's name, it went down _forever_. And inside it were _teeth _and _knives_ and it could have eaten whole worlds. It was all that, and I just had a sword."

He'd gone pale by then, hunched over and locking eyes with her. "I held the sword up and the abyss _cowered before me_."

"And that's just one of the _simple things_." Shinji huffed and rubbed his eyes. There was nothing easy to describe, words he couldn't _think _let alone _pronounce_, describing ideas and events that he had no way to understand.

Ayumi meanwhile moved out of her chair and gave him a nudge. It took him a second before he understood and leaned back. Smoothing her skirt out, the girl sat down in his lap and grabbed his arms, hooking them around her waist. The existential awfuls met up and dueled with his own lingering aversion towards physical contact. He wasn't in the mood to be touched, but for all of that he at least recognized she was being comforting. Tugging the girl in a bit closer, Ayumi met him halfway and tucked her head against his collarbone.

"There was another me." He mumbled toward her hair. "She was... _more_. More than I was. I'm just fifteen, and I got the impression she was over _five thousand_."

Another fact clicked into place and he shuddered. She was older than _human history_. There wasn't anything to _say_ to that, and Shinji grappled with the sensation that his whole life might have been- what, a footnote compared to hers? He shook his head and focused on Ayumi's heartbeat. "I only saw a few snatches. Conversations in that woman's life, but they were..."

He trailed off for a moment, and Ayumi's hands linked in with his and squeezed. "She did incredible things. Fought wars, tortured and was tortured. Loved and lost. She lived somewhere that had trees so tall they held up the sky, and caves so deep they left the earth behind. It sounds poetic, but they were there."

Tears were forming now at the wonder of the half-understood memory, as well as failing to find the words to convey the serene and joyful era. "It was beautiful. And it was horrible."

Freeing a hand to wipe his eyes, Shinji leaned back into his chair, dimly aware that it creaked ominously along the way. Heart pounding in his chest, he felt something like exhilarated, or drained. That much life _weighed_ on him, and left Shinji feeling raw right down to the bone. There was a temptation, to find the floodgates and throw them open. To _know something_, or be _someone_ to know, instead of having to guess himself. The hazy images in the back of his mind pulled back into whatever vault they came from, and he let out a long sigh of relief. Something he'd have to settle another day.

He barely registered Ayumi's weight on his legs, but she was warm. And more importantly, real and in the present. For once he wanted to hug her, and did so without thinking. She twisted in response, bringing one hand up to turn his face towards her, interrupting his thousand-yard gaze with her own look of concern. After that kind of story, Shinji couldn't really blame her.

Pausing for a hesitant moment, Ayumi's expression softened, offering him a coy half-smile. "You know, most girls would kill to hear one word of poetry, but I think I've heard enough-"

Before Shinji had even realized Ayumi moved, she completed the turn atop his legs and kissed him. For a long, happy moment, Shinji put a halt to all extraneous thought.

Pulling back and draping her arms over his shoulders, the brown-haired girl smiled softly and made sure to catch his eye. "If you get your head in the clouds, remember I'm down here. Someone has to keep you grounded."

Holding a misgiving groan behind his teeth, Shinji's face soured. More at himself than anything. "That's... not exactly fair to you. I couldn't ask you, or anyone to keep tabs on me. I barely can, sometimes."

Leaning in a bit further forward, Ayumi touched her forehead to his and gave him a wry grin. "Probably not, and maybe this won't work forever, but its working right now"

Shinji considered that for a moment, more than a little aware that his lips still tingled and that hers were still really close. He nodded once and matched her smile with a shy one of his own. "For now is good."

A gust of wind picked up and blew over the apartment roof, flipping Shinji's notebook open and sending Ayumi cuddling in a bit closer. They were still tangled together with Ayumi not-quite straddling him and face to face. Smiling faintly and more than a little bemused, Shinji found himself enjoying the closeness for once. Really enjoying it, instead of constantly evaluating and second-guessing. It was like whole parts of his mind had decided to just take a vacation.

He liked the sensation.

Getting all of the poisonous thoughts out of his head had helped too, leaving him with a bit more clarity than normal. Picking Ayumi up by the hips and glibly ignoring her squeak, he moved her around til her back was pressed against his chest once more. Leaning in and wrapping his arms around her middle, he hummed. "I really do like you, Ayumi-chan. You... you _matter_ to me. I don't say stuff like that enough."

She just gave him a questioning look, swinging her legs around to sit astride his thighs and make sure he saw her pout. He just let out a bitter laugh, one that sounded less and less sad as it went on. "I mean it. Like..." He fumbled for a topic, laughing a bit at _himself_ along the way. "I like your legs."

Ayumi blinked once and her face went beetroot, going so hot her hair might have begun to frizz out. She was smiling though, with teeth and cheeks. "R-Really? They're not too skinny?"

Glad he hadn't fumbled _too_ badly, Shinji shook his head at her question. "No way, they look nice- _you_ look nice." He hugged her from behind. "You take good care of yourself."

A sparkling smile was his answer to that. Shinji let out another short laugh. "I like that you push me to do things."

Ayumi's grin did a fair job of heating his cheeks up. Rocking back, she bumped her shoulder into his chest and bounced back, while he barely moved. "Well you are so very pushable, after all."

The silence was surprisingly comfortable after that. Easy going. Looking up at the sky, Shinji watched a few wispy clouds drift along. Reaching around his girlfriend and clapping, Shinji rubbed his hands together, grinning.

"You know what I want to do?" She gave him an odd look and shook her head, not understanding. Shinji found himself smiling wider. "I want to make out with my girlfriend."

Dumbstruck, Ayumi blinked rapidly before her own grin matched his watt for watt. "That is an _interesting _proposal. I also note that it's a sunny day, and that we happen to be on a private rooftop."

She leaned in to give him a quick kiss. "You might be interested to know that I'm wearing a swimsuit under my outfit. Shall I change?"

Hearing that, Shinji smiled, realizing he had about half as many reservations about the concept than usual.

Her swimwear turned out to be rather modest, for a bikini.

* * *

><p>It had taken a bit of doing, but Ritsuko had managed to create a sort of telepresence across three continents.<p>

A complicated tangle of couriers and conference calls had let her isolate as many variables as possible for the upcoming experiment. Clocking in at close to fifty-seven hours awake, she had demanded Maya supply thaumaturgical assistance and coffee as needed. The scientist needed a clear head for what was coming. It had stopped being a scientific curiosity, or a new field of study she could use to step out of her mother's shadow.

It had become personal. She was a part of the experiment now, and every action she took with her miraculous arm was another reminder of that. Ikari Shinji was the only Pattern Green on record, the only one they had been able to glean a sizable amount of data form. Data which, by any stretch of the scientific method, was absurd and terrifying to see projected on such a massive scale as this. Two psychotic episodes were coincidence. A rogue third, which could easily come from somewhere new and unexpected, was her responsibility to contemplate.

Browbeating various professors across the world, Ritsuko had found as many campuses that studied Metaphysical Biology as she could and sent them the abbreviated plans for her most recent iteration of soul camera. She was bending her mandate as head of Project E, and there was a chance the technology might make its way to the Committee, if it hadn't already. The risk seemed worth it to her though. Plus, they'd still need to upgrade the satellite sensor system, or rely on ground based detectors.

Sitting in one of her dark labs before a bank of monitors, Ritsuko laced her fingers together and cracked her knuckles. Live voice communication would have distracted her, but she spoke out her commands anyway, even as her hands flew over the keyboard. A screen lit up and had already begun gathering data.

"Kyoto-2 University is online..." More screens started flickering on as graduate students high on caffeine and stranger substances worked alongside their teachers to patch in.

NERV Oh-Three, Massachusetts Institute of Technology... Online.

NERV Oh-Four, Nevada... Online.

University of India... Online.

Kyoto-2 University... Online.

NERV Oh-Six, Bethany... Online.

The list grew longer until all twenty four physical screens were lit up and streaming. Racing the MAGI to complete her program before it could write it for her, Ritsuko compiled the tool and set it to work. Turning in her seat, her glasses caught the light. A holographic array warmed up and threw a hazy web of light into the air. An image of the planet Earth resolved. The continents as recognizable as ever, save for new, ragged fifteen-year-old coastlines. A wire grid wound around the projection as the globe surface rippled to reveal topology and elevation.

Standing with her hands in her labcoat pockets, Ritsuko waited for the MAGI to cook the data and give her a result. A red pip appeared over Japan, and Tokyo-3. Kyoto-2 was next. Then two more, six, fifteen, and finally all twenty four sensor locations.

Ritsuko found herself mumbling the program schedule, even as it worked in the background. "Graphing the primary events..."

The holographic Earth dimmed and shrank slightly while it rotated to bring the island chain of Japan into view. A green smear appeared over Tokyo-3 and cut off abruptly at the city limits. The ground-based sensors throughout the only had so much range. The dot lacked gradation, but she knew her city was thick with hot zones. For the moment, she hoped to keep the search simple for now.

She eyed her home nation and bit her lip. This was the deciding moment- the next observation sites were several hundred kilometers from Tokyo-3. "Expanding sample size to Kyoto-2 University and Sendai research team."

Another green smear appeared on the map. The crew at Sendai reported nothing on their end. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Ritsuko slid back into her chair and pulled a remote console into her lap. Typing furiously, she added in new search parameters, running down hunches while the base analysis continued. Weather data ranging from hurricane tracking to pollen forecasts appeared across the holographic globe, and none of them passed over Tokyo-3 or Kyoto-2 with any semblance of pattern.

She waited then, and her mouth compressed down to a thin line. Feeling the empty space between her lips, Ritsuko _really_ could have used a cigarette right then. More and more of her data points resolved upon the map, leaving twenty two empty spaces and two terrifyingly green ones. "So, it _is_ spreading."

Filtering the data and focusing on those two confirmed zones, Ritsuko ordered the display to render the green pattern intensity. A heat map appeared over Tokyo-3, much like the one she'd shown Misato and the Second Child a few weeks ago. Writing out another quick script, she plotted the course of the Pacific Fleet across the holographic planet. It was on its way to Vladivostok, if all things had gone to plan. Frowning, Ritsuko put her friend out of mind and focused on the data.

As before, Tokyo-3 was a dense cluster of high intensity readings, and now she tracked a steadily increasing background level- a pervasive field. The data was live, so she was able to watch the edges of each saturated region shift and move slightly. The densest points were the Geofront... nearly all of it, and a tiny Old-Hakone neighborhood just over the hills. Misato's apartment. At least those were expected.

Kyoto-2 though, it's levels and events were _much_ lower. Almost reassuringly so. Standing, Ritsuko leaned into the globe and commanded it to shift, zooming in on the university campus where the sensors had been. "How did you end up all the way over there..."

Another hunch brought her back to the remote console, digging up an old wargame scenario Misato had cooked up. An Angel-derived biowarfare attack, like a super plague. Years ago, the raven-haired woman asked Ritsuko to model it wtih the MAGI. Back then it had seemed like a good test of the Triumverate's powers. Now she tasked it to track the spread of Pattern Green. Plugging in the variables, she set it to run ten thousand times.

The hologram flickered faster and faster as it iterated, burning through permutations. Ritsuko watched the green try and spread from her city out into the rest of Japan, and the display threw up potential transmission vectors faster than she could track. By the end of it, the MAGI could only predict worldwide saturation in less than two percent of the results, and partial saturation in another seven.

They returned another, uncomfortable result, and Ritsuko read it out loud while she examined the program. "Insufficient data to generate predictive model."

Stepping away from that dead end, Ritsuko reverted the globe to the view of Japan. She eyed the zone covering the fortress city, and the shifting movements throughout. Focused on one particular intense point, a new idea grabbed hold. Pulling out the materials didn't take long, and she settled in and started scratching out the ritualized calculations. Doing it longhand was necessary for the thaumaturgical principles to take hold...

Finishing with a flourish and enduring a creeping a sort of mental exhaustion, Ritsuko held up her results. Now for the next step. "Assuming this is invoking the same Pattern Green..." She glanced over at the map and completed the second ritual with another intangible surge of effort.

One of the Geofront hotspots jumped up a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

"Sonnovabitch."

Ritsuko stared at the completed calculation for a moment, and her heart pounded hard and fast against her rib cage. She changed the resolution on the Toyko-3 overlap, digging for every bit of information she could over her densest cluster of samples. The MAGI worked with her commands, exaggerating the pings and fluctuations into a bouncing point graph. Several _thousand_ pings registered every second across the city. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she reorganized the maps and data, trying to plot _some_ kind of recognizable pattern.

She got one. A new map of the city appeared complete with roads and buildings, registering the nearly uncountable tiny spikes as Green events ticked over and over. She ordered the MAGI to filter for density and ran searches for those hot spots within the hotspots. "Colleges and Schools, funeral homes, hospitals, and temple grounds."

Staring first at the readings, then at the predictive ritual pages still in hand, she groaned at the otherwise empty lab. "Thaumaturgy is a pattern green event. Thaumaturgy has _spread outside of Tokyo-3_."

Slumping back in her chair, Ritsuko sighed and pulled off her glasses. There were readings in Kyoto as well, which meant that Thaumaturgy had shown up there too. Or something. The holographic earth had returned to its original state, showing the twenty one red pips and three greens.

India's Herman Institute of Science confirmed a pattern event. Thaumaturgy might have crossed the Sea of Japan and the Indian Ocean.

More data flowed in from the Indian team, and Ritsuko massaged her eyes with her fingertips. She _still_ hadn't gotten to why she even set up the teams in the first place either. Reaching out to enter in the last command, she held her face in her hands and watched the hologram through splayed fingers.

The three bright glowing green marks sat there, happily confirming active Pattern activity. Then another twelve points tinted to a darker, muted green. Background levels were increasing across the Asian continents. Ritsuko stared at the readings.

It probably wasn't all going end up being thaumaturgy.

* * *

><p>Walking through the city and toward Ayumi's apartment, Shinji spun a flower from his terrace garden between his fingers, careful not to bruise the stem. Watching the petals move, he couldn't help but grin- the train ride into the city proper had been <em>interesting<em>. Morning rush hour had packed the train car up tight with bodies wall to wall. It had been a challenge keeping the flower safe through all of that.

Clumping up among a dozen or so other pedestrians at crosswalks and stoplight, Shinji towered the crowd by at least a head, if not two. As far as awkward things went, it was one of the few he'd at least gotten used to. A tiny hand shot up out of the group across the street, and when the crowd parted, Shinji smiled as Ayumi waved. The walk signal blinked cheerfully and the two pedestrian masses charged out into the street while the cars waited their turn.

Shinji outpaced the rest of the surface and civilian workforce and nudged the flower into Ayumi's hand. "Walk you to school?"

Threading a hand through the crook of his arm, Ayumi grinned. "Sounds like a plan!"

* * *

><p>As far as Tokyo-3 Municipal High was concerned, the novelty of his presence hadn't worn off. All throughout the exterior grounds and inner halls, teenagers kept up silent stares as he approached and broke into whispered conversation when he passed. Ayumi gave his hand a squeeze and bumped her head into his arm. With fifteen or so minutes til first bell and class, they ended up claiming a patch of wall to themselves. Standing comfortably close, Shinji just let the minutes tick on by with his hand wrapped around hers.<p>

Bit by bit the throngs of students thinned out as they made for their various classes. Just as the last few stragglers vanished through doorways and around corners, Ayumi hooked an arm around the back of his neck and moved in for a quick kiss before the bell. A delicate cough stopped them both mid-motion. A part of Shinji, a relatively new and inexperienced part, _fumed_ at the interruption.

Dropping back down and bouncing with her toes, Ayumi's voice dried up audibly. "Nanba-san. Can we help you?"

The apparently named Nanba-san blinked once. She had been looking up at his face, craning her neck more and more to even meet his eyes. Snapping her eyes back down to Ayumi, the brown-eyed girl let out a short squeak. Shinji kept his mouth shut, but looked the girl over all the same. She was sweating a bit, and breathing a bit faster than was strictly normal. Pretty, just like almost every girl in the city as far as he could say, and black hair like the vast majority of people in the school. There weren't teenagers in Tokyo-3 to justify having separate buildings for junior and senior high.

Putting a hand on Ayumi's shoulder, he took a moment for a deeper diagnosis on the new girl. "A-Are you alright, miss?"

_Age seventeen, Healthy, no sign of trauma or infection. Elevated heart-rate, perspiration; social anxiety response within normal parameters._

"Saneda-san, I-Ikari-sempai I mean-" The new girl squeaked and cut herself at the waist and her voice shook. "I-Ikari-sama. I... Normally I wouldn't ask directly but I have a problem that involves you and I'm sorry for interrupting but-"

It all came out in a rush, and Shinji had not even been given enough information to get on-track, let alone get lost. Confusion aside he tried to place a face to that name- there weren't any other Nanbas in the school. She was three years older than him though, so they only would have met up during lunches or in the halls. K-something...

Scratching his head, Shinji tossed Ayumi an apologetic look before looking back up at Nanba. "Ah... I'm sorry but, Nanba Ki... No, Ko-?"

"Nanba Kasumi, Ikari-sama. It's alright, we haven't exactly met." She bowed again, smiling weakly.

Shinji felt a shiver run in and settle on his neck. "So... what can I do for you?"

The first bell rang, and Ayumi scowled at the timing. She shot a glance at the other girl and pouted a bit harder. Shinji only caught the edge of her expression, but he was _pretty sure_ that wasn't exactly jealously...

Meanwhile, Nanba-san nodded sharply and sucked in a quick, calming breath. She let it out slowly and sounded _much_ more composed. "Sorry, I'll keep it brief. I'm the president of the Shinto Cultural Club here at school, and we've restored a shrine outside the city. Someone's been coming by every week and vandalizing it. Destroying the grounds, spilling pigs' blood everywhere. We're losing members and it's not like we have funding..."

Shinji felt his eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline. "A-And what would you like me to do? I mean...?"

Nanba looked up _and up_ at his face again, giving him a sad little smile. "I was there, Ikari-sama. When you fought the kidnappers. I saw what you did."

Oh. _Oh._

The older girl picked at her uniform sleeve and looked to the side, suddenly hesitant. The calm she'd had just moments ago burned up, and Shinji watched as her cheeks turned red. "It's a silly thing, I admit, but we converted the shrine to respect Amaterasu... and maybe you could check it out? If for no other reason than... to score points... with your patron?"

The silence that followed was tangible, and the second bell rang. Nanba picked up her wits in a rush and dashed off, apologizing profusely as she ran. Shinji turned to his girlfriend with an almost mechanical ratcheting, feeling his neck grind and creak like a rusty hinge. Ayumi fidgeted in place, ignoring the bell and turning increasingly crimson as he stared, unblinking. Finally, Shinji's jaw dropped open, working soundlessly up and down.

"..._Patron?_"

Ayumi drew out her response, hemming and hawing. "Iiiiiit got started right after the terrorists and all that? You _did_ kind of throw a giant tower of sunlight about three miles into the air?"

Hot blood thundered through in his veins, and Shinji felt a muscle in his cheek start to twitch. With laughter or frustration, he wasn't sure which. "S-so, I apparently have a _following_, and people don't _tell me_?"

His girlfriend cringed so hard her eyes closed. "Devoted fans. We... thought you knew?"

Shinji slumped against the wall behind him, letting the back of his head hit and bounce back. He barely even felt the impact. Dragging both hands down his face, he blew out a sputtering breath past his fingers. At the end, he glanced at his girlfriend. "Well, I may as well check it out... Though what was that face about before?"

She purpled furiously at that, but smiled and smacked him on the arm. "Okay so it was kinda silly of me- just forget it okay?"

Laughing for once without something else getting in the way, Shinji nodded, even as he kept his guard up for a second swing. "Okay, Okay. I'll walk you to your class then."

Taking her hand in his, Shinji ambled along, and neither of them were overly concerned about being on time. It was difficult to be late twice over. Rounding the corner, Shinji let out a little snort and shook his head. "I'm not sure how I'm going to break it to them."

Ayumi cocked her head to the side, suddenly curious. "Break what to them?"

Glancing down once more, Shinji gave her a wry grin. "That I think Amaterasu might dress like a third century Roman god."

* * *

><p>Catching up with his friends between classes had been an interesting experience. Kensuke was <em>popular<em>, Toji was _driven_. When he had first stopped by class 2-A, Rei stepped primly out into the hall and with an almost mechanical precision, wrapped her arms around him. Looking down at the mass of blue hair under his chin, Shinji could only guess she _really_ liked that morning's breakfast, and her packed lunch.

Picking up Ayumi from her classroom, the growing circle of friends and pilots made their way to the cafeteria. Standing head and shoulders above them, Shinji still smiled as the conversation wove around him. Ducking through an open set of double doors and into the common dining space, students at a good half the tables stopped talking and eating. Shinji sighed and felt his shoulders drop a half inch. More staring. At least he was getting used to it now. Ayumi snuck a warm hand around his and squeezed.

After finding an empty table, Kensuke and Ayumi ducked off to buy lunch while Rei and Toji both hauled out their packed meals. Settling down into a chair himself, Shinji frowned at the creaking plastic. Focusing a bit, he willed out some of his reserve, leaving it more than strong enough. Waving aside shared food from Rei and Toji, Shinji just leaned back and waited for the rest of his friends.

Caught looking out at the other students, Shinji didn't _quite_ see Ayumi in time. Nor could he have guessed she planned on using him as a seat. Suddenly occupied with a giggling sixteen year old girl in his lap, Shinji was glad he'd reinforced the chair.

Kensuke slid into a seat right after and laughed, pushing his hair up out of his eyes. He'd started slicking it back for some reason. Girls, most likely. The unrepentant geek toasted Shinji with a carton of milk. "Glad you're out and about Shinji. We haven't seen you for a few months."

Pressing a hand against his nose, Shinji tried to mask his face and keep his voice level. It was nothing _Kensuke _had done... He wondered if all the school meals smelled so _disgusting_. Shinji let out a short cough past his palm. "Y-Yeah. I... made some bad time management decisions. Let's leave it at that."

Toji paused from inhaling the meal Hikari gave him to fill Shinji in on some of what had happened over the past few months. The short of it though was 'not a whole lot'. Fuyutsuki Kozo was a _far _more effective and interesting teacher, especially considering he was somehow a clandestine celebrity.

Waving a pair of chopsticks at Kensuke, Toji smirked. "They had to station a Section Two suit outside the Professor's office, so 'Suke wouldn't accost him or anythin'."

As one, those who had been present for the awkward moment burst out laughing, and Shinji found himself joining in more easily than he'd ever thought possible. Kensuke scowled and shook his fist. "That only happened _once!"_

Ten or so minutes later, the doors on the far end of the cafeteria burst open, and Shinji caught Kensuke muttering the odd phrase 'Hurricane Horaki alert'. Why became clear a second later when Hikari charged in, haloed by the open door and bright noonday sun. Masked in shadows, the girl's eyes stood out brighter than hot coals. Scanning left and right, her eyes settled on Toji, sitting between Rei and Shinji.

Her eyes narrowed.

While the others had to squint against the glare, Shinji watched, utterly mystified. Her cheeks were deep red, and vein on her forehead bulged in time with her heartbeat. Hikari was on the warpath. Still in his lap, Ayumi pressed her back hard against Shinji's chest and her hands clamped around his wrist like they were lifelines. Feeling her fingernails dig in, Shinji couldn't help but think that maybe they were.

For a split second, the face of terror blanked when Hikari locked eyes on him and the girl in his lap. The break in her fury vanished as fast as it appeared, leaving Shinji even _more_ confused. Hikari's eyes started to mist up, even though the rest of her face was unreadable as marble. She stalked forward and glared, daring students four years her senior to move or squeak in her presence.

Hikari stopped right at their table, well within arms reach of Toji. Again the frightening look seemed to shift to something morose when she looked at Shinji and his girlfriend.

"Ikari-kun," She gave a short bow to the pair. He could _hear_ the concern in her voice. "I'm glad you're up and around."

While he nodded dumbly, Hikari _whirled_ on Toji, throwing her arms wide and clenching her fists. Unshed tears started to build up in the corners of her eyes. "_You_ on the other hand have some explaining to do!"

"...O-okay?"

She glared at Toji, planting her hands on her hips. The tears started to fall. "It's _not_ okay! I shouldn't have to make a spectacle like this just to be seen with you!"

Toji meanwhile stumbled, falling over his words and making a complete hash of the Japanese language. "Can, we somewhere else can handle this please?"

By some unspoken cue, Rei and Kensuke picked up their lunches and _escaped_, leaving Toji to his fate. Hikari's wet eyes snapped to everyone at the table even as they left, and again they settled on Shinji and Ayumi. The scowl flickered and gave way to anguish, leaving Hikari to screw her eyes shut and get angry all over again. Shinji found himself wrapping his arms around Ayumi's middle while his mind worked hard to keep up. Even as his girlfriend shivered in his lap, Shinji began to realize he had a ringside seat for the archetypical teen drama moment.

"Why? Why can't you just _talk_ to me without some kind of condition attached?" The wrath turned to a choked sob in less than a second. "I don't understand what's wrong. I thought-"

She cut herself off at the last minute, and the whole cafeteria continued to stare openly and unapologetically. Shinji looked between the pair, concentrating hard as he tried to think of... something, anything. His girlfriend still held on tight, but he was pretty sure it was out of fear _for_ Toji and Hikari, than anything gaping crowds of students started to wear on him too, and Shinji felt something inside start to strain.

"Um... what did I do?" Toji stared at her dumbly, concern mixing with confusion across his face.

"Nothing!" Hikari cut off any further questions with a slash of one knife hand. Her eyes flashed red hot, and fresh tears started to roll down her cheeks. "Nothing with me! You go out of your way to hang out with everyone but me!"

Twice as confused but clearly underwhelmed by the explanation, Toji stood and found his tongue to stammer out a complete sentence. "But, I see you _every day _though, Hikari-chan. I'm... not sure what else-"

Planting her head roughly into his chest, Hikari squeezed her eyes shut and folded her arms up between them defensively. "Suzuhara Toji, I want to be seen _with you." _

Toji's mouth worked up and down, until finally he got back into the right mental gear. "I... I didn't kn- I mean, I couldn't te-" He kept cutting himself off and shaking his head, letting his hands fall around her waist before she drew back with a lurch.

"Don't! Stop making excuses if you don't want me around!" Hikari stared him in the eye indignantly, tears flowing freely now. But by this time Toji had enough time to take stock of the situation, and clearly was not enjoying the attention being drawn to the pair.

He leaned in with a hushed whisper, irritation building. "What do you _want _me to do then?"

The reply came quickly and with a pronounced stomp. "Not force me do this, you insensitive moron!"

"That's enough."

He hadn't said it _loudly_. No real need for that. Him interrupting was sufficient. Easing Ayumi out of his lap, Shinji stood up and tugged the table out of his way. The whole cafeteria fell dead silent, and Hikari and Toji turned as one to stare at him. Up at him. It was so _simple_, and his friends were better than this. They had all the pieces right in front of them the whole time, and neither of them deserved all the hurt.

"Both of you, calm down. Toji," The quiet cafeteria followed his eyes as he looked down towards the boy. Somehow, he managed not to tower even at his full height. "She feels neglected and hurt when you don't think about your relationship as strongly as she does. Hikari needs proof you consider her feelings."

Turning, Shinji locked eyes with the girl, the room shifting as one as Hikari let out a tiny sniff. "Hikari, you need to tell Toji what you are feeling, because he can't guess. Not because he wants to hurt you, but because you know your needs better than he can."

Sneaking a glance at their opposite, Shinji watched as his fellow teenagers accepted the truth as self-evident. He smiled faintly and leaned down as not to be so imposing. "You're both good friends, to me and each other. This doesn't need to go on, does it?"

They shook their heads, agreeing with every move they made. Rising smoothly, Shinji nodded. "Take the rest of the day off- head to the park. I'll handle things here."

Nodding, Hikari and Toji picked up their things, shivering and sniffling. The cafeteria crowd parted silently before them as they made their way out. Drifting into Toji's arm, Hikari leaned against the boy, and he reflexively swung a hand up to the small of her back. He mumbled faintly, red-faced but earnest and openly apologetic, and as they walked through the door, Hikari murmured back.

Smiling wider, Shinji nodded to himself, and Ayumi wrapped her hand around his and gave it a tight, pleased squeeze. Rei and Kensuke crept up a few seconds later, somehow basking in the defused crisis. Glancing back up at the door his friends left through, Shinji couldn't help but think something was off. The crowds of students still lingered in the cafeteria, staring openly at him or the empty doorway.

Blinking, Shinji coughed into his hand. "Uh... Lunch is almost over, right?"

As one, the student body turned back to their food and ate. Hurriedly.

Rei sidled up next to him and cocked her head to the side, chewing on the last bite of her meal. She looked up at his eyes for a long moment, swallowing before speaking. "Is something wrong, Ikari-kun?"

Glancing between his girlfriend, fellow pilot, and thaumaturge, Shinji felt a shrug coming on. He gave them a helpless, increasingly uneasy grin. "I... have no idea how I managed that."

* * *

><p>The next day, Shinji found himself sitting atop a machinist's stool with an automotive manual in hand. He'd understood it utterly on the first try, but he'd been leafing through it for most of the afternoon. Mostly so he didn't stare at the <em>hundreds<em> of posters all over the garage wall. Some of were pre-Impact vintage and most likely worth a fortune to some collector, others were outright _sexy_.

Misato was a terrible influence on everyone.

Meanwhile, only Rei's legs from the knees out were visible. The rest of her was underneath her car on a mechanic's creeper- the rolling bed used to crawl under cars. He'd built it himself and knew how comfortable it was. That was the reason they'd been at work for nearly three hours. It wasn't that he was _bored_ really, but as it stood, his mind started to wander. Maybe he could make a cushion with weight-activated thaumaturgical pressure point massage...

He thought about it a bit longer and blushed. Misato was _still_ a terrible influence on everyone. Especially him. Even a thousand miles away.

Focusing back on the manual, Shinji sighed and leafed through it _again_. "Who wrote this thing?"

He directed that down to Rei, still under the car. "Nissan. Wrench please."

After asking what size she wanted, Shinji pulled the the tool out and held it down for her waiting hand. "Well, I'm seeing like six dozen things they could have done better- I mean, if you want I coud-"

Shinji heard the wrench drop lightly on the concrete floor. Rei's empty hand eased out from under the car. "Brake line please."

Wincing, he moved to find the part. "I could really help though! I just need to..."

Rei shifted her legs and dragged herself wholly out from under her car, smeared with grease and grime. Leveling a completely flat, uncompromisingly serious face at him, she held out her hand. "Brake line. Please."

Shinji wilted and handed her the part. He realized just then that his stool was _not_ out of range, and by extension, neither was he. Between the meals he'd made for her and how much time she'd spent in the pool... Well, Shinji was pretty sure she couldn't hurt _him_.

His seat on the other hand was fair game. "Of course, Ayanami-sama. I'll be good."

Taking the cable in hand, Rei's lips quirked up as she rolled back under her car. Shinji let out the breath he had been holding and leafed through the manual again.

* * *

><p>Working on half a dozen projects around the apartment complex, Shinji spent the following days going over the fight between Hikari and Toji in his mind. Laying a thousand bricks in the afternoon, he'd asked himself just <em>what<em> had happened. During dinner one night, he'd considered the _how and why._ Each time, the answers came just as easily as they had before; he _knew what was going on_.

It was a familiar certainty. One he'd felt for almost a year and a half now. _Exalted_. The word felt bigger and heavier in his mind the more he thought about it. Concerns started to hang around him, and the weight was tangible. The last time he'd felt as certain was two weeks ago in the Geofront. Shinji had cut that thought off when it happened, and if it hadn't been for Rei and Ayumi, he probably wouldn't have taken the time to really examine it.

Rei had made sure that home was _home_, that he had a place to go where he didn't have to _think_ every second of the day. Ayumi meanwhile had kept things _simple_, being clear as to what she wanted or needed. They had given him the space he needed to find clarity- he was not the same person he'd been two weeks ago, and creating certainty of action or thought didn't doom him to repetition.

All of that looking inward lead to Shinji standing outside a dilapidated Shinto shrine, one train ride and longish walk away from the fortress city borders. Rei stood next to him, a bit dusty from the pre-impact road. They'd both agreed that taking a look wouldn't hurt, and it gave Shinji something to focus on while continued to look inward.

Walking up the uneven path to the shrine itself, Shinji took a moment to examine the structure. He ran a hand down a beam of stained and weathered wood and felt the grain tug at his fingertips. Turning to Rei, he shrugged and knocked on the pillar.

She just nodded once and reached into her school bag. "I will compose a list of materials."

Content to be silent, Shinji slowly made his way around the main building, taking in its foundation, down to the soil it had been set into. Eroded due to Impact tidal waves and later poor drainage, after they started reinforcing the Geofront. Trees, planted in a ring or square all around would probably help shore that up. Letting conscious thought drift to other things, Shinji again thought back to Hikari and Toji.

They were doing well, of course. Better than well. He'd hardly seen them apart for the past few days either, talking animatedly or sharing silence. There was still some awkwardness, but it was fading fast. Again Shinji wondered as to the _how_ he knew it, understood what to say so simply as to achieve his end. Absently shifting into a mental stance, Shinji traced the weather-beaten temple walls. Something rang true in his mind as he considered the structure and his friends.

Shinji had simply taken a deep breath and understood. And in understanding he had willed to happen, just as easy as breathing.

The clarity was sudden, and he looked back further. He couldn't think of the last time he'd really _struggled_ to wield his power, or to do anything really. He had to _learn_ still, but even now, he could almost look off into the distance and see potential for growth. The martial arts had been the first of it, the most obvious to build any sort of cultural connection. But the more Shinji thought about it, the more it made sense. He had gained something, a truer understanding with everything he did.

Cooking, Medicine, even talking to or with his friends- Shinji realized he was _learning with every action_.

Exhaling, Shinji reached out and touched the temple once more. Now it was easy. He ran his hands over a structural pillar that had sagged under the weight of the roof and age. It jumped into rightness, snapping back whole and clean as if it had been freshly cut and stained. It even smelled new. Bit by bit he wandered around the structure, tugging and straightening. Clay roof tiles rippled and clicked back together, and gaping cracks sealed up without a trace.

Rei had pulled out a notebook and had been writing the whole time. She stopped, and the sudden silence, the lack of pencil scratching on paper, was jarring.

Letting his hand fall to the side, Shinji blinked and glanced at his friend. He was about to ask what was wrong when he looked over her shoulder. "...Oh."

Nanba Kasumi and her Shinto Culture club stood at the edge of the tall grass that surrounded the shrine grounds, staring openly.

* * *

><p>In a familiar black space, five men appeared in holographic telepresence. SEELE council members 02 through 06 were cast false light, and it made their features look wan and sickly. Safe in his darkened study, SEELE 01; Kihl Lorenz was the only man physically present.<p>

The chairmen of the committee looked out to his peers and frowned. "Where is France?"

SEELE 03: Britian coughed into a thin hand. "He has abstained from this meeting. He left me a message stating that he was 'pursuing a separate option.' France assured me that all funding conditions and procedures remained in place."

Kihl couldn't slump in his wheelchair. His spine had long since become a solid assemblage of artificial vertebrae. "Then this is an acceptable deviance. We cannot afford to show weakness however. Ikari remains a small thorn lodged in our hearts."

To one side, a tall blonde man appeared rendered as green, the very picture of North American ancestry in the minds of most people. Which was to say actually of British colonial descent. "We remain concerned. Ikari's movements are increasingly bold. The situation changes faster than even the Scrolls predict."

"The scrolls do not _predict_. They are conditions to be reached for and signs to be interpreted." SEELE 04 snapped. "As stated by Ikari Yui's research, that we follow to this day."

"Dogma is not science, or enlightenment."

Raising a withered hand, Kihl cut in. "Councilors. Enough please. If you will look to your terminals, I have forwarded the results from our latest infiltrators."

As one the most powerful men across ten countries turned aside, half-vanishing from their holograms as they moved out of camera view. Kihl simply had his files interlaced with the vision granted by his visor. The old man waited while his compatriots scanned the reports. The dialogue shifted as they read, trading facts and observations with six voices and one shared goal. Lacking one of their number disrupted the harmony, but only slightly.

"Ikari has ceased Dawkins filtering?"

"More likely changed the parameters. Our agents have managed to place themselves. There have been extensive readiness drills and upgrades to various aspects of the fortress city." A sneering voice spoke out, it did not matter who, the blame was certain among them all equally. "Katsuragi's work, most likely."

It continued, and they all sat straighter for the naming of the trump card. "The progress on our hunter-killer?"

"Moderate," was the urbane reply, like the question answered itself in the asking, but was explained further for the slow of mind. "The loss of Unit 02 would be lamentable, but if our projections are correct, we could catch them in the Gulf of Mexico- salvaging the Evangelion in those conditions would be simple."

"NERV's commercial plans have taken root throughout the Asian and African continents. Ikari has turned our trap halfway against us." The last sentence was wry, laughing at no one and everyone present at once.

"Reports are inconsistent as to scientific and technological advancement." Frustration filled the space as a hand cut through the air, disappearing abruptly when it again crossed outside the lens's view. "NERV is promoting full cellular regeneration and offering it at significant markdown. Immigration is up."

A mirthless smile shined out in the darkness. "Hence our agents slipping past interdiction. Has Gendo moved the active scroll condition?"

"Negative. He approved the A-17, but our Inspector would not be as so foolish as to bring the sample and risk endangering either the Second or Katsuragi."

The discussion continued on for twenty minutes more, until Kihl let out a processed sigh. The other members fell silent and waited. "Our information comes to us too slow. I will make way to Tokyo-3 and see to matters myself. Objections?"

The question was less to find dissent, and more to discern who would contribute. Insight was valued at the table, as was unity. The blue-tinted Russian councilor cleared his throat. "None, but I suggest resolving the matter of the fleet. It would be a sufficiently public setback for NERV."

One by one the other councilors nodded, before all looking at Kihl for the final decision. "Very well."

"Release the Mass Production Evangelion."

* * *

><p>Earlier that evening, Shinji had made his way down to the garage to tell Rei dinner was ready. He'd found the girl in her car, half leaning out of the driver side door and staring at the uncovered engine as she turned the key. The machine rumbled to life, loud enough to shake the dust in the air and even make him take a step back.<p>

Rei had looked up at him then with wide shining eyes, and her voice was halting. "It purrs. Like a kitten."

That had been an hour ago, and Rei had convinced Deja with surprising efficiency to act as her teacher while taking the Skyline out for its first drive. "You don't need so much weight on the gas. Just a light touch."

The blue haired girl nodded, and Shinji could hear her easing up on the appropriate pedal. The engine quieted down in response. Rolling over the undulating roads outside the city, the car passed by swaying tall grasses as the sky turned orange. The taller teenager found himself squirming a bit in the seat. Rei had been eager to get out and driving- no time to install new interior or finish the bodywork. The car itself ran like a dream, however.

As for where they were going, Rei and Shinji had _both_ convinced the Section 2 agent to accompany them to the shrine for another night staking the place pilot security force was going to be following them _anyway_, after all, and there was no real pressing need for secrecy. At least not for protecting the Children.

That, and Deja by herself would also be much more approachable than an entire fleet of men and women in black suits, hawk-like eyes aside.

Which meant that Rei was getting more experience behind the wheel, and in _her_ car. Sitting in the back passenger seat, Shinji could see the edge of Rei's _blinding_ smile.

* * *

><p>The shrine stood just as it had the previous day, and the day before that. Shinji and Rei had been coming by for a bit more than week now, and usually staying well past midnight. He'd circle the grounds and inspect the structure, making sure it hadn't been tampered with. Landscaping had been a great way to pass the rest of the time time. Rei would bring her homework, and Shinji always offered to help. Which was to say she shot him a <em>look<em> when he tried to answer the questions for her.

It had taken a few days for the culture club to thaw around him too. Especially after he'd wandered into the shrine interior and found the a particular addition to the altar. He recognized the dedications to Amaterasu of course... but a copy of his old school ID photo had been... embarrassing to say the least.

Rei had leaned in around his arm and hummed. "That is a terrible picture."

But after that, Kasumi and the rest of the club members had taken his presence with something other than skittish reverence. Deja, the picture of professional sloth, had pulled a lawn chair from the trunk of Rei's car and lazed about into the cooling evening, arms tucked behind her head. Same old Deja. Kensuke _had_ mentioned that modelling gig went well for her, though.

Cutting grass with his bare hands was oddly relaxing, cleaving down the stalks and drying them in the same instant, and on the swing back weaving them into thin mats. Purely as a theoretical exercise, considering he didn't have the required materials for fully realized tatami. Rei joined him at the edge of the cut grasses, looking out towards the fortress city. She pressed a cold can of juice into his hand.

Shinji took it with a small smile. The sun was setting off in the distance, sinking past the low western hills. "You think anything's going to happen?"

"Something always happens, Ikari-kun."

"You could call me Shinji now, you know?" He glanced down at her, grinning a bit wider as he took a sip. Tart grape and a bit over processed, but it was still cold.

Rei's answering smile was smaller than the manic glee she'd shown behind the wheel. "Thank you, Shinji-kun." She looked up at the darkening sky. "What time is it?"

Not bothering with his watch, Shinji called on his power, humming. "About seven twenty or so. I'll go get the cooler and start on some sandwiches."

* * *

><p>Lying on the front platform of the shrine with his legs dangling over the stairs, Shinji stared up at the night sky and counted the stars. Wind tugged at his hair and the cut grass all around, sending it all waving faintly. Deja and Rei had both curled up for the night on chair and in a sleeping bag, respectively. The cicada were out in force, calling for mates across the shrine grounds and out even into the city itself. Those who lived in Tokyo-3 had gotten used to it.<p>

A new sound cut through the insect noise. Shinji sat up and waited, suddenly focused. Lit by stars and a half-moon, he had no trouble seeing for a hundred feet or more. It was a car- and there was little point driving at night on the shrine road. A mile after the shrine, the road _ended_. It had been destroyed during Second Impact. Hands draped across his knees, Shinji's feet started to bounce. The new car had stopped, and the boy heard a car door slam. Rustling grass to one side caught Shinji's eye, and then he realized Deja's chair was empty. Well, she probably had a better idea how to handle things that he did.

Didn't mean he wasn't going to try.

A man stomped through the newly cleared path over hand-crafted paving stones, swinging a jerry can of gasoline around while he snarled at the shrine grounds. Shinji watched him approach and narrowed his eyes, taking the man's measure. _Evidence of poor nutrition, lack of personal hygiene. Signs of depression. _Well, The man didn't _look _depressed right then. Wide-bodied and stocky, he was a real working figure, middle-aged and growing out instead of up. His eyes were clear though, and burning angry.

Finally approaching close enough, the disheveled man finally noticed Shinji and raised the hand holding the can, growling. "Who the hell are you?

Still sitting down, Shinji just shrugged and offered his open hands as an explanation. "I'm not sure that really matters right now. I'd like to know what you're doing here though, and planning with that."

Dropping the can at his feet, the man snarled. "None of your-"

The man's eyes went wide, standing out with realization. One hand reached over his shoulder for a dark shape strapped to his back, while the other pointed. "Y-You're that _Ikari_."

Shinji stood up easily, ducking out from under the shrine's slanted roof before he clipped it. Stepping forward he nodded once, frowning. "Yeah, I am."

"_You hurt my daughter!"_

He'd seen the baseball bat coming tens of seconds away, even just by getting a feel for the man's mental state. The swing was wild and over the shoulder, driven by adrenaline and enough rage to ruin just about anyone's day. Shinji stepped to the left and brought his arm up, palm out and waiting. The bat slammed into his waiting hand, and it hit hard enough to blow his hair aside. Purple with rage, the man wrenched down on the weapon, trying to jerk it free.

Shinji just squeezed his fist and shattered the bat down to the handle. On the other end of the strike, the vandal shivered, outstretched arms trembling as it held on to the remaining chunk of wood. The teenager looked the man in the eye and sighed.

Again the problem was _simple_, and he knew what he had to do. "I can't say I'm sorry, because that's not what you want and that's not what you're here for."

Shaking his hands free of splinters and dropping them to the side, Shinji sighed and stared the shorter man down. He was wide open. "Take your shot."

Fear gave way to disbelief, and then to more rage. The man tossed away the bat and settled on bare fists and boot-clad feet. Screaming, the father poured out _months_ of frustration and pain out on the pilot's body. Shinji stood, barely wincing as fists mashed into his jaw and nose. Blows rained down on his chest and shoulders, and when the man saw he wasn't doing damage, he picked up loose rocks and used them instead.

Shinji's white shirt was stained with dirt and blood from shallow scrapes, scratches he could feel but hardly notice. With every swing the man screamed. His daughter had come out of Shinji's first episode back at the school. She had seen Shinji do things that terrified her, both for how much he could have done and how little she'd resisted. He was a father who'd sworn he'd protect his daughter, who'd gone out to slay a monster and found a bunch of kids fixing a shrine. The terror had propagated, up into the family, into an awful lingering wound that Shinji himself had already punished himself for, without even knowing.

But the man sobbing at his knees hadn't known either. Wiping the blood from his split lip and blowing his nose, Shinji sighed again. "If that's all you have, then this is where it stops."

Kneeling, the man looked up, his own hands were bloody and ragged from the improvised weapons. Shinji hunkered down himself and took the man's hands in his own. Surface level lacerations, an easy fix. He smoothed the cuts with his thumbs and willed the blood to clot. Drained as he was, any resistance was token at best.

"If you have to be angry at me, then do it. I can take it. But you won't come back _here_." Jerking his head over his shoulder at the restored shrine, Shinji tugged the man to his feet. "Because I'm watching the place now."

Staring at his hands, the man still bawled. He looked up at Shinji, then at the can of gasoline he'd planned on using. Back inside the shrine, a slash of blue and a glowing red eye appeared out from behind a pillar, and Rei blinked, wondering aloud what the noise was. Wild-eyed and panicking, the man twisted and scrambled away from the question and witnesses. He dashed into the grass and made for the road, skipping the cleared paths entirely. Shinji watched and listened as he heard the engine catch and rumble out into the night, far and away from the shrine. Rei crept out from the thickly shadowed shrine interior.

A few seconds later, Deja stalked out of the tall grass, pistol in hand and dreadlocks askew. She holstered the weapon and huffed. "The Vandal?"

Shinji nodded, looking off toward the city before turning back to the shrine. Rei wrapped a hand around his and squeezed. "What is the matter, Shinji-kun?"

It took a few minutes for him to really answer. Bits of it had been floating around for the past few days, weeks really, but now it looked clearer than ever. He'd done so _much _over the past months, over his entire time as a pilot, an Exalt. He thought back to Toji and his sister, or to Ritsuko and her arm. The terrorists and his nightmares. His episodes above and below ground, and dealing with Asuka and Rei or Misato. There was good and bad in all of that, _he _had been good and bad through all of that...

"I think," He began, staring at the shrine and what it represented, then glancing down at the forgotten can of gas. "That I need to think about what I do more."

* * *

><p>A week passed since Shinji had defended the shrine. He'd been away from NERV and the Geofront for a little over three weeks. He sat in the passenger side of Rei's ever-improving project car, counting the amber lights as they blurred by overhead. Settling into the freshly installed racing leather seats, he glanced to the side and smiled. Rei had a deft touch behind the wheel, as sure as any martial arts master. Deja had signed off on Rei's learner's permit days before and waived the hour requirement. The blue-haired girl had passed her road test with a perfect score.<p>

The Geofront access tunnel seemed shorter than he remembered.

Both teens were silent as they made their way through the cavernous parking lot and past the various security checkpoints. They swiped their cards at the main gate and strode in, equally sure of themselves. Shinji took a deep calming breath as he watched the gate rattle open. NERV had been a distant sore point for him the past few weeks. Shinji had teased at the problem in fits and starts, coming to a fair number of conclusions and discarding more than a few.

Glancing to the side, he was glad to know Rei was heading in with him. Oddly enough, she was dressed for the pool- sandals, a swimsuit and a pair of sweatpants. A necklace with a thick keycard dangled around her neck. The duffel bag slung over her shoulder probably held a change of clothes. Nothing wrong with that, he figured. Looking ahead, Shinji picked up the pace. The weeks away had been good for him. They'd given him some much needed clarity, alongside his own increasing certainty.

He had a good idea where to start now.

Rei waved as she took a right at one of the uncountable crossways that cut throughout Central Dogma. She headed for an express elevator down, and Shinji wondered why. Maybe an underground pool perhaps. Well, Rei could take care of herself, and she'd meet back up with him outside.

Heading deeper into the Geofront, Shinji started to come upon familiar ground. Walls and floors he had pulled up with his bare fingers, and doors he'd welded shut. They'd been cut or blown open with normal tools, leaving ragged edges and gaping holes leading into his _quarantine zone_. He stepped over the line and into the place he'd done _so much_, most of it horrifying. He didn't have to be that, to make those demands of people or himself. Rows of abandoned desks and ramshackle MAGI terminals filled one chamber, while tools and the remains of half-completed prototypes dominated the other.

Taking in the damage, Shinji realized he could have easily fixed it. He spun in place and nodded, absolutely certain he could restore every broken part and panel. At the same time, he had a plan and was going to stick to it. Just being there though, in that room, was helping. Rei had told him to confront the problem in small parts, and so he _did_. Shinji looked around one final time and considered himself done with this small chunk of his rampage.

At the far end of the quarantine zone was his office, and the hole he'd blown out to free himself and his team. The floor, desk and every loose paper had been bleached to near ruin. He stared at the bare walls, exposed down to the insulation and cabling, wondering where the actual wall panels had gone. The notes he'd scrawled all over had been insightful but... No. Coming back to NERV and immediately wanting to pick that research up would not have been a good idea.

Stepping out of the zone, Shinji sighed and made his way further into the Geofront research complex. As he went, he started to see more NERV technicians and employees. Some gave him a wide berth, or up and about-faced down the nearest clear hallway. Shinji had expected that, and had done his best to prepare, but seeing it happen still made the guilt flare up. He beat the ill feeling back with certainty of purpose. Other encounters were neutral, or even nice. Overall NERV seemed to be split between those who feared him, and those who'd been worried.

Ritsuko had been one of the latter, but even he could see the fear. Shinji had run into the division leader, and they squared off on either end of the hall. Hands stuffed into her pockets, the blonde scientist took a long serious look at the pilot, the _Exalt_. Shinji met the stare as best he could. Ritsuko had only caught the _edges_ of his rampage, and she deserved better than a shameful flinch. The moment stretched out while Ritsuko took her reading.

Finally, she gave him a sharp nod and waved for him to follow. Shinji wasn't overly concerned by her silence, he could understand the need for uncomplicated things. Leading him through the various corridors, Ritsuko pointed him towards one of the dozens of laboratories honeycombed throughout the Geofront. The 'safest' of his prototypes had been left there, most of them from _before_ his episode. Good, what he wanted was probably nearby.

Instead of picking around the haphazard piles of crates and project results, Shinji started to push them around. Ritsuko watched from the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway lights as he worked. Paths and channels between shelves formed as he worked, and bit by bit Shinji pulled out his objective. Along the way he heard a faint squeaking. Off on one shelf with a fresh bottle of water, dish of food and changed lining were his lab rats. Five pairs of red eyes gleamed in the darkness.

Grinning faintly, Shinji nodded and scooped the cage up under one arm. Power flowed through his soul a bare thought. "Hey guys. How are you?"

The rats squealed happily, and Shinji smiled wider. He felt Ritsuko's eyes on him even as he continued to explore, pulling out familiar gloves and greaves along with a thick armored body suit. He'd have to make some adjustments though.

"I'm going to fix this, you know." The white-furred shapes hushed, listening intently. "I'm not ready to tackle this whole thing yet, but I'm not going to run away from it. I just needed that time away. Not unsurprising really."

He set the cage down and reached into a cabinet for an awkward, relentlessly military shape. Cradling the Specialist's helmet under one arm, he gave the rats a wry grin. Shinji was certain Ritsuko could hear him too. "I think I need a bit more time to figure things out, but I'm not going to ignore what went on here either. I think I can handle it better now. Not just say that I can."

A trickle of power called down the time from his internal clock, and he let out a bemused snort. He'd been wandering NERV for close to three hours. Pulling the rest of his marketing disguise into his arms, Shinji turned and made for the doorway, still occupied by one scientist.

Halfway through the first step though, he stopped, and turned back to the rats. "You know, there's someone you all might be happy to see again."

* * *

><p>The sun was setting by the time Shinji made it out of the Geofront. Rei had paged him along the way, telling him to meet her outside by one of the train stations. He'd found her right where she said, leaning against the hood of her Skyline and still a bit damp, smelling slightly of chlorine. Shinji smiled at that, glad that she managed to go swimming after all.<p>

To the east, the towers of the fortress city cast the setting sun back across the land, painting everything in shades of orange. Tossing the suit into the trunk, he kept the rats and their cage in hand. He offered them to Rei without a word. She held the cage up to eye level, and the rats inside met her gaze with five of their own. Raising an eyebrow quizzically towards Shinji, he could only meet her with a half-hearted shrug before ducking into the opened door. Apparently satisfied by that, Rei merely nodded once and set the cage down, a chorus of squeaks emerging as it was slid between the new seats.

She turned the engine over while Shinji eased in on the passenger side. Rei looked up while he sat down, head cocked to the side. "I will have to consider names for them."


	36. Ascendant

The walls had started coming down faster than anyone anticipated. Chemical fires threw hot gasses up into the drop ceiling, softening metal and burning through wood and insulation. Smoke flooded the space, billowing out in thick oily plumes from every window and widening crack in the three story warehouse. Half a dozen workers coughed and screamed in the darkness, blocked in by fallen debris or dissolving floors.

Bloodied and wheezing, Tetsuo crawled on his hands and knees while he hacked out dust and toxic grit. He kept one shoulder against the wall to keep his bearings. The paint around him started to peel and crack from the heat- staying wasn't going to be a good idea. Smoke and tears wreaked havoc on his vision. Everything was a hazy black shape or a hot orange blur. Some small part of him wondered how he could have gotten _lost_ in a place he'd worked for six years.

Above, the ceiling cracked. A widening tear sagged down, showing jagged wood and linoleum teeth. The smoke and heat shot up into the upper space, leaving the second floor hallway cool for a heavenly few seconds. Tetsuo stared at the impending collapse, suddenly too tired to do anything. Some sound outside drew Tetsuo's attention, a muted shout over the sirens. The actual glass in all the windows had shattered early on in the fire- had it been ten minutes, more? Tetsuo couldn't be sure. All he saw through the smoke was a black shape framed by the fortress city outside.

The window frame exploded inward, carpeting the work floor with bits metal. The smoke billowed around a new, hulking shape. Glowing orange and yellow lines traced up its limbs, crawling up the back of an almost faceless helmet. All of that had taken maybe ten heartbeats, and the collapsing ceiling above groaned once more. The man-shape _moved_, crossing the space and drawing the smoke into the wake of his passing. Sliding to a halt next to the fallen worker, he shoved both gloved hands into the wall.

Nearly a thousand pounds of debris gave way, falling down and crashing upon the armored man's arms and back. It piled up high across his shoulders.

The armored head tilted down to face the worker, and a blue crystal eye-slit seemed to look _through his skin_. A low computerized voice hissed reassuringly. "You're fine-"

Tetsuo was too shocked to answer. Shrugging against the pile, his savior _pushed_ and flung it all away. Free and moving, the grey suit was streaked with grime and dust. Pulling his hands out of the wall, the _hero_ grabbed Tetsuo by the collar and _lifted_. "Hang on and you'll live, sorry this is going to be somewhat bumpy!"

Hauled bodily through the smoke and fire, Tetsuo couldn't answer other than to scream. Together they charged across the burning building. The helmeted head swiveled left and right, and Tetsuo could hear digital mumbling through the mouthpiece. "Nothing load bearing around..."

Running straight at an office wall, the man lashed out with one hand and _shattered it utterly_. The whole office exploded into fragments. Kicking desk and filing cabinet away, the pair _jumped_ through a fire, sailing twenty feet or more before coming to a ragged halt. Slamming bodily into still-forming bruises, a new wave of pain washed over Tetsuo's side. The ache shocked him back into full escape mode. Even that couldn't stop him from seeing one of his coworkers buried under the rubble though. Mai's little arm peeked out from under another collapsed ceiling.

Tetsuo tried to call out, but the masked man was already moving. Heaving aside chunks of building like they were garden stones, he dug past the ruin and pulled the coughing woman from the collapse. Tucking her under one arm and grabbing Tetsuo in the other, the hero twisted smartly on one heel. "Hold on- we're gonna jump!"

_Jump?_

Dashing back through the cleared space and the open second floor window, Tetsuo's eyes watered. The speed stung his face, but he was moving too fast to feel the heat from the growing fire. Outside he could see slashes of silver from the fortress building across the street, and the flickering light of sirens. Faster than he could think, the trio crossed the distance and were airborne.

For a long moment, Tetsuo wondered if he was flying.

Then gravity took hold. Falling in a smooth arc, the armored man reached for the street with both legs and landed. The impact shook every bone in Tetsuo's body, but the pain was welcome, the clean air was sweet and he coughed hard to get the smoke out of his lungs. Paramedics with blankets and masks were already there, pulling him away.

Another voice shouted out, one of authority. "Specialist! Three more-bottom floor!"

The Specialist offered a faceless salute and charged back into the fire. Tetsuo watched past the oxygen mask and rush of bodies; paramedics, firemen and police. The street across from the warehouse was a riot of hazard colors and waving arms. Radios crackled from every side, relaying orders all across the city block. On the other side of the street, the warehouse burned.

A groan of distressed metal and the hiss of burning chemicals lashed out from the top floor, loud enough to send everyone outside scrambling for cover. A paramedic hauled Tetsuo into the ambulance and pulled the door back like a shield. They could still see the building through that tiny square window, and both men watched the topmost floor give way. It smashed and collapsed into the floor below, sending a concussive burst of flame and noise flaring out in a blooming mushroom cloud. The fireball ignited the tower of smoke for a roaring split second, before burning way.

Debris pelted the crowd under the first burst, sending anyone without armor screaming away. Bits of building pelted the ambulance across one side, denting the metal walls. A spiderweb of cracks appeared across the window. Tetsuo reeled, and outside he heard someone shout.

"_Second floor is going down!"_

Shivering and well past actually _feeling_ terror, Tetsuo leaned out around the door. The second floor was going down, sagging like the top floor had, only worse. What glass hadn't already been blown out by heat or their vanished rescuer shattered explosively. The rain of shards spread out in a fan ahead of the building facade, gleaming in the light of the fire and the noonday sun. Finally, Tetsuo saw the firemen armed with hoses trying to control the blaze, spraying down the neighboring buildings while hazmat trucks joined the fray.

The second floor finally collapsed with another echoing _boom_, a handful of heartbeats after the first. Charging through the door-less front entrance, one more lucky soul managed to escape the flame. The building itself was a lost cause and even Tetsuo could see it. Now they just waited. What remained of the building began to creak and groan. Tetsuo's hands clamped down tight on the ambulance door, squinting past the stinging chemical haze. He found himself slipping out of the ambulance and back into the crowd, pushing closer to the fire.

A dark shape in the rolling clouds of smoke charged forward toward the light. The _Specialist_ skid to a halt right at the doorway, waving back into the building. The last two workers rushed through the heat and grit, running along the main entrance hall Tetsuo himself had walked for _years_. The flames built up behind them, hotter and hotter. A final round of explosions rang out, shredding one corner of the structure and throwing the Specialist into the opposite door frame. The crowd outside ducked for cover once more, dashing back behind cars and barricades.

The armored man slumped down for a moment, and the whole warehouse began to shift and scream. Twenty feet away from the entrance, the last two survivors dashed with everything they had, but the ceiling and all the debris piled on it fell too fast. Tetsuo couldn't look away, not at the last moments of men he'd known for years. Snapping upright, the Specialist charged out of the door frame and through the suddenly absent wall. Skidding to a halt beneath the ruined corner, he threw his hands up. Nearly half a building slammed into his open palms, and yet _it held_. With the way clear, the armored man turned and shouted for the survivors to _run_.

Behind them all, the back of the warehouse started to collapse completely, falling apart like a sandcastle set against waves. Tetsuo's coworkers picked themselves up and ran, limbs bloody and wild-eyed but _alive_. Vaulting debris and dodging the surging fires, they blew past the Specialist's sides. The armored man stepped forward right as they cleared, and the warehouse fell apart behind him.

The Specialist stood across the street from the crowd of civilians and rescuers, armor, abraded and streaked with grime. Tetsuo watched and listened, as the last sounds of that moment were the lingering fires and the muted wail of sirens.

Then, as if by some unspoken cue, _camera flashes_ filled the air.

* * *

><p>There was a new altar to the gods of telecommunications in Misato's apartment, and only the expansive renovations allowed it to stand without dwarfing the normally tiny living room space. A sudden burst of color and sound cut through the apartment. PenPen stared unblinkingly at the television screen while one extended claw pressed down on the channel button.<p>

"-Unprecedented Aurorae continue to spread out across the skies of northern and Central Japan. Meteorologists say that it's yet another sign of our changed times after Second Impact, as the magnetic poles of the Earth continue to shift to this da-

The image scattered for a split second, and resolved mid-stream into an opening monologue. "-Last time on _Tokyo Love Story_, Hideki and Anko reunite after a year of separation- lost to each other after the destruction of Old Toky-"

Rerun, PenPen noted. Another channel change showed stargazers all over the northern hemisphere looking to the sky as unprecedented meteor showers shot across Earth's atmosphere. Pretty enough, the penguin supposed. The talking heads were going on about losing satellite coverage though. Good thing Tokyo-3 was hard-wired as often as possible.

"And now in local news- continuing our top story from yesterday, the Specialist continues his one-man campaign against workplace hazards and the perils of the blue collar environment here in Tokyo-3. We have footage of his latest daring rescue, braving deadly chemical fires!"

The man of the hour himself appeared not moments later, idly munching on some hand-dipped caramel apples. Even PenPen enjoyed his roommate's supernal genius at the culinary arts.

Shinji stared at the screen for a moment, chewing fitfully. "... Why aren't they asking why the building even burned down, or looking for more buildings at risk? Ignoring that makes no sense whatsoever."

"Television's worthless. This is why I read the paper." Shutting off the television and PenPen just gave the boy a fowl shrug from his perfectly molded indentation in the couch.

Looking over his shoulder, the hot-springs penguin stared at Shinji's rising eyebrows. "What? You talk to the rats and I surprise you with my eloquence?"

* * *

><p>Ritsuko sighed and shoved her hands into her labcoat pockets, fussing with her cigarettes and lighter but not taking them out. It had been close to a month since Shinji's episode. She and Fuyutsuki picked fitfully through the wreckage of the quarantined zone, wondering what each station and remnant had meant. The forensic reports had given them the clinical, objective details.<p>

Nudging a smashed terminal with one toe, Ritsuko gave into the temptation and pulled out a cigarette. "Katsuragi's been gone for more than a month now."

The old man hummed softly. He looked better at least, having caught up on sleep since the most recent crisis. Teaching had done wonders for him too, and Ritsuko could _hear _the smile in his voice, no matter the topic. "Her A-17 combat order had a provision for extended deployment; the Commander and I are not particularly worried."

Lighting her cigarette, Ritsuko gave the commander a noncommittal shrug. _She_ was worried, thank you very much. Misato was the one who ran herd on the absurd pilot personalities. Rei had become much easier to deal with over the past few weeks though. Stepping lightly, she meandered around the abandoned workstations and benches.

It had taken a lot of effort on her part to make sure everyone had remained calm. Weeks of meetings, one-on-ones and a whole host of favors being traded in the upper echelons of NERV research and development. Most of the scientists and engineers that Shinji had kidnapped were _livid_, and Ritsuko knew better than most how justified they felt. The scientist felt like she owed something though, and had to pay it back somehow.

She owed Rei, for maintaining her faith in Shinji despite his madness, and in Ritsuko herself. It had taken Ritsuko a few days, but she had realized after the fact that Rei had _shamed her_. Not even intentionally, either! The thought had boggled the scientist for hours afterwards. That night, she'd sat in the darkness of her apartment with only cats for company, thinking hard.

That was then however, and both her own sudden insight on herself and Shinji's manic episode were far enough behind her that Ritsuko had stopped counting days to the second since it ended. The _other_ scientists hadn't yet, but Ritsuko was going to do her level best to give Shinji _time_ to fix his mistakes.

Moving forward into the once-clean room Shinji had used as an office, the Sub-Commander and head of Project E took in the bare, stripped down walls. They'd removed the bleached but legible panels hours after Shinji had fled the Geofront and locked them up tight.

"Thaumaturgy aside, I can't tell where Shinji ends and his Exaltation begins." Ritsuko took a drag of her cigarette and gave Fuyutsuki a wry, fox-like grin. "Tell me, professor, does the blood run true? He is the child of two geniuses."

Fuyutsuki let out a short laugh, shuffling through some papers that hadn't been cleared off the desk. They were nearly black with scribbled notes. "Melodrama doesn't suit you, doctor."

Ritsuko smiled a bit wider and sent a meaningful look over the older man's shoulder, through of the hole Shinji had punched in the wall weeks previously. He followed her gaze outside and winced. The NERV logo stood out bright red on the silvery-grey wall.

GOD'S IN

HIS HEAVEN

ALL'S RIGHT

WITH THE WORLD

* * *

><p>It was a sunny day in Tokyo-3. The city blocks were high and full, while the solar collection towers turned to catch light and pump it down into the Geofront. Students and citizens milled around the high school, content to stick to their routines.<p>

Crossing the student parking lot, Shinji stopped and frowned at the pair of teens fussing over their car. It had been stuck halfway into the parking space with a flat rear tire. The broken car jack only complicated the problem. One of the teens caught his eye and waved him over.

Both of them seniors, they looked up at him and let out a short laugh. "Think you could help us, Ikari-kun?"

Shinji shrugged and gave them an honest grin. He was always probably going to be more than a little humble. "Sure."

The two older teens stepped back while Shinji hunkered down next to the rear bumper bumper. He could have fixed it all outright, but that would've been obvious. Reaching to grab the car's frame, Shinji eased up and lifted. People always told stories about mothers heaving cars off their children. Shinji could do that whenever he pleased. The driver fished out his keys and hopped in to steer while his friend laughed, tossing out thanks left and right. Rolling the car into place, the two teens sagged in relief, glad they wouldn't cause a further scene.

Watching the pair lock up the car and walk off, Shinji had realized that he still really did not fully_ get _people.

Or, it was more that he _vastly_ underestimated entirely benign human nature. Admiring eyes from every corner followed him as he wandered through the halls of Tokyo-3 Municipal High. Teenagers of all years grinned as he passed, waving lightly or calling out his name, and Shinji smiled back. It'd been going on for more than two weeks now, since his intervention at the shrine. That was the root of it all really, that shrine and the shinto club.

He hadn't said not to tell anyone or say anything, so naturally, Nanba-san and her friends told _everyone and everything_. In the school, at least.

It wasn't _bad_ attention though, if he were completely honest with himself. Just more than he'd ever dealt with. Tokyo-3 though was known for its loyalty- the people who lived and worked in the fortress-city were _dedicated_ to each other. They all pulled together whenever possible, and that same _esprit de corps_ trickled all the way down to the school and students within. No one spoke of it off-campus, and that secret was shared by the students and teachers. All of which lead to him being declared silently and unanimously 'Ikari Shinji: Campus Hero."

Ayumi told him it sounded like a _tokusatsu _character, and he agreed... on the condition that she never make that pose again.

Lazily making his way through the grounds, familiar faces jumped out in Shinji's memory as they passed by in the halls. Some he'd tutored- and the girls he'd started to recognize as having tried to flirt with him. Kensuke had to give him a little tutorial after the fact though. A while later he'd thought back to some of the things Misato had said and done around him. The blood rushed to his face and stayed there for _hours_.

Skipping the halls of student lockers, Shinji headed for faculty territory- the thin offices and relentlessly efficient office spaces and furniture. Errands, always errands. He'd helped others in different ways. Solving a small problem, lending his presence to one thing or another. Every so often a _big_ thing came up, a school crisis, like last week someone had suffered a severe allergy attack, and his rescue inhaler had failed. Shinji had been there, and a bit of magic-assisted encouragement kept the teen breathing long enough for the nurse to arrive. That, thankfully, was the _most_ exciting thing he'd been involved with.

A quick check found the papers Fuyutsuki-sensei had asked for, and with those tucked under his arm, Shinji leaned out of the office. His pager let out a harsh buzz. Shinji's heart sped up just a bit and grinned at the display. Ayumi wanted to meet for lunch. Walking a bit faster, he made his way to Classroom 2-A and dropped the files off, waving at Toji and Hikari while they laughed over their shared lunch.

Heading outside and stretching under the noonday sun, Shinji sighed and looked out over Tokyo-3. He'd helped out with the burning warehouse three days ago, and he could spare a few hours for his rooftop project. Kensuke and Toji had been big helps getting his half of the parking garage fit for thaumaturgical research, too.

As for his _afternoon_, Shinji scanned the skyline with a hum, content to listen to the bustle of distant traffic without a single siren to disturb his thoughts. That was getting rarer these days too, though mostly his own doing. Right after he started going out as the Specialist, he had patched in his suit's anemic, almost-an-afterthought helmet computer into the MAGI so he could listen in on the city's emergency service. Why bother _patrolling _when he could let the supercomputers could do it with several thousand traffic cameras?

Heading over to the trees and benches that he and Ayumi had claimed as 'theirs', Shinji mulled over the _why_ of it all. A teetering stack of burdens had piled up on him, and it was Rei of all people who had put him on his path. _Avoid stagnation_, she had said, followed by _give yourself time to assess the situation_. It'd been good advice. The Geofront stretched out far beneath his feet, nearly a kilometer under rock, soil and armor, and Shinji _knew_ he'd have to deal with it eventually. _How_ was the tough part.

In the meantime, he refused to stand idle. Every day he felt like he learned something, got closer to some sort of _answer_. Maybe not the exact one he was looking for, but in some strange way, each separate bit of enlightenment seemed to make the weight of his problems that much lighter. Rounding a tree and spotting Ayumi in her summer uniform, Shinji grinned inwardly. _She_ was doing a good job of making his problems feel lighter too.

Then two dozen students mobbed them both all at once.

Shinji blinked dumbly once and twice while his fellow teenagers competed for his attention. He should have been used to it by now, seeing as it'd been happening for _weeks_. Some called out just to say hello or for simple favors. The athletes in the cluster of bodies tossed out invitations to pick-up games or outright joining their respective clubs. The requests grew faster and more muddled the longer Shinji took to answer, as was the usual pattern. He looked to his girlfriend and shrugged helplessly, while she scowled petulantly.

He took the hint and brought a hand to his lips, _whistling._ When they all looked up at him, Shinji stepped forward and glowered. "_Hey! _You all should know the routine by now- form a line!"

Chagrined, the teens did as he said while Ayumi took her place. It'd happened often enough now that they'd worked out a _system_. The stories Nanba-san and her club told had included his miracle-working, so by now the whole school knew _something_. More than enough to make requests. Some got priorities, others got polite turn-downs. Ayumi was in the lead vetting each aspirant.

"A run in your stockings?" Ayumi scowled at the senior. "That's _girlfriend privilege _only, thank you very much!"

Repairs were the easiest to rebuff seeing as most of the time people wanted to merely save money instead of replacing it. Shinji made an exception for sentimental objects though. Tasks like that rarely ate up more than an hour of his time anyway.

Healing though was more serious. Shinji frowned while Ayumi wrote down the details of the latest request. In some roundabout way, the student body had found out about Shinji's _involvement_ in NERV's medical advances, but thankfully no one knew _his_ exact role. He was more than happy to play the studious intern and act like an 'in', getting people onto the waiting list for Geofront treatment. Ayumi met his eye and nodded solemnly, pocketing the note.

One by one the pair worked through the thinning crowd, rapidly eating up their time at lunch together. Shinji frowned as Ayumi sorted the notes into neat stacks and pressed them into his hands. He'd have to make it up to her somehow. At the back of the line someone jumped and waved, calling out Shinji's name. Ayumi scowled as the boy shoved to the front, until she recognized who it was.

"Aida-kun?" Her scowl stayed fixed in place, but it softened slightly. Shinji laughed lightly and wrapped his arm around his girlfriend's shoulders while Kensuke grinned, pushing up his glasses.

Turning to the crowd, Shinji coughed. "Sorry everyone, but you'll have to come back tomorrow."

With thirty minutes left to their lunch period, Shinji gave one of his first friends an apologetic look. "Kensuke, could you make this quick...?"

Ayumi followed that request up with a pouting glare of her own, and Kensuke laughed, raising his hands. "Easy! I'm not asking him to do my homework or anything." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a half-rolled spiral notebook, handing it to Shinji. "This is everything Akagi-sensei wanted about the thaumaturgy going on throughout the city."

Shinji blinked as he flipped through the pages, one-handed. It was the first he'd heard of any investigation... "In the city? We haven't taught anyone else outside of NERV."

"That's just it," Kensuke shrugged. "According to NERV's sensors, a bunch of thaumaturgical reactions are going on all kinds of places where people gather. She made me a handheld scanner for that part."

Pointing to a particular entry in the book, Kensuke continued. "I was looking at a restaurant that day and it took me two hours before I figured it out; the scanner pinged whenever the kitchen staff_ washed their hands_."

Ayumi looked between the two boys, eyebrows rising high and meeting in the middle, obviously lost. Wincing, Shinji made another note to explain thaumaturgy to her at some point, along with making up the _other_ mistakes he'd made. Each missed cue had become increasingly obvious over the past few weeks.

Stuffing the notebook into his own pocket, Shinji nodded. "Thanks, Kensuke. I'll make sure this gets to Akagi-sensei. In the meantime though, I'd like to spend the rest of lunch with my girlfriend, okay?"

Ayumi _beamed_.

* * *

><p>As far as Shinji could tell, fear of heights was closely related to how good your balance was. The particular trick to it, the form he had shaped his soul into, was effortlessly simple. Like a refinement of all the effort that went into learning how to walk, the most basic understanding just sort of leapt from out of his mind and into being <em>months<em> ago.

Stepping lightly along the half-inch skyscraper ledge, Shinji happily ignored the vertigo that would have sent a veteran climber scrambling for solid ground. Fifteen stories up and wrapped in in twenty pounds of armor, holographic projectors and disguise kit, Shinji smiled behind his mask and walked along a surface no wider than his own palm without fear. He could balance on his hands at the top of the tallest tower in the city at high wind. Even if he did all that while standing on one finger, he'd never stumble.

Easing around the narrow ledges across the building facade as if it were a sidewalk, Shinji grinned wider still.

As for why he was _on _the building, there was no particular reason other than that he _loved the view_. The afternoon cityscape stretched out above and below, and he sucked in another deep breath through the helmet's filters. All was quiet so far in Tokyo-3, and he'd head back home before dinner. Superheroes according to Kensuke hung out for all hours of the night, no matter how safe their city was. Shinji snorted, painfully aware of how little time there was in a day to do _anything_. He'd already burnt himself out once trying.

Making a full circuit of the building exterior, Shinji rubbed the chin of his helmet, contemplative. If he were honest with himself, he was better able to recognize the problems he'd had last time, and had already hit on a few solutions. For the moment though he was more than happy to focus on his _current _problems, though. Leaning back against a modern, nearly featureless building cornice, Shinji synced with his helmet computer and queried the MAGI.

A rush of traffic camera images and automated reports scrolled through his helmet. He didn't have the same direct mental or visual feed compared to Sorhyu's patch, but the helmet screens were more than enough. Unfortunately he didn't have speed-reading magic- yet. Scrolling through the list of events, Shinji let out a contented sigh. No major disasters, it seemed. Standing, he stretched and smiled a bit wider still. He'd get home with enough time to make dinner _and _work on his rooftop project.

Something red flashed, and he focused in on the alert with a thin frown. Spoke too soon, apparently. "Evacuation shelter breach?"

Double-checking the address of the shelter, he nodded and banished the MAGI alert, giving him back vision of the outside world. Focusing his will again, Shinji settled into another internal stance and eyed the building across the street. Misato had once joked about him being found in a spaceship as a baby. He hadn't understood the reference then. Digging his toes into the building ledge, Shinji _pushed_.

He couldn't leap tall buildings yet, but he was more than able to leap _between them_.

* * *

><p>Vans. Why did the bad guys always use vans?<p>

Watching them load boxes full of canned food and foil-sealed medical supplies, Shinji let out a wry snort. That's why, of course. He didn't need to spend a lot of time wondering as to the rest of their motivations, per se. That was for the police to handle, such as they were. The shelter itself was a squat, rhomboid extrusion of concrete that claimed one corner of a fortress city block. They tended to share space with the extensive storm drains and ventilation that honeycombed the city foundations.

Standing tall, the _Specialist_ leapt off the warehouse rooftop. The sky was shifting to orange, pink and dark blue as the sun sank toward the horizon. Landing in the shadows, Shinji reached inward for that stance of inevitable victory. The orange and yellow lines that traced his suit lit up alongside less easily explained sunfire whorls and the tangible promise of overwhelming impact.

Counting the two drivers, that'd be about six people. They all were wearing simple allergy masks and dark sunglasses- considering Shinji knew first hand how much camera coverage the MAGI had, it was pretty obvious precaution.

Hardly a problem if he could scare them into surrendering. "Hey!"

As one they all turned, some dropping their cargo at the sound of his modulated voice. Whirling on each other, they cursed and spat, kicking up dust at their feet. Shinji heard it all- plans to break for it, whispers about _the Specialist- here? _And so on. Fanning out, they abandoned the contraband while their apparent leader walked forward. Shinji found himself looking down at the smaller man.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thick wad of cash, fanning it out and letting Shinji see the value. The... Shinji wasn't sure _what_ to call him- head thief? The head thief bowed faintly, cash still in hand. "I'll gladly pay if you'll let everyone here walk."

"You're bribing me." Shinji blinked, unapologetically incredulous. "You're actually trying to bribe me. Who does that?"

. "Lots of people. I thought you were a publicity stunt anyway." Smiling behind his mask and glasses, the head thief just shrugged. The expression didn't reach his eyes. "Listen, the stuff in there is worth a lot to a lot of people- there hasn't been an Angel attack in what, a _year?_ Nobody's gonna miss it."

Shinji stood his physical ground, but inwardly he was _laughing_. "You're monologuing. Better, you're trying to make this all sound _moral_." He let out a short, audible laugh at that, wondering why the man was even _trying_. "I don't believe it."

Waving at the shelter, Shinji laughed a little harder. "First, because you're _trying to bribe me_. You can throw that-" he pointed at the wad of cash- "and not notice it after two vans full of-"

The sudden impact of steel on composite ceramic made a strange sort of metallic, ring-bang noise. So _that_ was why he tried monologuing. Shinji found himself bending forward at the shoulders slightly, pushed over only a little by the steel pipe that had been slammed into the back of his head. Slowly, Shinji turned into the weapon, letting it scrape along his helmet while focusing on the attacker with thin crystal eyes.

Ten long seconds passed while Shinji stared at the little man holding the pipe. The head thief shrugged, as if to say 'what can you do' and waved his crew forward, picking up weapons as they went. Whirling chains, brass knuckles. Firearms were rare in Tokyo-3. Small favors, Shinji supposed. Counting again, Shinji frowned- five guys this time. He'd gotten sloppy allowing the pipe to hit in the first place, but at least his helmet did its job. Where was the sixth man though...

Best to focus on the immediate problem- he wasn't leaving and they weren't going to let him stay standing if they wanted to finish their heist. The situation had already escalated. Shinji flexed his fingers and curled his hands into ready fists, checking each thug as they approached. There was a bit of apprehension in the back of his mind, knowing _exactly_ how deadly he was... but at the same time he knew now better than ever how to control it. His promised victory meant they'd need _hospitals_, not _life support_.

One by one the five remaining thieves circled around, testing the air with their weapons. It was surprisingly easy to read their intentions- none of them were trained combatants. Each man all but shouted their plan of attack with every step, and their blatant fear.

The leader seemed to notice that though, even as he pulled out a taser. "He's a NERV showpiece-" An arc of electricity snapped between the two prongs. "We're only human. He can only do _so much_!"

Well, that may have been _true_... A chain whipped out and threatened to catch him across the head. Arms up, Shinji did the sensible thing and _ducked_. The length of metal sailed around in a wide arc forcing the others to scramble aside as well. The hesitation was enough though. On some unspoken cue three of the thieves charged forward, slapping aside his arms with swinging pipes and wild punches. Two clamped around one of his arms each while the third barreled into his midsection. Shinji found himself airborne for a fleeting second as the three man tackle gained momentum and lost it just as quickly.

As one the pile of bodies slammed hard into the street, and Shinji's helmet cracked against the pavement, _again_. Sorhyu had tried something like this months ago... but Sorhyu was actually _good_. Getting his feet under his body, Shinji tensed and stood up, ignoring the weight of three men bearing down on him. With glasses and masks knocked askew, Shinji could see the fear surge back once more. Swinging his arms up then down, Shinji dropped two of them on the street, hard enough to stun and bruise. The man around his waist shoved back, scrambling away while the leader charged in with his taser.

Shinji let it discharge against his armor, utterly ignored.

Winding his arm around the leader's outstretched limb, Shinji twisted at the hips and pulled, forcing the man to slam hard into his chest and bounce back out. Bones cracked audibly and the man stumbled back, clutching his chest. Cracked ribs- Shinji noted with some small degree of relief, and nothing worse. Three down, two or so to go. Sensing something behind, Shinji shifted. The sound of moving air and rattling metal was enough to inform him of the incoming chain.

This time he caught it with one raised forearm, yanking the chain away and breaking the man's fingers with the same action. Striding forward Shinji whipped out with one back fist toward the man's thigh, hitting a nerve and bruising the man's leg down to the bone. No way for him to run. Four of six, fifteen seconds all told. He turned to take care of the last two when something bright overloaded his helmet's light intensification.

Ninety kilometers per hour netted out to about 25 meters per second, which was a bit less than _triple_ his overland running speed. That an overloaded civilian van could go that fast was more surprising, which why he only had time to turn and face the impact. Shinji found himself bent at the waist and pinned against the protruding hood of the vehicle, heaving for breath. It's high beam headlights bracketed his legs, and Shinji felt his armored toes scrape against the pavement and clip the curb. Behind him, the light reflected back on the windshield and the approaching hardened shelter wall.

Together, van and Exalt punched through the reinforced structure, tearing a gaping hole in the structure. A sudden hardening of his internal arete protected him from the worst of it. Shrugging off the broken concrete and drywall, Shinji shook his head and wrenched his helmet back into place. The van's abused engine groaned and clicked behind the front grill and crumpled hood. _They hit me with a van. _He looked up at the panicked driver, who was wrenching at the gear shift and mashing the pedals. The deployed airbag wasn't making it any easier on him.

Slamming his open palms onto the van hood, Shinji laughed. "You hit me with a van!"

Lifting his arms once more, he brought his fists down on the thin metal and the engine beneath it, utterly destroying both with a double-handed smash. The ruined van sagged forward, having completely lost its front axle. Bracing one leg against the firewall, Shinji shoved, and the van skid across the sidewalk for half a dozen meters. Stalking forward the pilot huffed, counting now five of six thieves handled.

The last man stood in the center of the street- the very first man who'd hit him with the pipe. Shinji just turned and stared. A second later, the thief dropped the weapon and lost control of his bladder. Six of six. Shinji sighed and clapped his hands, knocking free the concrete dust... Blinking behind his mask, he turned back to the shelter. Ambling over, he tapped one ragged edge of the hole with his gloved knuckles, and the hardened anti-Angel defensive bunker material cracked.

Shinji found himself frowning. "...That's just not right."

Car noises from down the street grew closer. The little fight had finally gotten the attention of Tokyo-3 law enforcement- and the news crews. Shinji ignored it for the moment, focusing on the shelter walls. He tapped into his reserve again, effortlessly understanding both the material and what went into its formulation. He stared at the concrete dust in his hands for a long, disbelieving moment.

Then a camera nearly knocked his head off. He jerked out of the way at the last second, only to find a microphone shoved in front of his face a second later. There was only one news station in Tokyo-3, but there were _three_ cameras and reporters jockeying for position. Shinji found himself backing up against the shelter wall as they closed in.

A photogenic brunette had the lead, sidling up next to him and standing in frame. She barely came up to his bicep, and her arm was almost at full extension, holding the microphone. "Specialist-san! Can we get a comment on your recent good samaritan works?"

"Uh..." The voice masking still worked, processing until he sounded like nothing in particular. "There's not much to say..."

"I'm sure the viewers at home are happy to know you're on the case- was today's crisis another daring rescue, like last week's fire?" The smarm and compliments were coming faster now, and Shinji could tell her teeth were orthodontically perfect. Bleached to a pearly shine too.

He shook his head and sighed, waving at the six would-be thieves and the one ruined van. Shinji shrugged. "N-No. Some people broke into the shelter."

The newsies made a point of _not_ turning to the sight. Instead they focused in closer on him, and Shinji could hear the whine of zoom lenses locking around his head. The lead reporter beamed prettily, blatantly _ignoring_ what he'd just said. "Specialist-san, the inquiring minds of Tokyo-3 want to know, just who is under that mask? Our phones have been ringing off the hook about it for weeks now!"

Shinji shrugged. Not like he was ever going to say either way. The shrill wail of police sirens cut across the city block, and the first hints of flashing strobes played over the buildings. He turned back to the shelter and touched the wall again. It crumbled.

On a whim he glanced back over his shoulder. "Listen, this doesn't bother you? There's a giant hole in an Angel shelter..."

He trailed off when the pairs of cameramen and reporters all blanched, seemingly in sync. The 'live feed' lights dimmed a beat later. Shinji cocked his head to the side and broke off another chunk of concrete- there wasn't even any rebar reinforcement. "I'm not enhancing myself here. It's really that- are you- hey?"

The last word was plaintive and a bit incredulous. The news crews had already made it halfway back to their vans, arguing all the way as the police vehicles rolled to smooth stops. The reporters hissed at each other, bemoaning the fact that they wouldn't get a better take due to the noise, and would have to settle for post-production at the studio.

Shinji let his hand fall to the side and huffed. Looking up at the late afternoon sky, he cocked his head.

Well, at least he'd get home in time to work on his project like he wanted.

* * *

><p>Jogging away from the shelter, Shinji rounded a building corner and leaned into an alleyway. His dust-streaked armor vanished in a brief flare of sunfire, leaving him in his normal slacks and shirt. Twisting around to get his bearings, he caught a flash of blue out the corner of his eye. Rei stood at the curb next to her still unpainted car. The girl herself was still in her school uniform, a bit at odds with the machine she'd put so much effort into.<p>

Still, Shinji smiled broadly. "Rei-chan"

"Shinji-kun," keys in hand, she waved at her car. "Shall we go?"

Nodding, Shinji moved for the passenger door when he stopped mid-step. "Ah... How'd you know where I was?"

Rei just smiled as she twirled the keys on her finger. "I asked the MAGI, same as you do."

Shaking his head and laughing, Shinji slid into the car. He wasn't going to complain about a ride home.

* * *

><p>The apartment door slid shut with a well-oiled whisper. Ayumi and Rei were on their way to the mall- something about a 'girls day to make Misato jealous'. Shinji smiled at the memory, and of the look on their faces when he hugged them both. It was finally <em>his <em>turn to make his girlfriend blush. Of course, their having gone out left him all by himself for the day. No school, no roommate, friends or girlfriend. And not one bit of going out and saving the day.

Spinning around in the living room, Shinji took in the space. It had been weeks since he'd taken stock of Misato's apartment.

Early afternoon sunlight spilled in through the angled floor-to-ceiling windows, bathing the main space and kitchen in warm golden tones. The pillow fortress from weeks ago had expanded, taking up half the living room with bedding and towers of cushions. There _had_ been two smaller penthouse suites above their unit, but Shinji had removed those long ago, clearing the space for stairways and currently unused lofts.

The furniture throughout was hand-crafted hardwood sanded to flawless perfection, stained, sealed and finally thaumaturgically strengthened. Coordinating all the spaces had been a challenge, as had meshing the old with the new. The gleaming steel appliances filling his kitchen were no longer factory standard. He could afford to metaphorically splurge on good design.

All of which lead to Shinji realizing he had _nothing to do_.

Slumping down on the couch, he grinned wryly, comfortably alone. It was more he had a great many projects, but most of them were in various stages of stop and go. His rooftop project needed rocks delivered from various quarries, as well as the steel, concrete and assorted tons of raw material. He fortunately wouldn't need a _crane_ to do any of it, but... Well, as far as the apartment was concerned, as far as Tokyo-3 was concerned, circumstances had conspired to give Shinji a day off. Still on the couch, he thought back to his kitchen.

After about thirty seconds, he cocked his head to the side and stared at nothing in particular. "...Can I make something unhealthy so well as to make it healthy?"

Shinji mulled over the question for a while longer, and the gold disc flared out on his brow. "...No, deep fried anything is still deep fried anything."

His stomach rumbled, and Shinji stared down at his traitorous midsection, snorting. "Aaaannnd now I'm in the mood for tempura."

* * *

><p>After his late lunch, Shinji whiled away the time with cleaning the kitchen and catching up on some lingering chores. One of which included repairing his Specialist-suit. He pulled it out from... wherever it stayed when he sent it away, falling in a heap next to him. He ran his hands over the seams and panels, cleaning away the soot and grime from several weeks worth of general heroics. All told, doing all of that had taken maybe an hour out of his day, leaving Shinji with even <em>less<em> to do until Rei and Ayumi got home.

But then PenPen waddled out of his fridge and offered to teach the boy how to play poker.

There was something very wrong with the world when a bird could beat a human at a card game.

After having fleeced him of all his cash on hand, PenPen headed into the bathroom, eager to try out Shinji's renovations. That left the teen to his own devices again, and the girls still weren't due back for _hours_. Wandering around the apartment, Shinji found himself back at square one with nothing to do. Leaning against the hallway wall, he wondered what the _hell _he did with his time the year before last? Eyes falling on the door to his room and what was inside, he nodded. Music, lots and lots of music. Easing in through the too-small doorway, Shinji took a moment to really _look _at his room.

Four bare white walls, a ceiling and a carpeted floor, with the only real architectural flourish being the patio doors that lead out onto the expanded deck. Those had been there when he moved in, too. Here Shinji felt like he filled the space more than anywhere else in the city. The walls seemed almost painfully sterile; the longer he stared at them the more his eyes stung.

There was a little desk and chair sized for a _normal_ adult that he hadn't bothered replacing. Not that he'd ever needed to sit down and do homework, even for the correspondence courses. His closet door was open, and a long row of identical school uniforms hung inside. It was the exact thing he was wearing at that moment, down to the belt and slacks. The only bit of furniture in his room made to _fit him_ was his bed, something Misato insisted on buying after he finally stopped growing. That was before he had spread out into all kinds of carpentry thought...

The only two bits of life in the whole room was a cello, and his SDAT player.

He hadn't touched the music player in over a year simply because he was _busy_. He used to need it to fall asleep, drowning out the noise of the city those first few nights he'd been in Tokyo-3. The cello though, that was tougher. He ran a finger over the top scroll just above the pegbox. He hadn't practiced in so long, and after he Exalted, Shinji realized he was afraid of breaking one of the last links to his mother. Aside from a hint of brown hair and Ayanami's jaw, he had no memory of the woman.

He sighed and looked at the room once more. Blank, empty and almost completely devoid of life. It was so blatant as to be ignored, simply because he spent almost no time there.

Scooping up his SDAT, Shinji found himself laughing. It welled up inside him, low and slow at first, before building into an almost hysterical fit. The sound echoed off the bare walls, and the glass patio doors seemed to shake in their seating. He stared at the music player and the mix tape he'd long since committed to memory. Every whole and sour note he knew by heart even before coming to Tokyo-3. In the little clear plastic screen, he saw a feral grin spread across his lips.

Raising that hand high, Shinji threw the gadget down and watched it shatter into a hundred pieces. The digital tape exploded in a fluttering spray of gleaming black ribbon. Feeling power flow into his limbs, Shinji laughed even harder. He picked his bed up and broke it over his knee, ripping the frame in half and knocking down the wall leading out into the hallway with the tossed remains. His fingers rent through the mattress like it wasn't even there.

Bare hands punched the patio glass and came away unscathed, but the doors themselves dissolved impressively, throwing a glittering wave of pulverized grains out onto the apartment deck itself. Cooling air flooded his room and tugged at the clothes still in his closet. He shredded those next, laughing as the white fabric turned gray in the growing clouds of dust.

Wild-eyed and laughing mad, Shinji tore down the ceiling and dug into the lofts he'd built before. Then the walls of his own room. When all was said and done he stood in the settling dust with nothing else upright and whole except for the cello. Powdered drywall caked the glossy wood finish. Snatching it up by the neck with one hand, the strings groaned painfully. He'd lost the bow around here somewhere, but no matter.

Bringing every bit of might he could to bear, in his legs and hips, all the way through his arms and into the instrument itself, Shinji manic grin stretched wider, and he laughed at the insanity of it all. So _much effort_ for everyone... and _none for him_.

He brought the cello down on the floor and destroyed them both utterly.

* * *

><p>Caked with dust, insulation and shattered drywall, Shinji slumped in the ruins of his room and the apartment below it. His mother's cello sat under his thigh, little more than a shattered wreck. What was left of his SDAT hung from a bit of ruined flooring. His two most favored possessions. Only possessions, really. He took it all in with an oddly calm expression, laughing lightly.<p>

Lacing his fingers together, Shinji cracked his knuckles and willed more power into his hands. Today he'd fix it all.

Tomorrow, he'd make it _better_.

* * *

><p>To most of the world, even to most of <em>NERV<em>, the Geofront was little more than an engineering marvel. In truth, merely a fraction of the Geofront had been seen or claimed by human hands. Ages ago, an impossible sphere had been carved into the earth and filled with soil not indigenous to the Island of Japan. Thirteen point seven-five kilometers in diameter, it was a sign of Mankind's diminished place in the grand scheme of the universe.

Kozo Fuyutsuki found it oddly reassuring, the _certainties_ involved.

Sitting at the bench built into the elevator, Fuyutsuki took as much weight off his tired bones as he could. The trip down into the under levels of NERV was long enough to read the morning paper, if he had thought to bring one. Meanwhile, Gendo slouched impressively, with his hands stuffed into his pockets. The elevator wheel ticked along and strobes flashed out every few seconds. Colors changed as they crossed further boundaries in the armor and structure beneath them.

Between the Evangelion Graveyard and the _real_ Terminal Dogma was another level. If Akagi's Angel computer had proven inert- little more than a corpse, it would have gone in that interstitial space. As it stood though, it was _much safer_ to keep the captured entity 'upstairs'.

The old man shed the burden of being second in command with an almost physical shiver. Staring at the back of Ikari's head for a long, deliberating moment, Fuyutsuki came to a decision. Straightening out his uniform cuffs, he pulled on the metaphorical mantle of academia and _authority in his chosen field_, as was right and proper.

"Ikari-kun."

Gendo's spine locked up. An irate professor's voice was not something a student forgot; Gendo knew it and the old man banked on that. "Fuyutsuki."

It was easy to hear the care that went into controlling one's voice after years of practice. The past few weeks had rattled the man, Fuyutsuki noted. Gendo had turned sidelong, just enough to look at the Professor out the corner of his eye. The honorific had been on the Commander's lips before he clamped down on the reflex. The beard obscured all.

Fuyutsuki scowled darkly and fixed his former student with a baleful look. "I did not like having to lie to Akagi about Katsuragi."

Whatever had knocked Gendo off balance was quickly boxed up and discarded. All the well-worn masks settled into place before Fuyutsuki's eyes with practiced ease. Hands still in his pockets, the younger man gave every impression of business as usual. "A necessary fiction."

Unperturbed by implied demand to drop the subject, Fuyutsuki pressed on. He needed more information, and Gendo's nearly absolute authority over the MAGI left him with only the _normal_ means. "Have they continued communicating since the attacks?"

Gendo just completed his turn and faced Fuyutsuki completely before answering. "The reports have started coming in by the day- in addition to whatever filters through the various UN channels. Our Inspector helped and hindered us with his message in a bottle."

The old man conceded the point. "Most governments have an _inkling_ of their connection to the Committee, so it stands to reason that some house cleaning is in order."

When a reply wasn't forthcoming, Fuyutsuki prodded. "Our response?"

"Measured." The statement was absolute, and Fuyutsuki knew it would would be done once they returned to the surface. "We will out a few of their men and leave them in the cold, while drawing others closer. By this point, the old men should expect any outgoing communications to be sanitized."

Fuyutsuki made a point of _not_ allowing his expression to change, or his voice to waver. "What of Katsuragi and the fleet? Unit 02 is a significant investment, as is the Second Child."

Gendo let out a dismissive breath. "Sorhyu's girl is a crutch, ensuring we reach the critical stages. Irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, considering the girl has rendered herself invalid as well. She was never intended to be much of anything."

Frowning, the old man knew better than to suggest that was a dangerous assumption, believing she'd _remain_ that way.

Settling back against the wall and wishing his legs weren't feeling like so much painful lead, Fuyutsuki took a moment to ponder the matter further. SEELE and by extension the Human Instrumentality Committee were... enduring, if nothing else. Plots and grand conspiracies rarely lasted longer than the lifetime of their leaders for a reason. Kaji's message had lit a fire under the United Nations, and suddenly NERV was no longer the budgetary whipping post. Over the past few weeks there had been vast infusions of cash via second and third parties, taking advantage of the looser restrictions on private industry.

Not to say they were back up to their previous levels, but long-deactivated sections of Central Dogma were gradually being brought back online. Akagi meanwhile had been splitting her time between the Pattern Green research and biotechnology, but NERV was actually on the road to deploying workable prototypes for refinement and sale. A six month turnaround was _unheard of_ in the technology sector, military research or no.

The idea of technology and research brought Fuyutsuki out of his reverie and back focusing on Gendo. At the same time, the elevator jerked to a halt. There had not been any maintenance teams down this far in _decades_.

Easing upright, Fuyutsuki did his best to prevent the wince from showing outright. Looking Gendo right in the eye, the old professor scowled again. "Your communications blackout was ill-timed, Ikari."

Gendo waved it off even as he admitted as such. "An unfortunate coincidence. I had expected to observe the boy while he was isolated from his support network. Katsuragi's influence is tangible even now."

Fuyutsuki felt his own eyes light up at that, crinkling at the corners. Considering how laconic was he was normally, Gendo had been _rattled _by his son's episode, for a given value of rattled. "And again, I say the blackout was ill-timed."

"A setback," Gendo made another concession. Two in less than five minutes- Fuyutsuki was now more certain than ever that something was up. "But an enlightening one. The boy's strength of will _can_ fail him. I know more now than I did before. Victory in all things professor, even defeat."

Raising a hand to push his glasses back into place, Gendo terminated the topic. "Assets were not in place to take action or tranquilize the boy- something we shall correct of course."

"Of course. Section Two has already been re-tasked and equipped." A bit of wan humor crept into Fuyutsuki's voice, and he smiled prickilishly. "You could have gassed the quarantine zone."

Making their way out of the elevator and through the intervening layers of Terminal Dogma, Gendo let out a contemptuous snort. "The boy was serving as a lightning rod. There was no reason to overplay my hand or sacrifice goodwill amongst NERV."

Fuyutsuki frowned at that declaration but said nothing- for the moment. He fell into step behind Gendo, forcing himself to keep a hand near the frost covered chain railing. Every footstep on the gantry railing echoed throughout the cavernous space. The sound bounced off the ceiling and back down, through the thin clouds of vapor that hung in the stale, rotten air. What little light there was in the space came from below, and the dim orange tanks that stretched out for hundreds of yards in every direction. Coughing, the old man pulled out handkerchief and held it to his nose.

Long-dead and dry blood reeked like little else.

Together they walked further toward a vault hanging from the ceiling itself. Somewhere relatively far above them was the Memory Transfer facility, but they were heading somewhere not even Akagi had been. Reaching the single nondescript door, Gendo pulled out a mundane key and cycled the lock. The hanging bunker had much more effective security installed elsewhere.

Inside, long-disused lights guttered to life, but they did little more than make the shadows seem even darker. The bunker itself was just one room, and in the center was a dust covered table. Gendo strode forward purposefully, already moving to wipe away the years of settled air. Fuyutsuki himself had only seen this room once before, and could recognize his own footprints in the floor.

Gendo's prints had crossed over his several more times over the years.

After a few more minutes dusting, the thin stacks of paper were brought out into the light. A handful of painstakingly etched handwritten notes, alongside photographs of alien symbols and their age-old translations. Gendo all but whipped one page at his second in command and demanded him to take it. Fuyutsuki sucked in air past his teeth and held in for a long moment.

They were Ikari Yui's notes, and her original translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Fuyutsuki let out the breath he'd been holding. Gendo ignored him, pouring over his own sheaf of papers. Yui's tight, efficient handwriting crowded every margin, shifting into normal Japanese, English, then various middle-eastern languages Fuyutsuki didn't recognize. Those notes were translated again in different colors, and the ink had not aged well over the years.

The text itself had not changed. The exacting parameters for Yui's scenario were laid out in scrupulous detail. Their _memories_ however no longer matched. Holding the pages in his hand, Fuyutsuki could fight the cognitive dissonance of knowing his recollection was _faulty_. Inconsistent, and pervasive. Together the two commanders of NERV reconciled themselves with the reality.

They came to the same conclusion within seconds of each other, and Fuyutsuki voiced it. "ADAM was never transported as the original sequence intended. Could it still refer to the Second and Unit 02?"

Gendo let out a frustrated grunt. "Our memory of '_Red'_ remains. The event has not yet passed."

Fuyutsuki sighed, wishing there was a chair nearby. He waved his arm gently, careful not to crinkle the fragile pages in hand. "Then where is the sample? Does SEELE still have it?"

The Commander still juggled the changing circumstances like the grand schemer he'd proven himself to be. "Our Inspector did not arrive with it as expected, but in light of the Dawkins Protocol and NERV's shift towards corporate backing, the Committee's _human_ response to the situation is understandable."

"But the Sixth Angel attacking as it did _required_ ADAM to be in transit." Fuyutsuki raised the pages again, the very ones that described his point. "Yui sculpted the events as to close off certain paths to the rest of them."

Both men lapsed into a long silence, and one of the overhead lights flickered as it neared the end of its functional life. Gendo looked up, intent and speculative. "So we could assume that the many-fold agent could be lying. Not unexpected."

The implicit connection was obvious to the older man, and Fuyutsuki nodded slowly. "Assume that Kaji still has the sample then, and for some reason took it back with him on the Pacific Fleet?"

Gendo snorted contemptuously. "The man is foolish and his goals are blatant, but he is not actually a fool. Nor would the Committee send him without acknowledging his place in seeing the plan through."

"As per the original plan yes, which was about _a year_ behind schedule, I should point out." Setting the papers down, Fuyutsuki sorted them into a neat stack while Gendo watched. He looked up at the younger when he continued. "ADAM must be in transit by this point and Sorhyu must be the one to kill it, if all the other pieces fell where they were intended."

Scowling, Gendo shook his head with a derisive grunt. "No, if she were actually "Red", then the girl would have performed acceptably and we would already be moving on to the next event in sequence. Instead her growth is unpredictable. Katsuragi's reports say as much, brief as they are."

Fuyutsuki was stone-faced and silent while Gendo continued. "Unscheduled activations, unforeseen adaptations- the girl will become an increasing complication moving forward."

Once more the silence stretched out between them, and Fuyutsuki felt the muscles in his neck lock down tight. Outwardly he refused to let his jaw tense or fold his hands up into fists. He'd been willing to make a great many compromises over the past fifteen years... Letting the tension drain out, Fuyutsuki fixed his former student with a patient stare.

"Unfortunately," he began. "We're losing sight of a more pressing and immediate issue. Your _son_ is already a complication moving forward, now and in the present, instead of two months from now."

Moving around the table Fuyutsuki turned to Gendo. He kept his voice was low and polite, but a thunderous weight crept in behind it. "The Second Child's psychological state makes her much easier to control, but Shinji remains a completely unpredicted variable in context of the scrolls. Say what you will about having learned something, but we know more about the _First Ancestral Race_ than we do Shinji's Exaltation!"

Gendo was silent for several minutes, and Fuyutsuki felt his jaw tense. The younger man ran a hand along the table as he started to pace, unusually animated. His former student never mumbled, never let anything show on his face even at the most tense. The shadows in the bunker seemed to cling to Gendo's uniform jacket and pants as he rounded the table.

Passing under a guttering light fixture, Gendo's glasses reflected solid amber. "First time, happenstance. The second, coincidence. The third, by design."

The non sequitur threw him, but Fuyutsuki still recognized the reference. The context remained elusive. "I thought the phrase was ''enemy action'."

With a smirk tugging at Gendo's mouth, he shook his head. "The boy would have to be aware of the game before he could even declare himself a player, let alone as an enemy."

* * *

><p>Memory of the shelter nagged at him, like the bit of concrete that had lodged in his shoe. Jogging down the street and into a nearby alley, Shinji resisted the urge to stomp and obliterate the offending shard- along with whatever <em>else<em> was under his foot at the time. Instead he clung to the shadows and pulled his street clothes out of wherever they had gone. The armor vanished in the same action, and Shinji wiped a thankfully clean arm over his brow.

Sometimes it seemed like every other day in Tokyo-3 lead to _some kind_ of industrial disaster.

Looking left and right down the alleyway for potential witnesses and finding it clear, he released the tiny measure of power that held his gear apart from the world. It spilled out onto the ground alongside him, an empty pile of plugsuit memory material, mesh harness and armor plates. Shinji sighed and hunkered down, already channeling more power to his hands.

Scuffs, scrapes and frayed edges all made themselves whole under his touch. Broken through the sole of the military-issue boot soul was the ragged hunk of concrete- and the bit of rebar that'd made it even _more _awkward to run. Shinji ripped it out and tossed the chunk aside, repairing the hole with his other hand. Shaking the dust free, he held the Specialist suit up and saw that it was good as new.

He was glad he couldn't chafe either, breaking the suit in every few days would have been _torture_.

Storing it again, Shinji yawned and stretched, heading for a particular maintenance grate halfway into the alley. It'd take him into the fortress city substructure and access paths, meandering around buildings until he could pop out elsewhere, well away from his latest bit of heroism. Easing the grate back down overhead, he didn't even bother with turning on the lights, his night vision was still near perfect, and the thin bit of sunlight that spilled through the honeycomb of access points lit his way more than enough.

But being _under_ the city reminded him of the shelter again. Shinji shuffled along the cramped gantry dodging hanging pipes and conduit, grumbling. It wasn't just that shelter either- almost all of the ones he checked were just as poorly made. Men with pickaxes could break down the walls, let alone Evangelion weapons or stranger Angel attacks. Realizing _that_ had made him turn to the _rest_ of the city. Huge chunks of the above ground infrastructure were... inadequate.

Ducking under another low-hanging, rust-covered support, Shinji found himself frowning harder. It hadn't taken him long to understand at least _part _of what was going on. Inadequate was inadequate. The news crew from the other day tied into it too, somehow, though Shinji wasn't _exactly_ sure as to the connection. They didn't act anything like the news programs he'd seen back in up north.

Stepping out of the maintenance way and back out into the light, Shinji sighed. It all added up in a half-understood mess of data, and being honest with himself, he had _no idea_ where to go from there.

Traffic was light on the surface streets, and sidewalks were thick with shoppers and people walking home or waiting for the trains. The sun was just about to cross over into afternoon proper, and school was just about to end for the day. Shinji's fingers drummed absently against his thighs as he looked over the crowds. There were _other_ things to do for the rest of the day, after all. He caught sight of some payphones and strolled over, ducking into the canopy for privacy if nothing else.

Pulling his pager out and sliding the keypad out, he thumbed a quick message, feeling sweat prickle out all over his palms. _Dinner tonight, at seven?_

Ayumi's response came back a minute later. _Sure! Somewhere downtown-_ The message cut off and a new one appeared right after it, and Shinji felt his mouth pull back in a grin. _Shit sorry forgot you hate city food... uh...?_

Still smiling he typed back, but the prickly-cold sweats were reinforced by a sudden addition of butterflies in his stomach. _I was thinking my place... Is that OK?_

The reply was near-instantaneous. _Definitely! See you at seven!_

Shinji glanced upwards and the butterflies ignited, heat rushing all the way up to his face. He was going to need a grocery stop, and quickly.

* * *

><p>Shinji had learned the lesson of delegation, and wasn't planning on forgetting it any time soon.<p>

A handful of phone calls later saw everything fall into place. Groceries in hand, he passed by pallets of raw materials stacked up outside the apartment door- everything else already inside he could reuse. Lists tumbled through his mind while he stowed the perishables, greeted PenPen and took stock of his assets.

With a bit more than three hours to kill, Shinji stood in the kitchen and looked out upon Misato's living room. He clapped his hands and sunfire flared out along his forearms. The apartment wouldn't know what hit it. His kitchen- remodeled _again-_ now had a hardwood center island with it's own sink. The stoves, gas ranges and other appliances had been ripped apart and rebuilt to his specifications.

The clock ticked on as Shinji worked, tearing out whole sections of wall, ceiling and floor. He made way for _new ideas_- stairways down into what had been the apartment one floor below. The apartment above became a new hanging loft as he tore down and built back up according to his vision. Only the common wall between Misato's apartment and Sorhyu's remained untouched, and his plans accounted for it. He'd ask the girl what she wanted when she got back and no sooner.

Rei appeared midway through, examining the revised spaces with unblinking red eyes. She nodded once and claimed one of the loft rooms as her own, gradually moving her meager possessions from one space to the other. The last to go was her cage of five rescued lab rats, _Un, Deux, Trios, Quatre, _and _Cinq. _Shinji smiled at that, taking a short break from the mound of debris around his wrists. Even at this distance he could hear the rodents chattering amongst themselves at Rei's cooing rapport, bright and enthusiastic about the new titles.

Exhaling, Shinji looked out on his work and called it good. He and his clothes were covered in grime. With an hour to spare, Shinji made his way to the bathroom, remodeled _that_ and subsequently showered. Careful rationing of his inner reserve left him glowing firmly by the end of his construction binge, but not so much as to bleach the world.

But even with all that, he was running just a _bit_ late. The doorbell rang just as Shinji was spreading out the ingredients for dinner. He all but glided through his new spacious kitchen and tapped the door open. Shinji felt a dumb, liquid grin spread across his face when he looked down and saw his girlfriend. She'd _dressed up._

Ayumi matched his smile with one of her own, but her eyes widened when she looked past his arm and into the apartment itself. Her mouth worked and she made a funny, strangled sound before finding an actual word. "...I was here a _week_ ago and-"

She just looked up at him, bewildered. "What did you _do_?"

Grinning faintly, Shinji rubbed the back of his neck and tugged her inside. "I uh, had some time to myself before you showed up. I've realized that I like to keep busy."

The girl just nodded and took her seat at the new dining room table, in the equally new dining room. Rei sat next to her, dressed down in the customary tank-top and shorts like she always did after school. "Saneda-san."

Something wasn't quite tracking. The boy blinked while juggling jars of hand-ground spices. Rei. At the table. Waiting for dinner. Shinji leaned back and rammed his head into the nearest cabinet.

Shinji watched his girlfriend glance to her right and mumble out a toneless. "Hello, Ayanami-chan."

Another surge of sunfire flowed down Shinji's arms, and the disc on his brow flared into warm view. "Ah... Rei I'm sorry- I forgot to tell you."

The blue-haired girl blinked once, flicking red eyes between Shinji and Ayumi before giving the pair a firm, understanding nod. "Right. I shall leave you two alone."

Red spread out across Ayumi's cheeks as she stared the other girl down, and Shinji's face was going beetroot just as fast. Rei eased away from the table with a lithe hop and jump, and the awkward moment _stretched_ as she hummed along to some unheard tune. An almost tangible force of comedic timing made the couple lock eyes and start to sweat. Rei somehow _dragged _their embarrassment out like a cat with a ball of yarn, spreading it in tangles across the table.

She took in the tableau with a look that Shinji began to understand as _deliberative intent,_ and only the tiniest quirk at the corners of her lips hinted at the _smirk_. She paused at the door to say something, but decided against it at the last minute. A few moments later, Shinji and Ayumi were alone in the apartment. Groping for a topic, Ayumi cast around the apartment, looking for anything to drag them both out of the awkwardness. Her eyes fell on the towering array food waiting to be prepared.

"So!" She chirped, clapping her hands and forcing her voice high and light- doing her level best to push the red-hot mortification out of her cheeks. "What's for dinner?"

* * *

><p>The ingredients for the main course of ginger pork were spread out along the new kitchen island- freshly cleaned and sterilized with thaumaturgical warding. Shinji couldn't stop from grinning at the thought of a self-cleaning kitchen. Gold fire crawled down his arms as he reached for the uncut meat. Shinji's hands did not so much blur as flicker between knob, spice and tap. Pans were filled with precise amounts of oil and he diced ginger root under his fingers.<p>

Ayumi sidled up next to him, heedless of her sky blue sundress tying an apron around her middle and smiling. "Don't mind me, I just wouldn't feel right not helping."

Shinji blinked, but nodded nonetheless. He carefully coaxed the gas range to the optimal temperature, directing the heat through the oil and meat in just the right ways as to cook them to his exacting standards.

Meanwhile Ayumi chopped the greens and unground spices, humming faintly. "So... how exactly does all this work? The magic stuff."

A half-dozen previously given explanations tumbled through his mind, called out of memory. His most recent one had been with Sorhyu over soul muscles. Shaking his head, Shinji just gave her a shy little smile. "It's... not easy to explain. I'm still working on it."

"That's alright, but I'm still curious." She grinned charmingly and moved the diced greens aside for him to add in.

"Well..." Shinji bit his lip and thought about it for a moment, reminded that his concentration was still focused on his primary technique of the moment. "Almost everything I do, they're all techniques. Stances I can take."

He picked up a clove of garlic and crushed it in hand. The outer husk burned away while the rest fell into a waiting skillet, perfectly separated. "The one I'm using now..." Shinji exhaled softly and urged the heat higher with a deft tap of the gas. "I could make all of this with my bare hands, my palms are pans. My breathing and the space between my arms is an oven..."

Shinji felt Ayumi's eyes lock on his hands as he moved through the technique. "I have another one that's simpler, but I'm not using it right now. I open a sort of floodgate inside myself and suddenly everything _makes sense_. Like I'm pouring raw genius out into whatever I'm doing."

Pulling one skillet off the range and moving a pot with the sauce into place, Shinji just shrugged. "Most of my techniques are all very transitory and focused. Lots of short bursts and stuff... Some I can use at the same time, but I have to take each stance separately."

Ayumi blinked, and her jaw worked up and down for a moment. She was about to say something when her nostrils flared and her face scrunched up adorably, suddenly hit by a wave of flavor. "Wh-wait a second, I thought you were _behind schedule?_"

Laughing, Shinji nudged her out of the way with one hip and pulled the pans and pots off the stove before heading to the dining room to serve. "I was! I wanted this all to be ready by the time you entered the parking lot!"

Swallowing a mouthful of expertly seared pork, Ayumi reached up and held a hand to her mouth, desperate to keep from losing a morsel that hung off her lips. She slurped it up with a laugh while Shinji dug into his own plate. "You mean they're all learned skills?"

Across the dinner table, Shinji did his level best not to laugh, watching his girlfriend try to sample _everything_ and leave nothing to waste. He didn't _blame her_ either. "So far yeah. I mean I have a few random things..." He waved his chopsticks at his head, and the gold disc burned out to full brightness once more. "I can make this thing show up whenever I want, and it's got three or so levels. Low, 'personal lantern', and 'visible for kilometers."

Reloading her plate with seconds, Ayumi cocked her head to the side."You mean the big towering mandala-thing we all saw at the end of the terrorist attack?"

"Yeah." Shinji nodded. A beat later his shoulders started shaking as he remembered. "Back during some of the first round testing in the Geofront, Ritsuko was pulling her hair out because they were seeing the top edges of my corona downtown. It was reaching up through a _kilometer_ of rock and armor like it wasn't there."

The conversation shifted then, and Shinji recognized the look that spread across her face as _Ayumi's curious expression, number three_. "What's the Geofront like? My family just runs a little grocery store so we've never seen it."

It wasn't her fault, but Shinji suddenly felt the good mood drain out of him. His hands fell toward the table at the same rate, thumping softly against the edges while his chopsticks clinked faintly against the dishes. The Geofront... He'd been putting it off for way too long. Months. Ayumi shifted in her seat, forcing Shinji to realize he'd let his eyes fall down.

"Ahh..." He shook his head and put on a respectable smile, waving it off. "The Geofront is... really big."

He shot his girlfriend a warning look when her face pinched up, holding back the obvious burst of laughter. Ayumi's mirth was infectious though, and Shinji found the earlier reminder fading away in the face of an opportunity. A syrup-coated cherry for desert waited by his hand, and he glanced at it meaningfully. The dark-haired girl stopped for a moment, shaking her head while pulling out her defenses.

Shinji's hand drifted closer to the cherry while Ayumi shook her head harder. "No. No no no _no_- don't you dare, you worked so _hard _on all of these! You made more than we could eat tonight!"

He just grinned at her and nodded.

Flicking out with his finger, Shinji sent the sugar-coated bit of fruit sailing across the table before it landed on Ayumi's plate. She shrieked, laughing hard and holding holding her hands up as it skittered around her leftovers. Lighting-quick, she snatched up a bit of cooling pork and flung it back to slap wetly against Shinji's nose. The thin hunk of meat slid off his face and landed on his plate, and a long, tense silence stretched between them.

Five seconds later, the battle commenced.

Sticky rice was quickly improvised into poor ranged fodder, while the heavier chunks of left over meat were quickly divided before being hurled back and forth. Red smears drew jagged lines across their arms, cheeks and chests, or clung to fabric in wet, sugary blotches. The steamed vegetables were Ayumi's arsenal of choice, having eaten hardly any of them. Shinji hadn't minded the uneven distribution either- they bounced off his skin and he didn't even blink.

Eventually the war ended, having spread out of dining room and into nearby rooms. The kitchen walls were decorated with sauce-craters and the dripping scars of desert. A few errant throws made their way into the rest of the apartment. Shinji and Ayumi stood across from each other at armistice, all the dishes scraped clean between them. They'd taken to eating the ammunition as to win the war of attrition.

Ayumi, breathing heavily, flicked her tongue to lick a bit of cherry that clung to her lip. "I-I think... This is the part where we make out."

While not _winded_, Shinji's heart was beating just as hard, red faced. He stared across the long hardwood table and nodded slowly. "Y-yeah. I think so too."

They were quiet for another long moment, before Ayumi hiked herself forward on the table by her hands. Her toes hung half a foot the floor and she _stretched_, but even with Shinji leaning forward, they couldn't _quite_ reach. She felt back to the ground with a bounce and pout. "Your table is too long!"

The tension that Shinji was able to recognize as _resoundingly hormonal_ snapped with an audible twang, and he felt a prickling cold sensation crawl down his neck. Ayumi's own face cooled down as well, and a second later, they both burst out laughing. Even with her blue sundress smeared with the remains of dinner, Ayumi looked amazingly cute.

Once the awkward spell had been broken, the pair started pulling up dishes and whisking them off to the sink. They worked in silence, and Ayumi put herself close enough that Shinji could brush by her if he wanted. Tonight he _did_, catching her with his hand on some turns or when they reached over for a brush or faucet tap. Towels and wet washcloths were pressed into each others hands, and Ayumi made a point to help whip the mess from Shinji's arms and face herself. Red-faced, Shinji got the clear hint and returned the favor.

Even so, there was a _lot_ of mess to clean up. Glancing at the clock, Shinji winced when he realized it was just after nine. "I... don't think I can jump you home in an hour. Especially looking like that."

Ayumi nodded and tugged at the front of her dress, blanching visibly. "Yeah... "

Picking at his own shirt, Shinji considered his options even as he willed a bit of power to his hands. The stains all along his shirtsleeves vanished under his fingertips, and the interlocking threads straightened out as if freshly spun and woven. He glanced up and realized Ayumi had been staring as he cleaned his clothes with his bare hands.

Saving time on the wash wasn't going to magically get her home any faster though... Shinji shrugged and waved at the apartment. "If you take off your clothes, maybe you could stay here? I'm sure Rei wouldn't mind you borrowing something and there's more than enough room and-"

Red flooded into Ayumi's cheeks, and Shinji _immediately_ realized where her mind was going and _what he had just said_.

Backpedaling both around the table and in his mind, he frantically waved his glowing hands while Ayumi gave him an _interesting,_ if visibly shy look. Swaying side to side, she drawled. "Thaaaaat's a bit forward, Shinji-kun."

Clarifications and apologies crowded up in his throat and made his eyes bulge, even as the skin of his face and neck prickled hotly. Ayumi laughed despite herself even as she twisted in place, only a _little_ mortified compared ot his _very _mortified. Her first giggle was all they both needed to punch a hole in the tension though, and it drained out in fits and starts.

Shinji sighed and ran a hand through his sticky hair, keeping his eyes down toward the floor. He still snuck glances up through, watching Ayumi's sandaled feet, or her hands tugging playfully down at the hem of her dress. "I uh... I didn't mean it like that. I mean, I said what I meant to but."

Giggling again, Ayumi waved it off. "I understand." She let out a gusty sigh and leaned against the edge of the table, biting her lip. "Iiiiiii- better call my folks, no matter what."

* * *

><p>Tiny, poorly made phone speakers were <em>murder<em> on sensitive ears. Shinji winced as the voice on the other end of the line rose sharply. In the background of the call, another speaker laughed raucously- Ayumi's mother and grandmother respectively. Waiting outside the bathroom with a basket full of towels and one of Misato's spare robes- the longest one he could find. Leaning against the hallway wall, Shinji let out a sputtering sigh. Ayumi continued to wheedle and bargain with her parents.

Shifting awkwardly, he let out a muted, sputtering sigh. It wasn't like he _wanted_ to listen. It was just har-_difficult_ not to. Otherwise, Shinji found his thoughts wandering... and that was not good.

"M-Mom! It's not like that!" Shinji heard the rustle of cloth over skin and hair, and the click of the phone being juggled between hands. "It's too late for us to go home and I don't want to make dad come and pick me up- No! No don't you _dare_ mother! I'm almost seventeen and we've_ talked _abou- _condoms have nothing to do with this!_"

Shinji turned red, cringed and heard this girlfriend huff into the phone. Ayumi had _lungs_, it seemed. So did the rest of her family. A bare arm shot out of the halfway open door with a bunched-up wad of blue sundress. Shinji caught it without much effort and passed the basket back in the same motion, keeping his eyes firmly locked on the opposite wall. No more bad karma. None.

Of course, he didn't feel right just leaving Ayumi to fight that particular battle alone either. He knocked on the wall. "If it helps, you can tell them there's ten or so Section-2 Agents around me at all times. Is that enough of an escort?"

Ayumi was silent for a long moment, and Shinji couldn't _see her_, but he imagined her decisive nod as she relayed what he just said. Her mother and grandmother replied, and Ayumi's voice dropped into the low, piqued tones of _teenager_. "-I am going to spend the night in my boyfriends apartment in _a separate room_. I will see you tomorrow morning and _then_ you will ground me, and I will sleep the sweet sleep of the just because _we were perfectly responsible_."

With that, she hung up and stalked out of the bathroom. Shinji stood up in an instant with her blue dress still in hand. "I-Is everything alright?"

She waved it off, folding her arms over her chest. She was almost drowning in the robe. "Fine, fine. My folks worry. I never spent the night with my first boyfriend, but he and I lasted like, two months."

Running a hand through her hair, Ayumi winced as her fingers caught on some sticky clump of sugar. "Suddenly the robe makes sense- may I use the bath...?"

Shinji could tell she was trying to keep her voice light and casual, but they both turned a bit red at the implication. Still, he nodded. "Just keep all the settings low, I just put it in this afternoon and I haven't tested it all yet."

She just smiled at that and leaned in to press into his chest with her forehead. Twisting, she swept back into the bathroom and closed the door, mumbling. "'This afternoon, he says. The tub's bigger than my _bed _and he installed it an hour or something..."

As it turned out, no matter how hard he tried, Shinji couldn't 'repair' his hair to cleanliness, or get the sticky syrup out. Instead he took a shower right after Ayumi, but he'd already been experimenting with thaumaturgical insulation and the Japan-standard in-line water heater. They both enjoyed long, luxurious and _separate_ showers. Shinji had to keep reminding himself of that fact.

Now they lounged in the living room, sprawled out a nest of cushions and blankets that paled in comparison to Rei's pillow fortress. Shinji considered it a fair attempt. Spread out perpendicular to each other, Ayumi's head used Shinji's side as a pillow, and she yawned into one hand. Her blue sundress wasn't well suited for sleeping, so Shinji had stepped in and whipped up a set of thin cotton shorts and a matching t-shirt.

And, in true Ayumi fashion, she was tackling their latest bit of awkwardness head on. "It's fucking unfair, you know?"

Coughing, Shinji laughed and stammered into his hand, trying not move. She also had to use that _word_ too, of course. Regardless, he held still more out of concern where her head was than anything else. "W-what?"

Rolling over on her stomach, she crawled up and over his body on hands and knees so she could look him in the eye. Shinji blinked at her impish wink. "Us. Sex. Teenagers."

She flopped bodily across his midsection, and Shinji felt the familiar prickling-heat and pleasantly uncomfortable sense being close to someone. "I mean, everyone _says_ we're all sexed up and stuff, but doesn't that just create an unrealistic expectation?"

Shinji blinked at that and nodded, and for once was actually able to _think_ about the question instead of focus on finding a deep dark hole to dive into. "I... that does make a lot of sense actually. Hormones aren't imaginary, but it _is _overplayed... Unless you're Toji."

"Suzuhara _is_ known for being a bit coarse, but nobody at school ever thinks he's a bad guy." Ayumi's nose crinkled cutely. "Just, overly guy-ish."

"Yeah..." Shinji let out a short, low laugh while Ayumi shifted.

She moved around to curl up against his side and settled into the crook of his arm. They spent a few moments getting settled, finding the best, or least awkward, placement for hands and arms.

When she was finally in position, she pressed her forehead against his chest. "Is this alright? I mean...?" Ayumi found a free hand and gave it a squeeze, trying to emphasize the question.

Feeling the muscles in his throat bunch up for a moment, Shinji willed the gut reaction down and nodded. "This is fine... just, not use to closeness still. Not for anyone's lack of trying."

Ayumi burrowed into his side a bit more. Shinji could only see the top of her head and the damp brown hair spread out over his chest, but he felt her smile into his chest. "I'm still sorry for being too touchy-feely before you were ready."

"Thanks." Letting out a low laugh, Shinji squeezed her hand back and sighed. "These days I don't get why it's a big deal though. I've slept with girls often enough for it to not really be... a thing?"

A half-second after he finished his sentence, Ayumi went rigid, harder than structural steel. Her fingers dug into his shirt and scraped harmlessly against his skin, but he _felt it_ all the same. Meanwhile his own heart jackhammered in his chest, _painfully_ aware of what he just said and what it sounded like. Ayumi squirmed and pushed up so she could look him in the eye, and he was already dreading the incoming look of betrayal.

"I didn't mean it like that!"

The snarl and rant never came- or at least Shinji only caught the unspoken edges of it. Anger in her eyes gave way to indignation and the jealous glare he'd started to recognize more and more. Despite all that, Ayumi's lips quirked madly trying to fight off a smile. Instead Ayumi's brows slanted and she swung one leg over his midsection, framing his body with her knees and calves while her eyes gleamed with a playful, scolding scowl.

Looking down at him, she reached over and flicked chin with finger. "Yeah I know, but-"

Now Shinji blinked, having watched his girlfriend cut herself off mid-sentence. She bounced on her bent knees, eyes wide and fighting off laughter that still managed to sneak out past her lips.

"Oh my god." Now Ayumi's brown eyes gleamed, and she shot upright as far as she could go, p vibrating with mirth. "It's true. It really is true. You _totally_ have a harem!"

Shinji felt his jaw unhinge, and blood rushed into his neck and cheeks. Now he was _imagining it_. "I-I do not!"

Ayumi wasn't buying it, giggling helplessly and bouncing up and down. Her stomach and shoulders shook hard enough to make her hair bob and wave. She half-pounded on his chest and pushed him down so he was stretched out flat long the floor. "You do! You totally do!"

The back of his head flattened a pillow on impact while he squirmed, and his hands reflexively snapped up to catch her wrists. "I have trouble sleeping. And nightmares! Misato helped me- and-and Rei! But Rei might be my half-sister?"

"Oh that's even _worse_." Locking her fingers with his, Ayumi laughed and fixed him with the smuggest smirk she could. "Your life is a _dating sim_!"

There was no coherent response to that. Shinji found himself sputtering, gaping like a fish while Ayumi cheerfully continued to tug at his arms. Sparks in the back of his mind ignited and guttered out a dozen times over, and for all that mental effort, all he could do was get out an eloquent 'buh'. Ayumi _howled_ in response, still straddling him and all too happy to play with his hands and arms.

Something inside him came loose at that moment. It was the same sort of feeling when he started the food fight, that _spontaneity_, and the willingness to follow through. Laughing so hard that her eyes were closed, Ayumi had _no idea_ what was coming. A quick jerk of his hips and a technique he'd used maybe _twice_ outside of training was more than enough to toss the girl off to the side. Less than a second later, their positions were reversed.

He didn't even feel guilty about it.

Lying on her back with her hands pinned against the floor and hips flanked by _his_ knees, Ayumi stopped laughing. She sucked in lungfuls of air, but kept her eyes locked on Shinji's. A fairly expansive part of Shinji's mind was _more_ than pleased to note how red she was getting. Turnabout really was fair play, it seemed. They stayed like that for what felt like several minutes. Shinji watched Ayumi's throat move as she worked her jaw.

Finally, she licked her lips. "Shinji-kun, can I ask you a question?"

Shinji's thumbs traced around the insides of her wrists, driven by a hopelessly underdeveloped instinct. Her pulse was _high_. "Sure."

Shifting slightly, Ayumi gave him a solemn, serious look. The sleepy, flirtatious tone had fallen completely away. She worried at her lip before letting her thoughts out. "You ever think we should?"

His whole body froze. "W-what?"

"That we could just do it. Get it all over with. This... " She shrugged as best as she could, smiling faintly and giving a meaningful glance at their situation. "Stuff."

"... I'm not sure that's the best way to think about... it. " Leaning back, Shinji's fingers wrapped around Ayumi's hands and pulled her upright so they were both standing on their knees. Her legs were still trapped between his though, but not _quite_ as much.

She didn't respond, so Shinji charged ahead. The words were coming easier, and his thoughts weren't _quite_ so loud and awkward. "You were right earlier about expectations too. I don't like to think of this, or that, as an obligation we have to fill."

Looking away from him, Ayumi's cheeks puffed up before letting out a gusty sigh. "Right..."

A beat later, her somber look melted away and her more earnest, casual smile took its place. Unlacing her fingers from his, Ayumi pressed her hands flat on his chest and leaned in to look up at him, eyes gleaming. "Pretty hard to think otherwise sitting halfway under a Greek god, though."

Fresh redness surged up into his cheeks, but Shinji could at least quip back. "N-No! only half! I think, if that."

Still standing on their knees, they settled into a a more comfortable silence. Ayumi's fingertips moved up in short circles around his chest, leaving warm trails on his shirt. _Signals_ were still a new concept, but he got that one loud and clear. Her hips were _right there _too, so his hands settled where the'd do the most good. Ayumi gave him a pleased grin and cuddled in a bit closer.

"As for the other stuff..." Shinji kept his face turned into her hair, mostly so he didn't have to think about his expression. "Things have been pretty heavy recently, I'm... not really sure I could handle it. It'd be a mess."

Smiling into his chest, Ayumi twisted around until he could see her face, radiating coyness. "Ain't that always the way with greek gods, destroyed by a beautiful woman~"

Prickling cold broke out across his forehead and the back of his neck, even as Shinji mustered up an actual honest grin. He squeezed her middle with both hands, lips quirking wider. "... I hope you're not volunteering."

"Why not? _Is _there a line somewhere?"

The cold vanished in the face of an incandescent blush that was _almost_ bright enough to read by.

* * *

><p>Rei coming back inside at nearly eleven at night was enough to break the spell. She had taken one look at the pair and simply cocked her head to the side, staring. The couple had shot away from each other like they'd been burnt, but found themselves breaking down laughing a half-second later. Rei offered her own tiny smile and headed toward her new room, leaving Shinji and Ayumi to the end of their night.<p>

Shinji wasn't quite ready to sleep yet though, and pulling an all-nighter was looking like the best option for everyone. He waved off Ayumi's concern, pointing at his forehead along the way.

There was one thing that still nagged at him though. He leaned against the opposite wall from the de facto guest bedroom, sighing softly "So... the Geofront."

"I didn't forget," Shinji's face slackened noticeably in distant contemplation, like he'd done on the rooftop not weeks ago. "But I did have to think. About me, everyone involved with me." Ayumi quietly nodded, slowly seeing what he was getting at. "You remember the... episode I mentioned, though?"

Standing in the guest room doorway with her arms wrapped around her middle, Ayumi held still and stayed silent, letting him set the pace. Shinji ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "It's a people problem. I... don't know how to handle it. To fix it. Sorry isn't good enough"

Ayumi's expression shifted. Her eyebrows rose high in the middle and the curve of her lip was equal parts sorrow and sympathy. "Well... you're right. Saying you're sorry won't work... A few years ago I got in a fight with a friend and no matter how hard I shouted, 'sorry' wasn't what either of us needed."

The girl turned and played with the door. Shinji glanced between her hand on the frame and her face as she continued her story. "What I learned was that you can't force sorry. You can't show them your apology... but you can let them see it."

The Geofront. One of the high-speed railways flung a line of train cars down the track at a bit less than two hundred kilometers an hour. Gravity did most of the work on the hanging lines, drawing the cars down into the interior and towards Central Dogma.

Inside one car with a backpack slung over his shoulder, Shinji sighed and let his head fall against train window. There wasn't anyone else in the car, and glass was pleasantly cool against his forehead. Rei had dropped him off one of the main access points, mostly because August had been hot, and September was somehow _hotter_. He'd been spending more time outdoors too, working on the apartment roof. Glancing down at his bare arms, Shinji felt his lips quirk to the side. He'd gotten a tan.

Looking back out the window and onto the evergreen Geofront forest, he wondered if Misato and Sorhyu were enjoying the Pacific. Or the Atlantic, he wasn't entirely sure where _either_ of them were, but everybody knew worldwide communications were iffy at best, even fifteen years after Impact. His own skin stubbornly refused to burn, but he knew for a fact Misato would have jumped at the chance to 'bake' on her floating private island.

He figured it was mixed blessing that Operations Director had total control over the fleet, otherwise Misato would have been the biggest risk to battle-readiness from casual distraction alone. Then again, knowing Misato as he did, Shinji could imagine her directing those maneuvers from a deck-side chair.

Thinking about it further, Shinji figured it wouldn't hurt to come up with some kind of sunburn cream. He knew enough about genetic disposition- Sorhyu would probably come home looking like a boiled lobster. Misato though... Shinji watched his reflection turn a bit red. Misato would jump at the chance to _tease him,_ too.

Still, something to work on when he got home. For now he had an errand to run and a favor to ask.

* * *

><p>Ritsuko's expression was a study in dryness. Shinji couldn't help but think that it suited her, like there was a rightness to her being so inherently deadpan. "You want me to what?"<p>

"Design me a better suit. Materials, hardware." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded page that was nearly black with notes and suggestions."You're the only one I know of who could even attempt it."

She held the suit between her hands and gave him an odd look. "You could easily make a better version yourself, right?"

"That's true, but this might be a better use of our time?" Leaning against a nearby lab console, Shinji shrugged. "I want to put some hours in at the Geofront clinic, among other things."

The stare she gave him in response said to him in big bold letters that Ritsuko wanted more of an explanation. Neither of them were in a particular rush, though, so the silence stretched out almost comfortably. For once the lab Ritsuko had claimed that day was brightly lit and _not_ littered with overflowing ashtrays and turgid cups of coffee. It wasn't her favorite lab though, Shinji recognized that one as having cat statues perched at her preferred station. Ritsuko wasn't acting as... _icy_ as she had been the last time he'd really talked with her- around her.

Still, explanations. He gave her a wry grin and waved an arm. "My technique only goes so far. I could make breadboard circuitry by hand without a soldering iron, but not a microprocessor. My hands can't double as a chemical etching process."

Ritsuko just nodded at that, laying the suit on a nearby table without taking her eyes off his. "Hours at the clinic?"

A wan smile was her answer. Shinji spread his arms out, palms open. "Better than a lot of other things I could be doing."

Huffing, the blonde woman folded her arms over her chest and stalked toward him. Her lab coat flared out behind her like a proper cape, and her steps ate up the short distance. "You have _no idea_."

She stopped just short of him, chin jut out and tilted up like he _wasn't_ towering over her. Shinji had to admit it made him happier than any amount of tact- Ritsuko wasn't _afraid_ of him. Or at least she wasn't letting it show on her face.

"I." The word came out hard and even, not quite a snarl but halfway there. "-Have an _extremely clear_ idea of other things you could be doing, or were _planning to do_."

Shinji didn't give ground, but the definitely felt the urge to. His breathing went shallow, mostly so he didn't make matters worse by snorting in her face. The absurdity of the thought helped the tension drain out of him too.

Ritsuko though still held that calmly intent tone. She plucked the page of notes from his hand, tight enough to crinkle it between her fingers but only just slightly. "Do you remember what you were planning during your episode?"

"More than I'd like to." Shinji stared past her shoulder. "Been trying to focus on positive projects."

Taking a step back, Ritsuko's scowl etched itself deeper into her face. It was a look he could only call _bitter medicine_. "Well you need to know. The baroque resonance imagers- powered by _blood_ no less. Shared-brain interface. You were working off of poor foundational neurochemistry there, so anyone you would have tried to hook up..."

She didn't need to go further on that point. Ritsuko started ticking more projects off on her fingers Blatant human rights violations, abusive behavior, the list went on. Each point hit Shinji like a gunshot, and while he didn't _flinch_, he felt the impacts all the same. They dug in and almost seemed to make his heart heavy, but at the same time, he didn't bow. For once, Shinji felt strong enough to bear the guilt.

Ritsuko however saved the best for last. "Somehow you were both rational and _irrational_ at the same time, because that is the _only _way I could accept you thinking that _filtering an Angelic Intelligence through the MAGI was a good idea!"_

She punctuated her statement with a hand slashing through the air, the same one that held his suit plans. The paper folded around her fingers and crinkled audibly under the sudden acceleration. Shinji let out a shaky sigh, but kept his eyes focused on her brown ones.

The thunder in her voice finally fell away, and Ritsuko stepped back in closer. Her tone shifted to something more like concerned peer, and her expression softened. "Ikari-kun, I need you to give me a reason for you to stay here, to use my labs and work in the Geofront."

Still keeping his eyes locked on hers, Shinji took a steadying breath and gave Ritsuko a firm nod. Outwardly decisive, his own thoughts couldn't help but marvel at the fact that he _was_ being decisive. That the roar of maybe-might-be-shouldn't wasn't drowning him out from the inside. Moving over to a console, he stopped just before hitting the access MAGI command, and his hands hovered over the keys. Looking back at the woman, he waited for her permission.

Ritsuko studied him for a long moment, and she wasn't wearing her glasses, so Shinji couldn't see his own face reflected back. Finally, she stuffed her hands in her coat pockets and nodded.

Tapping in the sequence, Shinji turned back to the screen, pulling up designs and correcting a few lingering issues. "I went back to where I was before the episode, not so much starting over but..."

He pushed the diagrams and implementation plan onto a larger monitor. "We've got everything we need- the compression algorithms, manufacturing techniques-"

Waving at the screen, he pointed at a schematic. Mock blue-pencil lines laid out the tools needed to make the tools he'd set out to do months ago. Ritsuko stepped up closer, squinting at the screen. She bit the tip of her thumb, and her eyes flicked over every line and figure. Shinji started to sweat while she poured over the display. Her eyes tightened again, and almost by reflex, Shinji made a casual diagnosis.

_High stress factors, ongoing conditions. Hormones regulated due to birth control, nicotine addiction. Myopia._

There wasn't a lot he could do about most of those, and Ritsuko's business was her business... He willingly let that thought grind to a halt and focused on the one thing he had an idea about. Ritsuko meanwhile finished reading, and gave him a smile that reminded him she belonged on a magazine cover right next to Misato. The tight knots of guilt at his stomach and tension in his neck eased almost simultaneously, and it took everything Shinji had not to visibly sag in front of the woman like he had been holding his breath for hours.

"I think this will do, Ikari-kun." She reached for a nearby chair and settled in and kicking off into a light spin.

Ritsuko wasn't at all _old_, but watching her grin, seeing the tension drain out of her, Shinji couldn't help but think that the _age_ dropped off her face. The subsequent thought came naturally. _Note to self- give people positive tangible results._

Finding his own seat, Shinji took a moment to bask in the relief of a project done- his _first_ project done. He looked at a calendar hanging off one wall- August was almost over, and he'd started on the MRI idea back in... April? He wasn't sure anymore, but the worst part of the project was over with. Manufacturing details, materials- all those things were easy. He'd supplied the necessary genius to _create_, and now other geniuses would _implement_. The knot of stress in his neck had been there for so long, he forgotten what it felt like not having it.

Ritsuko reached out with one foot against the floor, braking her spin and facing Shinji once more. "We're not fully out of the hole yet, Ikari-kun." She gave him a wan, understanding look. "You're a division-leader without a division again, and I had to spend almost every bit of my professional credibility to keep your former employees..."

She trailed off, unsure as how to continue. Sighing, she looked down at her knee. "There's no nice way to put it, a good third of NERV's brightest minds fear you, for good reason. I've also put _my_ head on the metaphorical chopping block, if anything like this happens again."

Shinji's hands balled up to fists against his pant legs, but he forced them to relax and smoothed out the wrinkled fabric. There wasn't any grand declaration or foolproof plan, either. He'd learned that with Sorhyu and Rei, and Ayumi confirmed it. Fear and the results of his actions weren't _problems_ he could solve, not directly at least.

Finally though, Shinji looked up and nodded. "I understand."

Ritsuko glanced at him sidelong for a moment before nodding herself. She turned to her console and got to work, finally pulling out the notes Shinji had made for his new suit. The quiet stretched out between them, and again Shinji felt a sort of comfort settle around him. There had been some kind of awkwardness whenever Ritsuko was around, like what was their role or relationship- what decorum applied. He'd lacked the _words_ for it, to define or acknowledge whatever the problem was.

Shinji mulled it over a few moments, taking his own console and updating a few files while he was there. Along the way he came to the fairly simple conclusion that they were _associates_. Maybe not friends, but mentor and student at times, or esteemed coworkers with overlapping fields and insights. Shinji found that he liked the definition.

Checking his work and saving the file, Shinji still had one thing he wanted to ask before heading out. "Akagi-sensei?"

She blinked once and turned to look at him, waiting. Shinji let out an embarrassed little laugh before waving at his forehead, then tapping the side of his eyes. "I could fix your nearsightedness, if you want. You wouldn't need to wear glasses anymore."

Ritsuko's eyes shot wide open, and her pupils shrank to pinpricks while one hand reached for the glasses hanging from her breast pocket. Not a reaction he'd expected in the least. The scientist shook her head, snorting, but not unkindly.

"I could have gotten laser eye surgery years ago, Ikari-kun." The question he wanted to ask must have been plain on his face, because she answered it right away. "I haven't, because I don't want to look like my mother."

"You could always get cosmetic lenses." Shinji couldn't help the thin teasing note in his voice. Misato and Rei were rubbing off on him it seemed.

Leaning back in her chair, Ritsuko nodded. "That's true. I'll think on it Ikari-kun. Thanks for the offer."

Shinji could accept that, standing smoothly and powering down his borrowed console. He glanced around the quiet lab and smiled; for an errand, it was incredibly productive. He said his goodbyes and made for the door, ready to spend the rest of his day in the NERV infirmary. A final niggling question stopped him at the door with one hand on the frame.

He looked over his shoulder past the crook of his arm at Ritsuko, unabashedly curious. "I never asked before, but... why are you letting me try again? I already made a mess of things around here."

"Call it returning a favor." She turned away from the console and the bare-bones sketch she'd made of his new suit. Ritsuko reached into her pockets and pulled out her cigarettes and lighter, giving him a dry, amused look. Flicking the lighter open with her _right_ arm, Ritsuko smirked past the first puff. "Figured I'd give you a hand."

* * *

><p>Four days passed since Shinji had dropped off the suit with Ritsuko, and he'd spent most of his daylight hours in the Geofront infirmary. It had been scaled up over the months, out of sight and out of mind. Now it was almost a fully realized hospital, with treatment wings and surgical theaters he'd designed almost a whole year previously. Shinji had spun up so many idle projects even before being given a division, and people around him were <em>still<em> implementing his half-formed ideas. Some of the senior staff had already developed new thaumaturgical techniques based on his initial pressure point massage.

Peeling off his latest set of sterilized gloves, Shinji sighed and leaned against a nearby wall, alone in the hallway. The only thing the hospital lacked were _patients_, which proved to be a mixed blessing. Most of the city made due with surface level hospitals and clinics that were just shy of the Geofront's cutting edge. The reason being that unsecured personnel couldn't be allowed past the armor layer or anywhere near Central Dogma. Obnoxious, as far as problems went, but not one he couldn't solve.

Time and distance had given him perspective, too. It had been difficult at first, getting back into a Geofront routine. He'd spent his first day wound up tight, dreading any contact with his former team. What he'd do, say. Throwing himself on the ground and begging forgiveness _sounded_ like a good idea, but both Ayumi and Rei's advice had made it clear- beating himself up about it, even for their benefit, wasn't going to fix the problem.

So Shinji cracked his knuckles and got back to doing something productive- like healing people. Construction had only slowed during the budget cuts of the previous year, and a trickle of injuries made it in every week. Once the first corporate and government research grants came through, burns and breaks from the constant activity in the city and under it kept the medical professionals of Tokyo-3 busy. Even as he worked though, Shinji wondered; _what_ were they doing, considering the state of things topside...

Stretching, Shinji hummed and let his post-shift break wash over him. It took week-long fugues of work without rest to even make him _notice_ aches and pains, but none of his senses had ever dulled when it came to relief and relaxation. Lacking a clock in the hallway, he channeled a bit of power through his soul and marked the sun in the sky; four-thirty. Might be late starting dinner if he didn't catch the right train...

"Pilot Ikari, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki would like to see you in Cafeteria Seven-B. Pilot Ikari..." Over base intercom, the bridge officer repeated her message two more times while Shinji stared up at the ceiling.

It was looking he wasn't going to be home in time to make dinner.

* * *

><p>Central Dogma was to most people the interlocking positive and negative pyramids that were centered in the cavernous space. They weren't wrong, but appearances were misleading. There was a lot more to the Geofront interior. Outbuildings were hidden under thin tree cover, like the original Proving Grounds Ritsuko had created shortly after Shinji Exalted. Using the surface paths to Dogma, Shinji passed by those same structures- mothballed <em>again<em> after Sorhyu left along with Misato.

Cafeteria Seven-B was like a dozen other repeated 'chunks' of interior space throughout Central Dogma. The Prinbow box had been constructed as an outbuilding using the same interior templates as the rest of the research facility, and Shinji had claimed the kitchen in _that_ building during the MAGI crisis. Memories of those days came rushing back, simply because he walked into the cafeteria and saw the same coffee machines he'd rebuilt for the technical staff. Or at least, they _looked_ the same...

"Ah, Ikari-kun! Please, have a seat." Raising a steaming mug of the same cold-and-pressure filtered brew Shinji had pioneered, Fuyutsuki-sensei sat at an otherwise vacant table with a tray of food and a smile.

Shinji hesitated, caught between smelling the food on Fuyutsuki's tray and _smelling the food_.

The old teacher must have noticed his expression. "I'm sure the cooks wouldn't mind bringing a tray out for you, Ikari-kun."

"It's... not that sir." Shinji couldn't help but fidget. "I... well, regular food doesn't sit well with me anymore."

"I beg your pardon?"

Jaw working left and right, Shinji tried to think about how to explain what he felt. Shinji shrugged, not trusting the words available to him. "I haven't eaten anything better than my own work for almost a year."

Fuyutsuki set his coffee down, then his fork with a hunk of meat still on the end. He frowned, giving Shinji a strange, calculating look. Finally he spoke, humming softly. "I see... Well then Ikari-kun, I'm sure the cooks won't mind you joining them for a bit."

Letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, Shinji sagged in place just a bit and grinned. "Would you like to join me in the kitchen then? I don't think you've seen this particular trick."

Standing up from his half-eaten dinner, the old man smoothed out his NERV uniform jacket and grinned. "I'd be delighted, Ikari-kun."

NERV staff were by definition locked by nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements, so Shinji didn't hesitate at all when he stepped into the kitchen with Fuyutsuki right on his heels. The older man was one of the few people even close to Shinji's own height, and he found himself nearly a head taller than the Sub-Commander. Sunfire wreathed his arms while he snatched ingredients out of the various cupboards and refrigerators, already turning the restaurant-style burners up. He had more than enough ingredients, and three meals weren't that much harder than two.

Fuyutsuki watched, utterly intent. His eyes tracked every move Shinji made, the flick of his fingers as they somehow flash-heated cuts of meat, or mixing dough with his bare glowing hands. The bread baked on its own, completely bypassing the oven and in a fraction of the time. The old man watched, and for _once_, Shinji saw someone who didn't gape, deny or otherwise disbelieve what they were seeing. Even Ritsuko suffered that moment of 'this does not belong in a rational world'. The Sub-Commander though, he just observed, and accepted it as self-evident.

He must have noticed Shinji's own curiosity, too. "When you have lived as long as I have, Ikari-kun, you grow to accept what most folk deem 'impossible' is merely an admission of ignorance. Sometimes we have not seen all there is yet to observe in this world."

Scooping up the tofu dish and soup into takeout containers, Shinji waved over one of the kitchen staff while scribbling out some reheating instructions. "Listen, could you get someone to take this to Major Katsuragi's apartment?"

The man blinked and glanced between Shinji and the Sub-Commander for a moment, before giving a faint nod. Rei's meal vanished into a heated caterer's bag and was on it's way, while Shinji finished up his own dinner and the replacement for Fuyutsuki-sensei's less-than-stellar supper.

When they were finally seated, Fuyutsuki breathed deep, and his eyes were wide. He shot a look at the remains of his previous meal. "...I can understand your predicament now, Ikari-kun."

Shinji could only shrug, half a mouthful suspended by a fork as he spoke. "I suppose it can't be helped. I'm... only human, after all."

The older man merely nodded, thankfully not questioning further whether Shinji had intended to apologize himself, or towards the chefs he had upstaged. "Indeed."

* * *

><p>After negotiating the sudden interruption that was dinner, Fuyutsuki finally laid out the reason for calling Shinji to Central Dogma. He pulled out a folded travel chess board- the same one he and Shinji had played on almost two years ago.<p>

"I had enjoyed the few games we played," The old man gave Shinji a grandfatherly smile. "Considering all that's been going on above and below ground, I thought now was a good time to take a personal look."

_Nobody_ liked being put on the spot, and Shinji knew he wasn't an exception. He couldn't help the cringe, even as his hands hovered over the nearest pawn. "I... yes sir."

Fuyutsuki waved down his concerns with a dismissive hand. "It's been weeks since your episode, Ikari-kun. You're stable now and not in trouble- you punished yourself more than enough."

"I should have been disciplined though, or something..."

"Perhaps," Fuyutsuki allowed. "But the time for that has passed, psychologically speaking. In any event, you are stable _now_, and of sound mind."

Before Shinji could argue that point, the old man moved a knight into position, taking a pawn that had wandered too far out. Shinji frowned and looked at his board state, picking another pawn and pushing it forward. Move and counter move, until Shinji had freed his power pieces and lost half his pawns charging into the center. As a strategy it was simple, straightforward, and reasonably effective. Fuyutsuki's forces meanwhile danced away, almost always moving out of threat even before Shinji's pieces had gotten into position.

"Another thing to remember is that punishment is contextual..." Fuyutsuki swept aside the remaining pawns in a handful of moves. "Mania, violent or otherwise, leads to a _medical _response, not a disciplinary one. We don't punish the paranoid schizophrenic when he forgets his medicine. Further, when he maintains his medication, he is perfectly productive."

Shinji nodded slowly, sliding a bishop across to put pressure on the opposing king. "So... You're saying that..." He let his hand slide back off the table and onto his lap. "I don't know what you're saying."

"I am saying that there are things we do not know, and for the time being, NERV as a whole is considering your situation akin to a man needing a treatment that doesn't yet exist." Fuyutsuki smiled again, paternal and understanding.

Losing his bishop on one turn to Fuyutsuki's rook, and then his queen to the old man's remaining knight, Shinji stared at his board and sighed. He tipped his king over and conceded defeat.

"Your tactics were unrelenting, Ikari-kun, but unsophisticated." The old man tapped the checkered surface with one gnarled finger. "In Chess, predictability is a weapon both sides must wield."

Shinji gave the man as slow, absent nod while he mulled that over. It wasn't like he had any idea _how_ to hide his intentions. Shinji hadn't ever tried to pull one over on his aunt and uncle, or anyone else he knew. He hadn't ever tried to push boundaries when he was younger, to try and fail and adapt. Now he was playing catch up with all those toddler tricks and techniques...

Resetting the pieces with the ease of long practice, Fuyutsuki gave Shinji a new grandfather-grin. "Another game, Ikari-kun?"

Feeling one side of his mouth tug back into a half-frown, Shinji nodded and reached for a pawn and made his first move. He wasn't a child or an adult, but he _was_ a Solar. There was a rightness to his strategy, even without an active investment on his part. It was _understandable_.

"Back to what were discussing before..." Fuyutsuki moved his knight across the board, smiling faintly. "We have the reports of course, but what do you think of your sync scores?"

"They're... synching." Shinji wasn't sure how else to put it. Most of his attention was on other matters while he mirrored Fuyutsuki's knight. "I can make the Eva move and that's about it."

"I mean, the scores and tests?" He just gave the older man a helpless shrug. "For almost a year, all we did _were_ tests, and they took up eight hours of NERV's day- I don't see the need to dwell on them overmuch."

Fuyutsuki's eyes crinkled mirthfully, almost abashed. "Yes well... They _were _one of the few things that remained within our budget."

The game went on from that point, and the sound of wooden figurines sliding along stone was loud in the otherwise empty cafeteria. Shinji lost two more games before winning a third, after Fuyutsuki miscalculated on a risky gamble he'd wanted to use as an object lesson. The old man admitted with no shame that he'd always be a teacher, first and foremost.

With the pieces reset once more, Shinji stared at the board with his chin propped up against with his thumbs, and his fingers laced tightly together. "Fuyutsuki-sensei, can I ask you a question?"

Sipping his coffee, Fuyutsuki could only raise an eyebrow. "Of course Ikari-kun, feel free."

"Do you know that most of the above-ground shelters aren't much stronger than cardboard?"

Fuyutsuki's hand froze above his right-hand bishop. Slowly, he pulled back and let his hands fall into his lap, sagging down on the bench seat. "Distribution of NERV's budget is a closely guarded secret... And sometimes the impetuousness of youth surprises everyone."

Shinji nodded, playing with a stainless steel fork. He'd mangled and bent it into a dozen shapes over the various matches with just his own strength. "I wasn't punished on grounds of a temporarily unsound mind... I still have my authority as a division leader."

There was a long, deliberative silence. "...That is correct, Ikari-kun. You still only answer to the Commander."

"Then I'll answer him when the time comes." Shinji stood up and gave the older man a polite bow, thanking him for the game. "In the meantime I'm going to take care of things above ground."

* * *

><p>Instead of having anything resembling dinner, Ritsuko stared across the ten-yard span of empty glass floor between herself and the obsidian black desk. "Commander."<p>

"Doctor Akagi." Gendo leaned forward with his elbows on his desk, as was his habit. "Is there a problem?"

The bottle-blonde felt her eyes narrow behind her glasses. There had been certain... questions. "Not a problem, per se. It's been nearly three months to the day since Major Katsuragi headed out to sea, and we've not heard any word from her or the fleet itself."

"NERV remains outside the good graces of the United Nations, despite any primacy the A-17 order gives us." Gendo barely moved while he spoke. "Until an Angel blood-pattern is detected, the Major and Second Child are passengers."

She frowned, chewing her lip. "And as passengers, they probably do not have the same communication privileges as officers and crew, officially or otherwise."

The reply was all the more effective for its brevity. "A reasonable assumption."

It made an ugly sort of sense, the kind that didn't make her _feel better_, but sank into the cracks of her rational mind and stopped it from complaining. Ritsuko felt her weight shift back on to her heels, and the self-analyzing part of her mind called it _resignation_. She didn't like the path her own brain was taking her. Caught in that moment of introspection, she was only dimly aware of Gendo's stare and mausoleum silence. The seconds passed slowly.

"As it stands, our forces are depleted." Gendo's expression was unreadable as always. "Expedite the transfer of Evangelion units 03 and 04."

Ritsuko bristled without thinking, and worked suppressed the wince when her heel clicked loudly against the glass beneath her feet. "Sir, I don't think that's at all feasible. Our corporate grants are not even a tenth of what we had beforehand."

"By the time you reach your lab, an updated statement on our budget will be on your desk." His voice was even without being flat. "You will see there is more than enough to support additional Evangelions."

Chewing on her lip, Ritsuko tried to process that statement. NERV had consumed the rough equivalent of three small nations worth of money and raw materials. Governments, Misato had once joked, would go _bankrupt_ paying for an Evangelion. Doubly so if money at that level behaved intuitively, compared to the economies of civilizations. Three Evangelions even on standby were a constant drain with maintenance alone, to say nothing of testing or the all-to-necessary training deployments.

Throwing out estimates in her mind of what she'd find after heading back to Dogma, Ritsuko crunched the math and came to the same conclusion. Cost for new facilities, storage, upkeep and necessary expansion... There was _no_ plausible way the Commander had enough money on the wire to pay for _five_ Evangelions.

Gendo tore through her introspection and whatever polite mask she could have maintained. "If the costs are still too high to continue supporting Project E, perhaps we should begin making cuts elsewhere."

Her stomach flopped uneasily and churned against her diaphragm, while ice water flooded Ritsuko's skin. The cold gave way to a hot flush. The warning was unmistakable. "Y-Yes sir. Commander."

"Excellent. Dismissed, Doctor Akagi."

Spinning on one heel, Ritsuko made for the exit as fast as decorum would allow. Her legs started pumping hard the second the door closed behind her. Charging toward a waiting elevator, she thanked whatever vagaries of scheduling kept the hallways and cars clear so late at night. Inside the cool safety of the elevator, Ritsuko mashed the button and waited.

The numbers wouldn't stop tumbling through her head, like a puzzle she couldn't put down. Brainteasers and the like were very much catnip to her, and in some ways it proved to be a vital survival skill. However, no matter which way she tried to juggle it, she couldn't keep Project E in the black with five active Evangelions.

_Four though... We could handle four_.

Unwanted implications mixed with the steady downward motion unpleasantly enough she found herself fumbling for a calming cigarette or antacid tablet, and came up with neither. When the elevator doors opened at last and emptied out onto one of the Geofront rail stations, Ritsuko simply found the nearest trash can and threw up. Wiping her arm with one sleeve, she tried to latch on to the hopeful alternative.

Maybe they'd finally mothball the test or prototype.

Her stomach rebelled again. Probably not.

* * *

><p>Shinji stared at the phone and frowned. "That's... not right."<p>

As for _why _it wasn't right, that took some review. He'd started the day refreshed, ready to tackle the problem of Tokyo-3's slipshod infrastructure. To do that he'd needed to get something of an overview. His initial approach had been simple, too. Climb the tallest tower in Tokyo-3 and look down. That and a map had been enough to establish a baseline, to figure out where the shelters and fortress structures spread. The edges of the city were flanked by the squat, non-retracting industrial blocks, the same ones he'd been stopping fires at every other week.

Looking out for landmarks, he'd placed the high school, both of the city's shopping centers, and the street where he and Ayumi had their late-night noodle date. Misato's apartment, _his_ apartment too really, was past the hills to the west and well outside the defensible city structure, but was still 'over' the outermost curve of the Geofront. There weren't any shelters out that far though, so he'd been able to keep his 'work' separate from his personal projects. Small favors, he supposed. Shinji had taken notes, made the measurements and run whatever numbers he could think of, regarding the fortress structure. As far as the shelters were concerned, there were more than enough _places_ for people to go, but none of them were worth the time it took to build them, let alone evacuate.

Armed with the map and the beginnings of a plan, Shinji had spent the rest of the weekend filling in the blanks as best he could. To do that, he had gone back down to the Geofront and Central Dogma. Walking the halls and checking in with the clinic, he split his time between the other handful of projects still on his plate. It was comfortable that way, letting his mind just work on something in the background. There was a lot he just didn't get, mostly in the human side of the 'how and why'. Fuyutsuki-sensei knew, and his father _definitely_ knew. The physical side of the how though he could handle on his own, to a point. Tokyo-3 as a research facility belonged to Ritsuko and the rest of NERV, but as a _fortress_, it belonged to the Operations Director.

Which led Shinji to trying to make sense of Misato's offices back home _and_ in the Geofront, backtracking across the whole city twice over. She had _a year_ of backlogged paperwork from the government _and_ the UN, and what he skimmed basically came down to 'fight cleaner battles!'.

Considering he was at least nominally a _pilot_, Shinji had scowled at the documents and muttered "Why don't you fight then?"

Having claimed a replacement Geofront office for himself, Shinji pulled in everything he'd learned and collected so far. But even with all that, the papers and files didn't shed much light on what Misato _did_ with Tokyo-3. She had almost zero footprint in the MAGI, barely accessing it or dedicating mainframe time to her own projects. It took him a bit to realize that Misato usually asked Ritsuko to write out her ideas and requests in a way the computers could understand. He had left a message with the scientist, but she hadn't gotten back to him yet either.

Even asking Misato's direct subordinate didn't help that much. Lieutenant Hyuga had just shrugged and pointed out that he was more a communications officer, coordinating amongst several hundred distinct armory units and JSSDF support. He'd been able to fill in a few blanks regardless, but Shinji hadn't been able to see any grand unifying plan for the fortress city, short of stripping out all of the conventional arms in exchange for more proven positron weaponry.

While he worked, Shinji did wonder if Misato knew about the shelters, or about how the 'homey' parts of the city were a thin skin hiding its other role. He couldn't say either side was _more important_, though. The people who lived and worked needed to be protected, but at the same time NERV needed to be ready and able to fight the Angels and defend the Geofront. After digging through a damages-expense report, Shinji had found himself frowning. If Misato _hadn't_ known about the shelters or anything, then it said a lot to him about how far ingrained it all went. Or, if she _had_ known, then she was doing a good enough job that she apparently assumed it wouldn't have been an issue?

Misato went on a lot of faith sometimes, but she backed it up with a certainty of _will_.

In any event, Shinji didn't know what to do about the shelters or the city itself. He had _ideas_, good ones! But he needed confirmation. The fact that he missed Misato was more than enough reason for him to try and call her halfway across the world.

So he dialed the number Misato had given NERV before she and Asuka left. Military communications still relied on a hierarchy of people, so it _should_ have connected him to some sort of central dispatch office across the planet. Instead of a soldier though, Shinji got what amounted to an error code. After he listened to the bleating series of tones, he frowned. Signal had been fine last he checked, but he tried again both inside the Geofront and out. Then he tried his pager, Ayumi's, and called Rei back at the apartment- all good. The other pilot had even volunteered to try calling Misato from the landline. A few minutes later, she'd sent word back that she got the same off-key error.

After promising to make it up to Rei with a late night dinner, Shinji headed back into Central Dogma and the office he'd claimed for the day. Once there, he hooked up the landline phone and punched in the number, waiting for the MAGI to handshake with the overburdened satellite network and who-knew how many communication relays and a dozen other switches between him and the United Nations Pacific Fleet.

Same tones, same error.

Again, staring at the receiver and having spent nearly two hours trying to figure out why, Shinji couldn't help but scowl. "That's... not right."

It wasn't his phone, or the landline. Digging into a phone book, he called the JSSDF liaison to the UN, skipping most of NERV's own communication network simply because that organization came before NERV in the directory.

The phone rang twice before a secretary picked it up. "General Kirishima's office-" Shinji opened his mouth, but the man on the other end kept talking. "I'm sorry, but the General is just about to leave, would you like to leave a message?"

Shinji glanced at the desk clock and winced, eight o'clock; no wonder he was leaving. Something inside him ticked over, a lever in his soul he'd rarely used or understood, but achingly similar to other techniques. He spoke quickly, earnest and efficiently. "This is Director Ikari of NERV, if the General has a moment I would like to speak to him."

The man on the other end was silent for a long, painful moment. Shinji felt his face fall and shoulders slump bit by bit as the seconds ticked away. Finally though, the secretary came back. "One moment please while I transfer you."

Tones and the brief crackle of a signal switching from one line to another was all the warning Shinji had before he heard a new voice. "General Kirishima speaking- I thought you were a _Commander_, Ikari."

Wincing into the receiver, Shinji let out a quiet cough. "General sir, This is _Ikari Shinji_. Director of the Special Projects division here in NERV." He fumbled for a moment, adding "I suppose I'm one of the Pilots too."

Kirishima was silent on the other for what felt like hours, and it took several beats for Shinji to realize what sounds he heard were _muffled laughter_. Decorum reasserted itself quickly though, and the general came back all business. "Very well then, Director Ikari, do you have identification by chance?"

_Is this a prank call_ was left unsaid.

Dragging a hand down his face, Shinji let out a silent groan. He'd _again_ forgotten that he still sounded like a fifteen year old, even on the phone. Clearing his throat, he made a fair attempt at adding years to his voice, trying to add some tenor to his alto. It worked out better than he expected... And by Kirishima's amused hum, not as well as he would have liked.

Prank or not, Shinji figured the joke was on him.

As for identification; he hadn't ever used it, but Shinji _did_ have authority to requisition troops and material from the JSSDF, just like Misato had as Operations Director. He pulled out his card and read off the six-block code and waited for Kirishima to check it on his end. There was another long pause, until the older man came back, sounding a little more serious and much more interested.

"You have my attention now, Director, what can I do for you?"

Shinji slumped into the seat and let out a sigh, careful not to blow into the receiver. "Thank you General, for taking the time out for me. I've been trying to contact the Pacific Fleet for the past few hours, and I've gotten nothing but an error code for my troubles." He ran through what he'd already learned and laid out his request. "If you could try calling the fleet yourself, and give me the number of someone I could contact in the UN Navy?"

Kirishima made a sound that Shinji couldn't quite place, somewhere between thinly veiled disgust and suspicion. He was fairly sure it wasn't directed at himself though. The general punched in the direct like as Shinji read it off to him, and they both waited. He came back a second later. "Error code, just like you said."

Now it was Shinji's turn to scowl into the phone, brow furrowing. "Thank you again, General, you have no idea how much this has helped me."

"Not a problem, Director, as for the UN contact..." He rattled off a few names and numbers, forcing Shinji to scramble for pen and paper. "While you're working on that, I think I'll wake some people up on my end, and make some more calls."

After the general hung up, Shinji stood up and put the handset back down on its cradle. He'd have to hurry if he wanted to get back in time to make Rei that dinner. Flexing his soul once more, Shinji banished his fatigue.

Dinner aside, he was going to spend all night working on this if he had to.

* * *

><p>After three days of work, Shinji was no closer to having gotten a hold Misato or <em>anyone<em> at sea in the Pacific Fleet. It was becoming increasingly clear that _something was wrong_, and he had exhausted all of the obvious paths to solving the problem, save one.

Akagi Ritsuko had been a ghost for those three days.

He had only found her by sheer luck one afternoon, blundering by a cafeteria stocked with his pressure-brewed thaumaturgy coffee. She was haggard- her lab coat rumpled and stained with more coffee and thin smears of cigarette ash. When she turned to face him in the doorway, he saw ten-pound bags under her eyes. It was obvious, but his mind repeated what his eyes were telling him. _That is not right_. He had seen her tired, overworked, and at wits end, but never _that_ much. There was no hint of her normal razor-edged composure.

"Akagi-senei," Shinji blinked, moving in and past the tables without stopping. He found himself scowling, more out of his own medical compassion than anything. What he lacked in social grace, Shinji had grown in bedside manner

Tugging the coffee gently out of her fingers with one hand, he hit pressure points up her arm with the other. Ending with a firm pinch at the place where neck became shoulder, Shinji watched the physical signs of fatigue bled away under the thaumaturgical shorthand. Her body refreshed itself, but she was going to need something solid in her stomach before long.

Fortunately, they _were_ in a cafeteria. He ducked into the kitchen and Ritsuko followed him with her eyes as he raided the fridge. He sat down with a plate full of sandwiches, enough to feed six people. "Akagi-sensei, you should know better..."

Ritsuko sucked on her teeth, and her nostrils flared- the sandwiches were toasted, and that made the scent all but omnipresent. She reached for one, and the tall glass of water Shinji had brought as well. "It's fine, Ikari-kun. I'm fine."

She chewed, and Shinji watched, picking a sandwich himself and waiting. Reaching into her coat pocket, Ritsuko dug out a pack of cigarettes. She gave it a fitful rattle and found it empty. The blonde glared at it, crumpling it in her fist and tossing it over her shoulder. Swallowing, the scientist licked her lips.

Her eyes were still slightly wide and wild, looking all the world like she'd been running from a monster for days. "Just fine. I am merely trying to reapportion two new Evangelion cages, following up on maintenance for the proto and test types. Nothing major."

The words all came out in a rush, and Shinji just stopped with his sandwich halfway to his open mouth. He was about to ask the obvious question when another voice broke in. "Why would we need new Evangelions. We have Asuka-chan."

Shinji and Ritsuko both turned them to finally see Rei. The girl stood next to their table, still damp from swimming and clad in a pair of sweatpants over her swimsuit. She shrugged one shoulder, resettling her infusion pump under her arm. She met Shinji's eyes, then Ritsuko's, blinking once. "I overheard you talking, after checking your recent labs. I didn't find either of you, so."

That was _another _sign something was up. The labs sprinkled throughout the Geofront were Ritsuko's domain and home away from home. Catching her outside of one... Shinji didn't say anything yet, and Ritsuko stared at her half-eaten sandwich.

Rei didn't take the silence though. "I say again, why do we need more Evangelions?"

"Sorhyu's worth three of us when she's sitting in the pilot seat." Shinji may not have liked her much a few months ago, but the redhead had _beaten _grudging respect into him with sheer force of personality. It was tough to ignore that.

Somehow being caught between the level stare of two teenagers was enough to make Ritsuko collapse in on herself. Shinji had always seen Ritsuko as this presence, someone who stood above him despite being a foot shorter and half his weight. Watching her across the table, she looked tiny- still Ritsuko, and Shinji knew better than to underestimate her. Everyone had bad days, or weeks... but something still nagged at him.

"That's... above our pay grade. This is a war." The scientist offered a helpless shrug. "We need them because we're NERV. Orders."

Standing up hard enough to break the bench away from the floor, Shinji pulled away, leaving Rei and Ritsuko blinking red and green eyes respectively. he turned on one heel and made for the door, muttering all the while. The solution was so obvious in hindsight- the past three days had been at best a learning experience, a useful one! But unnecessary nonetheless.

Rei blinked, and a bead of water dripped off her chin to splash loudly on the cafeteria floor. The answer didn't sit well with Shinji either. He felt his insides coil up and chill. Everything Ritsuko hadn't said set him on edge, and a piece of a puzzle tipped off the stack and landed just shy of being in place. Staring down at his empty plate, Shinji felt his jaw tense. It was a problem to solve, a trick or riddle, and he was good at solving problems.

He was also _tired _of solving problems.

Ritsuko and Rei scrambled after him on sandal and low-slung heels respectively. They cleared the door and followed him into the corridor, not quite jogging to keep up.

"Ikari-" The older woman reached out to grab his wrist, aiming to pull him to a halt. "What are you doing?!"

Passing by checkpoint and research facility, Shinji glanced left and right, mapping out the supercomputer network that wound through the walls of Dogma and the underground dome. He barely felt Ritsuko squirm, sitting on his forearm like a bench seat. She'd wrapped an arm around his head and neck, holding on for dear life.

Then, he finally heard her shouting over the spinning engine in his mind. Her fingers dug into his hair and pulled at his scalp. "Ikari Shinji- _put me down_!"

He did, right next to Rei. Ritsuko bounced on her heels and toes, and the other pilot threw an arm around her middle to steady the woman. Shinji had ended up carrying and leading them to one of the many thousands of elevators sprinkled throughout the complex. Glancing between Rei and Ritsuko, he nodded. "I need you two to be ready for when I get back. I'll need your help later."

Ritsuko leaned on Rei and pushed a hand through her windblown hair. "A-and where are you going, what do you need our help with?"

"Still thinking on that..." Shinji stared past the closed doors, humming. "...Of course the MAGI wouldn't work."

Rei cocked her head to the side, just a bit winded. "Why would the MAGI not work?"

Because," Shinji gave the girl a dark grin. "We need some better channels of communication."

* * *

><p>The space gave him room to pace. It was nice to be somewhere he didn't feel misshapen or grotesquely huge. Ritsuko had given him the half-answers he'd needed to finally figure out where he'd been going wrong. Fighting the MAGI had been a futile effort, simply because there were parts that he could not access. Oh, if he'd dug down into the physical hardware he could have accomplished <em>something<em>, but that would have taken time he didn't have. Striding around the open space, he glanced back at the entrance, and the door he peeled out of its frame. When he dug his fingers into the metal, he couldn't help but think about maintaining his own open door policy.

Shinji shook his head- it wasn't that he lacked the time, it was that he wanted to spend it on _other things_. On projects and people who _mattered_. "So, here is the situation as I see it; You almost certainly know about the fortress city and the shelters, the same as I do now."

The lack of response and ongoing silence didn't bother him. His shoes made hardly any noise when they hit the polished black floor, and the rest of the room was dark, like most of the labs in Dogma and the Geofront at large. What little light there was barely reached the walls, and the furthest spaces were nearly black save for thin bands of light; hidden consoles or decorations, Shinji couldn't say.

"Of course, I was missing a whole bunch of important stuff." He moved up closer to the black desk, almost looming over it. "Necessary background information, logistics. I mean it was all Operations, not Special Projects- and I couldn't just call Misato and _ask_."

Shinji let his fingers curl and uncurl, winding open to drum the air. His breath and blood felt hot in his lungs and skin, riding the _fight_ half the survival imperative. A half-dozen flavors of anger simmered just under the surface, and for once Shinji found himself nursing it. A bit of indignation, some self-recrimination, and a healthy amount of pure frustration.

"The shelters- I could understand the need for it, the false reassurances. I don't _like it_, but I understand it."

Shinji felt his voice thicken, and the muscles in his neck were standing out tense like the rest of him. Perfectly tailored clothes couldn't hide the fact that he'd been trained into a soldier's shape, and this time he _banked on it_. It was all a matter of spectacle, _presence_. "I don't see anything wrong with NERV's stated purpose either; it's meant to develop, repair and deploy Evangelions against Angels, no more, no less."

He stepped on a glass panel, and the floor beneath him changed tint. The smoky black gave way to UV-filtered green and blue, like looking at a sunny park through a pair of dark sunglasses. "I didn't like what I was seeing. I was going out and doing things though, getting ready to fix it. Deep down though I was just going to do just enough, and ignore the rest. Not the work, but the implications- the how and why behind it all."

Big speeches weren't his thing, but they came easily at that moment, and Shinji felt his internal reserve _sing_, eager to be unleashed. "I would have let it lie, and pat myself on the back thinking I'd done a good thing."

"Instead though, thanks to you." He finally looked over at the man sitting behind the desk. "You gave me a wake up call."

Striding forward, the cavernous office seemed to squeeze and shift, and what space between Shinji and the desk vanished, compressed into non-existence. A list of a thousand motions unfurled in perfect clarity, and Shinji found his perception slowed to account for each one. A flare of sunlight filled the space, flooding the office and soaking into every polished surface while Shinji himself shined gold. Cloth, paint and enamel smoked and curled under the sudden onslaught.

His arm and leading leg came up, the former stopped high over the desk to harness potential energy, and the latter slammed into the floor for support. Shinji felt his clothes ripple and snap against air and acceleration, drawn tight against his limbs as he brought his open palm down.

And stopped, a half-inch away from the desktop itself.

Drawing back, Shinji opened his hand and grabbed the bleached desk, pulling it aside like it weighed nothing. He learned forward with his sunfire brand standing out on his forehead, staring at his own reflection in orange lenses. The glasses cracked under the pressure wave, and Shinji watched one visible pupil contract as he growled. "You got my _family_ involved."

With the desk out of the way, Shinji stared down at the Commander of NERV and made his point. The only obstacles that stood between the commander and himself were the ones he _permitted_. The older man sat in his chair with a hand on each knee, apparently unperturbed. Gendo's silence was a weapon, and Shinji recognized it for what it was.

He stepped away from the sun-scorched desk and the cracked floor. He stared back at Gendo, looking for something. What exactly, Shinji couldn't say. The man just tilted his head in response, and his broken glasses turned opaque in the face of Shinji's fading corona. Impassive and inscrutable as always. Shinji let out a little snort, unimpressed. He turned for the exit and stopped at the door, wrenching it back into place as an afterthought. Restored, as if it had never been broken. That done, he looked over his shoulder.

"Things are going to start changing around here, father." He reached out to hit the door control, and his thin frown hardened. "Starting with me."

* * *

><p>Gendo sat alone in his disrupted office. It was only then that Gendo allowed himself to relax. A bead of sweat dripped down his brow.<p> 


	37. Reunion

_And that night Leothric arose in the dark and took the sword, and went westwards to find Gaznak; and he went through the dark forest till the dawn, and all the morning and till the afternoon. But in the afternoon he came into the open and saw in the midst of The Land Where No Man Goeth the fortress of Gaznak, mountainous before him, little more than a mile away._

- Exerpt from _The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth_

* * *

><p>Offshore observers had spotted them first, and by initial reports, it looked like a funeral procession. Ghost-ships coming to shore through the early morning mist. Ritsuko had called the pilots at two in the morning with the news. Rei grabbed her keys without bothering to dress, and Shinji promised the scientist the <em>best goddamn chocolate cake<em> he could make before dropping the phone. The cordless thing hit the floor and cracked, but the two teenagers were already out the door.

The Skyline _rumbled_ down the land-route highway, and Shinji could _hear_ Rei's expert timing, shifting gears like a seasoned pro. Bands of sunlight cut over the hilltops in thin rays, burning through the wetland mist that surrounded Tokyo-3. They were going to make landfall in Iwaki, and it was a three and a half hour drive. Pressed into the passenger seat like he was, Shinji figured they'd get there in about half the time.

Heading toward the Pacific Coast, the two pilots eventually merged with the NERV convoy that had charged out ahead of them. Ritsuko had mobilized _her_ division, including the infirmary staff and critical care teams. Shinji recognized their vans and drivers as Rei wove between them, cutting to the head of the pack. Two hours since Shinji got the call, the two pilots broke out of the low coastal hills and into the open wild grasses that separated the interior regions from the post-Impact shores and beaches.

The second Onahama Port was a riot of activity. With the main road clogged, Rei pulled the wheel hand over hand until the Skyline angled toward a dirt road, running along the main artery. Shinji winced every time the front fender hit a rock or particularly sturdy bit of deadwood.

Rei stared ahead, muttering. "This will buff out- time lost in traffic cannot be regained."

Breaking out of the access road and through a half-rusted chain-link gate, Shinji and Rei rolled onto crowded pavement once more. Men and women in yellow and orange hazard saw to a hundredfold tasks, while massive trucks hauled supplies and vital retrieval equipment into place. Not long after Shinji and Rei got out of the car, Ritsuko arrived via VTOL, just as red-eyed as they were. Coordinating from Dogma, she'd taken the earliest chance to break away.

Shinji turned, gritting his teeth as he watched the massive outpouring of effort. There were harbors closer to the Geofront, so coming _here_ meant something bad. The communication block the Commander put into place kept the fleet from radioing ahead for support. More VTOLs roared off from the nearby parking lots for a visual inspection, charging out into the early morning Pacific.

On a clear day, he could see to the horizon. A tiny dot appeared on the edge of the world. His hands found their way into Rei's and Ritsuko's. "They're coming."

The wait was torture. Misato and Sorhyu had been gone for over _two months_. It was September 16th, 2016. His fifteenth birthday passed by without anyone noticing, including himself. Ahead, the flagship of the United Nations Pacific Fleet closer at a steady one and a half knots, just under two kilometers an hour. The flotilla of other ships that limped were just as slow and in some cases _towed_ by their fellows. It made the snails pace understandable.

Men on the carrier's bow raised flags and sent signals to the shore, while more aircraft took off for priority rescue and recovery. A handful shapes from the carrier itself shot skyward, toward the coast, heading for whatever airfield and landing strip they could find. A red and white rescue vehicle raced ahead of the rest, and Shinji lost it when it crossed the sun. The rest would have to wait for the fleet to actually come into port. Shinji overheard the expletives and cries of disbelief- the fleet was down to a third of it's former size. Rei heard it too, and squeezed his hand.

Getting closer still, he could pick out more details, like a bloody tarp strapped down to the aircraft carrier deck, or how half the ships were still sending thin trails of oily smoke into the air. Something had picked up the fleet and _chewed_.

The hour passed, and Section Two had arrived with sweatpants and jackets. Rei had been shivering, even with the rising sun scouring away the clouds. The _Over the Rainbow_ split off from the main body of the fleet, first into port with the most critical damage, special cargo and the fastest way of getting the injured disembarked. Massive vehicles Shinji couldn't name, but looked like giant staircases and rolling elevators moved over to the dockside, ready to meet up with the gaping hangar doorways.

On the deck itself, the beaten tarp fluttered under the wind, and thin streams of red-orange streaked the carrier's sides, along with broader patches of dried ichor, covered in almost cancerous looking barnacles, even above the waterline. Shinji's eyes flicked from damaged hull to nearly ruined superstructure. The one side of the ship he could see was _crumpled_, looking like someone had stomped on a soda can a thousand times over. No amount of repair could have kept the thing seaworthy for longer than a few hours.

Rei had come back and found his hand again, squeezing it so hard he felt his knuckles grind together.

They both had a pretty good idea of what the blood meant. "Asuka-chan."

Several thousand voices started shouting orders in half-a-dozen languages. Russian, German, Japanese and English all mingled together in call-and-response. Sailors threw out lines for the dockyard-bound to tie off or tug on. Cargo cranes moved into haul away wrecked aircraft or what ordnance they couldn't find a place for inside. Everything was a rush to _empty_ the carrier, and there was no sign of Misato or Sorhyu. Shinji looked down at Ritsuko, but she'd put her glasses on and stood facing the sun, hiding her eyes behind the glare.

On the carrier deck, a particular voice started shouting in English. "_Hey big guy! Big kid! Shinji Ikari! She said you could hear me!"_

Turning, he saw a black-haired American woman waving frantically. She started pointing skyward, before cupping her hands around her mouth. "_HEADS UP!"_

Shinji scowled despite himself, but looked up into the blue sky. A dark figure crossed the wide blue expanse, and his pupils shrank down to pinpricks. That red and white helicopter _wasn't a helicopter_. Arcing through the sky, it was close enough that Shinji could see it, name it, even describe it. Twenty-ten eyesight aside, Shinji couldn't _believe_ it.

Evangelion Unit 02 was in free fall, several thousand feet up and _dropping_.

Now more than ever, he saw it as obviously cybernetic, limbs with slashes of pale flesh exposed to open sky. The arms and legs snapped out and caught the air with a booming thunderclap, loud enough to shake dust from concrete walls. Contrails spun out from between fingertips and around ankles, growing thicker and blooming wider the closer it got. Wind buffeted the ground, ripping hats from heads and picking people up by their vests and jackets.

But the Evangelion wasn't slowing down. Shinji watched it skydive, angling its hands and feet toward the carrier. Palms carved through the air, forcing the Eva into a drilling spiral. Black streamers flared out from its hips in a whipping blur, unfurling with a _crack_. The spin stopped and the whole Evangelion jerked back, buoyed by wind in the black ribbon sails and the sudden _thrum_ of an expressed AT field. The extra limbs- and a third trailing one from the Eva's spine down to its ankles shifted and bent, bat-like and billowing.

The _wings_ beat the air, and the Evangelion lowered itself onto the mostly abandoned carrier deck, light as a feather with its arms crossed over its chest.

The docks were silent, save for the Pacific swells and the cawing of gulls. More disciplined heads amongst the recovery crews whistled and shouted, and the spell was broken. Shinji squeezed Rei's hand and let out the breath he'd been holding, and finally allowed himself to _look_ at the Evangelion.

The red, black and orange machine had seen better days, covered in patches and wound bandages. Staples as long as a man's arm stitched its wounds, and one of it's four eyes was missing. Meanwhile, the wings _rippled_. They moved like fluid, warping down into frayed-tipped ends that hung from the Evangelion's hips. Frayed or _fingertips_, Shinji couldn't say.

The dock was silent for a long moment. Bit by bit the recovery crew picked itself up, milling around the Evangelion's ankles. Shinji found himself staring up at the Evangelion, along with Rei and Ritsuko. Out the corner of his eye, a flash of purple-black and achingly familiar red broke out onto the carrier deck. A vice that had been clamped around his heart just let go.

Katsuragi Misato stood there, one hand holding her beret down and the other on her cross.

Unit 02 shifted, and from its external speakers a familiar voice boomed out. "Sorhyu Asuka Langley and the Pacific Fleet have returned!"

* * *

><p>A sprawling field hospital and ad-hoc machine shop had unfolded out onto the docks. While men and women swarmed across the <em>Over the Rainbow.<em> Covered by drab tents and under the care of NERV-trained nurses, sailors who had been on their feet for twenty hours or more found themselves recharged under a brief pressure-point massage. Re-energized, they charged back out into the recovery area, eager and willing to rescue their own ships.

Nearly every able-bodied soul in Onahama port threw themselves into the recovery effort, dragging out those who couldn't move themselves. Cranes had kept up a steady flow of crates and hastily lashed together palettes moving towards the dock warehouses and neighboring train yard. In that same depot, a four-track Evangelion transport rumbled to a halt, loaded with supplies on the outgoing trip.

Sorhyu worked until the last minute after plugging in fresh batteries. She pulled armfuls of whatever was needed off the carrier while an active AT field _thrummed_, spread out through the region. Even dispersed, Shinji felt the resonant tingle in his fingers, toes, and throughout the thin cloud of awareness that made up his soul.

When Unit 02 was finally done, Sorhyu eased it over to the railway, followed by a thick knot of sailors and soldiers. Shinji for his part had been attached to Ritsuko and her medical team, running herd on what amounted to disaster relief. Several _thousand_ people were injured, maimed or in otherwise critical condition, even after two months rest and surgery at sea. For those missing limbs, there was only so much Shinji could do _that moment_, but people _much_ smarter than him had already started drafting emergency plans for a crisis like this one.

In the meantime though, Shinji saved lives with a touch.

When all was said and done, the non-critical, non-essential personnel were allowed ashore. Hoses snaked into the carrier from all angles, and thick streams of brackish ocean water were pumped out from shore-side pumps and internal bilges. In the rail depot, the internal hum of Sorhyu's AT field snapped off, and the _Over the Rainbow_ sank four meters into the dockside water.

Shinji didn't really pay any of that much mind though, because the crowd had parted. Ritsuko and Rei had wound back around to his side, and the three of them stared across the thin gap between the crush of people.

Katsuragi Misato stood a few strides away next to that Kaji guy, beret in hand and wind tugging at her hair. Shinji took the first step, but Misato was faster and already running. She slammed into his chest hard enough force the air from their lungs, but Shinji didn't give a damn if he was out of breath. He let his arms wrap around her back and smiled into her hair. Some part of him wanted to cry.

The rest of him picked Misato up by her waist, twisting on his heels and laughing.

He kept her moving for half-a-dozen rotations, not at all caring that the people around him blurred into a mass of colors and impressions. His first friend was back. His _best friend_ was back. Misato laughed and slapped at his arms until he slowed, pulling her in for another dangling hug, swaying lightly. This time she wedged her cheek into the crook of his neck, still laughing. Shinji grinned into her hair and didn't care who saw him or whatever they thought. He just luxuriated in the _rightness_, holding on to her until the ugly knot of worry in his heart let go.

The snap-click of one lighter after another tugged them out of the happy rush. Misato dropped down to the ground, but bounced back on her toes, planting a quick and impish kiss at the corner of Shinji's mouth. They both turned to look at Ritsuko and Kaji. The scientist had shoved a fresh pack of cigarettes into the man's grateful hands, lighting up in unison.

"So," Ritsuko smirked around her own cigarette, while Kaji grinned outright. "You two seem happy to see each other."

Shinji caught Misato's smirk out the corner of his eye and watched the joke as it formed. He beat her to it though, throwing an arm around her waist and grinning at the blonde. "You have _no idea_."

And then Rei was there, standing between the three adults and huge teenager. "Shinji-kun, I would like to hug Misato-san now."

There was a collective blink at that before Misato flung her arms around the girl with a laugh, pulling her into a three-sided hug with alongside the tallest pilot. It didn't take long for a red-clad arm to reach out and yank Ritsuko into the mix, then Kaji. Shinji found himself sandwiched between Rei and Ritsuko at one turn, then Kaji throwing a hand out to be shaken. The three college alumni split off for their own hugs, while the two teenagers took a moment to just bask in the fact that the closest thing they'd ever had to families were back and together.

Another wave of rescue and recovery swept up around them, forcing the five of them together once more- not that anyone minded. When the sudden press of bodies bled away, a shrill whistle rang out. The NERV contingent turned to see a cluster of sailors in frayed and soiled gear hoisting a wheelchair between them like a sedan chair.

Breaking rank, a husky redheaded man stomped forward and bellowed in a thick, unplaceable accent. "Presenting the space-monster _scrapper_, the creature-_crunching crown princess_, _our fair lady _Asuka Sorhyu _Langley_!"

Those sailors and marines not busy with holding her up parted, and even empty handed, they mimed the motion of presenting arms while trying not to laugh. Between them, the pilot of Evangelion Unit 02 grumbled without heat in her wheelchair. "And yet again I have more reason to kill you all."

Behind her, the dark-haired american woman who had shouted about the incoming _flying Evangelion_ ruffled her hair. "Aww, you know you love us, and we love you too."

Shinji blinked at that, and watched the easy camaraderie that seemed to surround the girl like a cloud. Sorhyu had won their loyalty, unequivocally, and he could see it plain as day. Glancing back at the carrier, the heavily damaged Evangelion, and the pilot herself, he couldn't help but wonder _what_ had happened in the past two months. Once he really _did_ look at her though, Shinji felt his brain skip a medical track.

Still-healing injuries was the first thing that came to mind. Sorhyu's plugsuit had been cut away from the arms, making room for splints and casts. One arm was bandaged up to the forearm, while her other hand was just wrapped tightly to keep her wrist from moving. If she'd had to _pilot_ like that... Caught up in just going over her injuries, he forgot to even flex his own powers. There wasn't a real need- he could _see _the wrapping around her broken ribs or the set compound fractures in her right shin.

Sandwiched between Misato and himself, Rei took a hesitant step forward. She stopped, seemingly unsure of something, before deciding to herself back in between his own bulk and the side of Misato's jacket. Asuka was the first to break the silence.

"So yeah," He watched Sorhyu's one good eye flick from face to face, and giving the blue-haired girl an unreadable look."What am I, other than being ignored?"

The husky man smirked, now placed as unmistakably Irish. "I'm sure they're meaning no disrespect, m'lady."

"Carter, you're just lucky I can't get up and bop you one." From the girl's retinue, a marine reached out to cuff the aforementioned Carter upside the head. Asuka's mood brightened considerably. "Thank you, corporal!"

Shinji frowned, more out of confusion than anything else. He glanced sidelong at Misato and Kaji before asking the question at the front of his mind. "She piloted like that? You _let her_ pilot like that? And had her hauling cargo instead of getting her to a hospital?"

He waved at the Evangelion, then the girl. Circumstances might have _demanded it_, but every medical instinct he had was screaming at him for _some_ kind of explanation. Misato and Kaji gave him nearly identical expressions, something along the lines of _schadenfreude_. He bulled ahead anyway. "I mean, it makes sense given how she _landed_, and wings? Where'd you get _wings_, some other NERV base?"

Considering Sorhyu was behind him, that was probably expected. She coughed pointedly. "Well, I wasn't exactly _in_ the Eva for most of that."

Shinji blinked, glancing at the girl once more. She _wasn't_ covered in LCL. Sorhyu huffed and gingerly crossed her better arm over chest, smirking faintly. She let the silence speak for her, and Shinji looked back at Unit 02, and only now saw that it's _plug was missing_. Not just missing- ripped out, like some great hand had pried off the armor and ripped out three of the Evangelion's vertabrae. Not claws, blades or acid, but _hands_.

_How was that thing still functional? _

He must have asked out loud, because Misato answered from his side. "You might be the one to answer that, but hey-" She pulled a hand-radio from her jacket pocket and gave it a click.

Shouts on the carrier deck rang out, and the thick tarp stretched across the flight deck was pulled away. Shinji, Ritsuko and Rei could only see the edges of it, looking up from the docks, but that was enough. On the deck was a corpse, white, black and achingly familiar... and unmistakably alien.

Misato grinned, proud and feral. "At least we brought back plenty of _plenty of spare parts!_"

* * *

><p>Misato had been on her feet for almost twenty hours. That wouldn't have been worth mentioning, if not for the fact that she'd been doing so <em>every day <em>for the past three weeks. She turned to look at the ravaged aircraft carrier. Every slash, rip, crack and crumpled plate was a reminder of the past two months at sea. Misato was pretty sure the ship felt and looked worse than she did.

The joyful reunion wound down not long after Asuka arrived, though Misato was glad to note the girl wasn't being a killjoy. The pilots had drifted into an awkward cluster amidst Asuka's retinue of sailors and soldiers. The Major watched her kids, humming thoughtfully. Asuka and Rei were oddly standoffish- not surprising considering the redhead was stuck in a wheelchair. Coming back beat to hell didn't make for a very good homecoming, after all. Every so often, Rei stuttered and shuffled toward Asuka, then stopped before cuddling back in toward Shinji. That was something of a new development...

She sighed and let out a tired smile. It was worth all the pain to be so close to home. Misato glanced back at Shinji and smiled a bit wider. He'd changed too, like he'd grown into some of the physical presence he'd gotten early on. Misato had lived with the idea of a war beyond comprehension for more than fifteen years, and being first in line to fight that war. Shinji meanwhile had been put on the fast track to who-knew where by his father's letter, and then the Exaltation. That he seemed to be finding his stride made the struggle worth it.

As for her situation, Misato glanced between Ritsuko and Kaji. They'd drifted into their own little cluster, the three college friends back together at last. Kaji had been in prison for something, when she'd dragged him out for the fleet expedition. Ritsuko had been burning the candle at both ends with tech demonstrations and marketing. The UN inspector looked as rough as Misato herself, and Ritsuko...

Ritsuko was hugging them both. _That _was new.

The bottle-blonde had thrown her arms around their shoulders and drawn them in close, so much that Misato found her chin wedged over Ritsuko's shoulder. She glanced sidelong at Kaji, stuck in the same situation while Ritsuko half-dangled between them.

"Missed you guys. So much." And with barely a hesitant pause in her voice, the scientist pulled back to hold the pair at arms-length, calling down the longest explanation Misato would have to make that morning. "Now tell me why is a _hand _sticking out from that cargo tarp."

Kaji coughed. "That would be one of the Committee's contingencies."

Ritsuko blinked once and turned to face the man completely. "You mean they- with the surviving...?"

A grim nod was her answer, and Misato watched the unspoken words fly right over her head. "Hey-hey! Don't leave me out! Who did what now?"

The blonde shook her head and gave Misato's bicep a squeeze. "Not here, not now. A lot has changed in NERV the past couple months." She sucked on her teeth, suddenly wide-eyed. "Shinji had another episode."

"Wha-" Misato felt her jaw drop, mind flicking to a _new _Caligula sequence.

Ritsuko cut her off before she could ask for confirmation. "Like I said- not here, but I'm _glad_ you two are back." She sighed and slumped into Kaji, falling back into old college habits. "I'm not trained to handle wild pilot personalities and..."

Seeing _Ritsuko_ of all people caught so off-guard was enough to staple ice cubes to Misato's spine, and not in the fun way. She glanced at Kaji, who'd been steadying the scientist while she _shivered_. The fleet definitely had it bad, but NERV had _definitely_ had its share of problems. Just like them to all go to hell and back without her to steer.

She gave her friends a steady, calculating look, before Misato fought off the tiredness and put on one of her best gutsy-plan grins. "This is one of those crunchtime moments, Rits?"

It took Ritsuko a moment to get the reference, and her eyes narrowed. "I don't see how me cramming for finals and you skipping class with Kaji applies here."

Misato just grinned wider. "Well _this time_ we're all a bit older and wiser, and I'm not gonna let this bum touch me unless the world's ending." She slugged Kaji in the arm, eyes crinkling. "Plus, we're more than just a brain, bod, and balls."

Kaji and Ritsuko blinked at that, and Misato watched as their expressions shuffled through resignation to all-consuming-crazy-plan terror. Cigarette falling off his lips, Kaji gaped openly. "K-Katsuragi _what are you thinking?_"

The dark-haired woman smiled even wider and thrust a red-sleeved arm into the air, spinning on one heel and cutting through the crowds. Her friends followed, pelting her back with questions even as Misato straightened her jacket and cuffs. The plan was already formed, but the particulars had to be just right or it wouldn't work.

"I am thinking-" she tossed over her shoulder, scanning the roiling sea of heads and shoulders. "That we have a genius mechanic and natural soldier. Then we've got a girl who can pilot her Eva by remote. I'm not even counting what Shinji can do."

Her eyes snapped onto a familiar salt-and-pepper moustache, and the stoop-shouldered old man it belonged to. Misato lead the way as she wove around the rescue efforts, clearing a path for Kaji and Ritsuko along the way. "I'm thinking, that we've gotten the biggest shot in the arm to Unnatural Warfare since I came to Tokyo-3."

She broke through the last ring of people, coming upon a particular group of men- the surviving captains of the UN Pacific Fleet. Stolocker among them. She snapped off a quick salute, and meant it in earnest. "Admiral," She grinned.

"Katsuragi." The grunt was surprisingly affectionate, and Stolocker's eyes flicked over her shoulders to the familiar Kaji to the unfamiliar Ritsuko. "It looks like we're your guests for the time being."

"Yeah, about that..." Misato hummed, while Ritsuko paled. Which was the right thing to do; many a hijink happened when Misato _had ideas_. Pulling out her Operations Director voice, Misato nodded firmly. Charisma and authority were her weapons, but she needed _soldiers_. "My A-17 combat order _can_ be extended if circumstances permit."

She waved at the white arm rising above the carrier deck, locked in rigor. "I have the authority to deploy or station the UN Pacific Fleet wherever I want."

The captains and Admiral were silent, staring down the woman with blatant expressions of stupefaction, incredulity. Ritsuko and Kaji shared the same looks for slightly different reasons. All Misato could do in the face of the attention was drink it in like a sun-starved flower.

"As of today, the number of people who _know_ Unnatural Warfare jumped from those three-" She pointed through the crowds at the bit of plugsuit red, blue hair and Shinji's own tall frame. "To the _thousands_ who make up your fine crews. I need your experience now more than ever, Admiral, and I hope you'll take my comment regarding the A-17 as a polite fiction. Pretense for doing what needs to be done and where."

Meanwhile, Ritsuko licked her lips and coughed, muttering. "It'd also be a damn sight cheaper fixing your fleet than fielding four Evangelions."

Stolocker looked past the brim of his cap, staring up at Misato for a long moment. He was a man beaten into shape by the ocean and Navy, and the past two months had been as hard on them as Second Impact. Worse in some ways. Misato kept her face firmly fixed on her most charming smile, the kind that belonged on recruitment posters. She scanned the other captains, stony expressions all. They looked like stern shrine guardians, and aside from Stolocker, they were all taller than her.

Finally, the moustache twitched. "You'll have the fleet as long as your order holds, Major. Don't make us wait too long to go hunting though."

* * *

><p>A city's worth of people had mobilized to recover and repair the Pacific Fleet. More dock space was cleared to accept new incoming ships, while crews hauled tools and material into position. The moment <em>Over the Rainbow<em> was seaworthy, the carrier was tugged back out into open water, making room for the next damaged vessel. People boiled around like ants on a mission. But even then, two hours after they'd made landfall a handful of the surviving ships in the fleet had given up. Their captains had committed them to graves in the waters far out from the harbor, waiting for the tiime and talent to cut the wrecks back into useful steel.

Sorhyu Asuka Langley sat on her wheelchair and watched it all, kept well out of the way.

Not that she _blamed_ anyone for that- Not enough battery power left for her to run the Evangelion, and well, she was just as exhausted as most of the fleet. More so in some ways or others. She'd known ahead of time that her homecoming wasn't going to be champagne and confetti, no parades or accolades, just more work. She let out a thin smile at that, not minding at all.

Of course, not everything was sunshine and roses. She looked down at her plugsuited legs and frowned. Her right knee was basically a wreck, braced up and sore from not being able to stretch it. Her toes wiggled sluggishly inside her thin integrated boots. Underneath the red and black plastic were more than a dozen battle scars, most of them fresh, hot and angry.

Looking back over at the ocean and remnants of the fleet, she Carter and Bolton had made it their mission to keep Asuka's mind off all her troubles, and she had to admit, it felt _good_. _Victory_ had felt good. She'd wrapped the proof of her greatness around her shoulders like a blanket. Or a new pair of wings, she wasn't feeling picky about it right then.

She wouldn't have _minded_ a parade though.

A sharp whistle made her turn painfully, facing the dockyard and crowds once more. Even all of NERV's resources, there was only so much they could do. Asuka watched the first massive trucks shudder and rumble to life. Gradually the dense press of soldiers, engineers and technicians thinned out, while ambulances and rescue VTOL took off, carrying those who needed critical care. Asuka felt a twinge in her arms and sides, reminding her _yet again_ she still needed the 'care' part. Kaji-san and the Professor had already left with her Evangelion and a good third of the people working on the docks.

Misato had been nice about it though. A near solid month of being mothered actually turned out kind of awesome, once the older woman had gotten it through her head that Asuka wasn't made of glass. She'd gotten more hugs in those weeks than she probably had in the past six years. Now though she wondered _where_ Misato had gone. And Rei.

Maneuvering with a wheelchair was tough with one good hand, but Asuka grit her teeth and managed, huffing. All told it wasn't hard either- just spot the tallest pilot and Misato was probably nearby, and Rei. Asuka watched them interact for a moment, paling around. There didn't seem to be a limit as to how touchy-feely Misato could get, apparently, because Asuka was sure Rei's hair was going to stick in that mushed up pile for _weeks_.

She gave the trio one more look and sighed. She really had no reason to feel _that_ left out, but just feeling it was enough to draw chalkboard nails down her spine. If everyone was leaving though, she was going to do _something_ constructive before they all packed up. _What though_ was the question... Slouched in her chair, she scanned the crowds one last time, hoping for a bit of inspiration.

A familiar smear of color caught her eye, and Asuka grinned.

It took her a bit of waving and shouting before someone would push her closer to her target, but it didn't take long to reach a familiar sailor. He still had the same artfully chaotic mass of tattoos crawling up both arms, starting with his fingertips and vanishing up past his sleeves. They still looked almost three dimensional too.

She would have clapped if she had two working hands, so Asuka settled for another shout. "Hey! Tattoo guy!"

He turned and gave an owlish look before finally registering her. Asuka couldn't exactly blame him, being below his line of sight. She also finally got a good look at his nametape, and found herself oddly disappointed. _Wright? Seriously?_ It made some of the jokes she'd heard around the guy make more sense at least- the other crewmen had said something about meeting any swabbies in the recruiter's office...

When Wright finally answered, he pulled off his hat and held it at his side. "Miss, what can I do for you?"

That would have been a time Asuka folded her arms over her chest, but as it stood she couldn't really pull it off, bound up in a sling. Still, she grinned into the late morning light. "You're still working on your GED?"

"Yeeaaaah..." He drawled, glancing left to right, obviously wondering where she was going.

Asuka smirked even more. "Good, I'm your new tutor."

The look on Wright's face was _pure art._

* * *

><p>Eight super-massive train engines hauled a truly fantastic amount of weight from Iwaki and the Pacific Coast of Japan into Hakone, and finally the Geofront itself. The two Evangelion transport rails had been dispatched hours apart, but they returned together, one after the other. Seen directing from above, Akagi Ritsuko swept along catwalks and gantries over the Evangelion cages with one hand in her pocket and the other instructing. She was in her element, one half of her lab coat billowing out from one side as she ordered the cages below to open and expand.<p>

High above in secure observatory, Ikari Gendo watched NERV go to work.

Blaring sirens wound up and screamed, while warning lights threw wide strobbing bands of light across every cage surface. Walls mounted on tracks moved under the force of house-sized gears and counterweights, drawn back with thick roller chains hidden in those same walls. The bulkheads all shifted aside, allowing the Eva to be raised upright and settled into its secure blocks. Gaps and opens spaces in the superstructures would have clamped around the Evangelion's arms, sealing tight and letting the technicians pump in refrigerant. If the Evas weren't held in cold storage, they'd _rot_.

Putting Unit 02 on ice would have to wait, though. Down below, Akagi leaned over the railing and gaped at the damage. Both shoulder pylons were missing, and seventy-percent of its armor had been peeled away in thick winding sheets. The extra ceramic plates they'd fashioned before deploying it had all been destroyed- abraded or broken off in about twenty minutes of combat.

That was to say nothing about the blood-smeared white and black panels that hung from the Evangelion's hips.

Relevant data was already being funneled in and collated by the MAGI, appearing on the solid screens spread across thick consoles. Fuyutsuki loomed behind him, humming thoughtfully. "Anything to say about those?"

Gendo let out a short grunt. He looked down through the glass and saw Akagi looking up at him. Her eyes narrowed to razor slits before she turned away on one heel. "An inconsequential variable. Easily accounted for."

The old man nodded amiably, sipping a mug of the now almost omnipresent cold-brewed coffee. Silence stretched out between them while the information continued to pour in. Budget estimates based on previous encounters, compared to test data from NERV-Berlin. MAGI make-work, perhaps, but useful nonetheless. Gendo was about to wash his hands of the matter when another cage-access alarm sounded.

Glancing back down through the observatory glass, Gendo blinked once.

Fuyutsuki took another sip, moving to stand by Gendo's side. "And the Committee's move here? I'm surprised they managed a functional one out of the first two remnants we sent back."

"A potentially useful asset." Gendo stared at the ruined white machine, considering the gaping hole in its chest, all but spilling out sun-dried offal. "Harvest it"

"Beg pardon?" Fuyutsuki glanced over at the younger man, mug stopping just short of his lips.

The Commander of NERV did not meet it, instead choosing to stare intently from behind a new set of orange-tinted lenses at the corpse being strung up in the second cage. Bloated pustules had welled up beneath what armor and skin survived. Its mashed, once conical head hung on thin bits of sinew and spinal cord. Seagulls had picked at the ragged, exposed flesh for _weeks_.

Gendo nodded at the mutilated remains down below. Akagi had already called in her best tools, material and personnel. "Strip it down, every layer if need be. I wish to know how it was so easily... compatible with Unit 02."

* * *

><p>Ten minutes into the drive home, Misato found herself yawning. Once she had stopped moving, it felt like every mile and hour of exhaustion hit her in one massive wave of <em>tired<em>. Fortunately, she and Asuka were in the backseat, while Rei had the wheel. In less than an hour, Asuka had already dozed off. Settling back into the tooled leather, Misato held a hand over her mouth and felt her jaw stretch involuntarily. A sharp _pop_ sent a wave of pain through her face when the joint _clicked_. She winced and rubbed at the sore spot, feeling every bit her age- all th-_twenty nine_ years of it. Shivering, Misato wrapped her arms around herself and hummed. The tiredness was giving her the chills...

Hours later, Misato opened her eyes and wondered why it was so warm, and where Rei's car had gone. Her perspective had gone all screwy too. The outer walkway leading to her apartment door was familiar, but her eyes weren't at the right height, so everything _looked _wrong. Half-drunk by sleep, she considered squirming back into whatever warm thing was carrying her, or breaking its nose.

Then her mind seized on the very important point; _carried_.

_Oh god, where's the car, did I crash? Is everyone okay? I had a mostly-perfect driving reco-waitasecond Rei was driving..._

Misato felt her eyes snap open and into focus, and she found herself looking down her own chest and past her knees, over the railing that showed her apartment neighborhood and the hills that separated it from downtown Tokyo-3. To her left was a huge expanse of white cotton, and she could see one familiar arm hooked under her knees. She kicked by reflex and nearly caught Shinji in the chin with a flying knee, but he just shifted his grip let slide down feet first.

Her calves and thighs almost turned to jelly when her boot heels hit the floor, and she grabbed onto Shinji's waiting arm without thinking. "I uh, guess I still have sea legs, huh?"

Right as she looked up at him, Shinji pointedly rubbed his chin with his free hand. "Maybe..." His voice had gone soft. "I don't know many mermaids who'd kick that hard."

The hesitance was familiar, but the _glint_ was new. Misato huffed, but not unkindly, and felt a real smile of relief break out across her face. "When did you start being such a smart ass..."

"Oh, just from keeping myself company." Shinji stared past her watery grin with a worried little look." I see you taught someone the sleeping-massage trick."

They'd reached the door to her apartment as he frowned. "I should have told you it doesn't actually replace sleep."

"Considering Shinji-kun's problems with finding rest, you should have more respect for it, Misato-san." Rei whispered, finally joining. She stood behind Asuka's wheel chair, having pushed the sleeping girl to the elevator and then up to their floor.

Surrounded in two sides by _doting teenagers_, Misato wept inwardly for the painfully responsible youth. Wincing outwardly, she also felt more than a little guilty at how close they hit to the mark. Shinji seemed to have gotten over his night terrors, or had figured out how to go without sleep indefinitely. Misato hoped it was the former but would have accepted the latter, even if it felt like some kind of loss.

"I think I'll be fine Rei-chan, Shinji-kun..." She reached for the door control and smiled, eager to be _home_. Hot food, hot showers, her friends and family.

The door swished open, and her legs gave out again. "Shinji. What the fuck."

Her apartment was gone, and someone, namely Shinji, had shoved a mansion in its place. Half-walking, half-carried, Misato found herself stumbling into an actual _foyer_. She struggled out of her boots almost as an afterthought,while Rei woke Asuka and hesitantly helped her chair over the riser that separated the entrance from the rest of the apartment. The redhead blinked an uncovered eye and let out her own muted expletive, wondering aloud which hotel this was, and why hadn't they stayed here sooner. Shinji hunkered down to pick up her cordless phone- broken somehow. He waved his hands over it and it un-broke itself as he put it back in place, good as new.

Nearly every surface was some blend of stained dark cherry wood, or almost golden-amber paint. Misato turned, blinking owlishly at every new thing. The kitchen had been redone, again, and a marble covered center island had taken the place of her dining room table. The common wall she shared with Asuka's apartment was still there, too.

"My bedroom's gone." Misato turned to Shinji, wide-eyed. "Why is my bedroom gone?"

Shinji just smiled and nudged the woman further into the apartment, toward the familiar handmade couch. At least some things hadn't changed. "Because I built into the apartments above us- we have four bedroom lofts now."

"Lofts, huh?" Misato let out a weak laugh and slumped into the couch. That was it. She wasn't going to walk anywhere else forever. Almost without thinking, she found her eyes rolling upward toward the ceiling.

"I haven't slept in a loft bed since I got out of colleg- Oh." That ceiling hadn't been so high before.

And the stairs were new too. She couldn't see it completely from that angle, but it was pretty clear he actually meant _loft_, not just 'upstairs'. The upper floor inside her expanded apartment was open-walled... whoever was _up there_ could look _down here_ and...

Asuka finally found her voice, even as Misato tried to remember how _big_ the two units above hers were. "Ikari do you even have any hob-" Misato heard the girl's self-conscious cringe. "Wait no, this _is_ your hobby."

Shinji just rubbed the back of his head. "It really kind of is... Anyway for now, I don't think anyone will mind if you stay here?"

He glanced at Misato and then back at the redhead. Asuka bristled faintly, but Misato knew the girl well enough that all she could do was put on a paper tiger show. Still, there was a certain methodology that had to be maintained...

Leaning forward, Misato clapped. "Asuka- I think as long as you're still laid up in that chair you should stay here- can we get a bed or something in the... living room?" She directed the question at Shinji, and then took another look around, wondering if that was the right word.

Shinji just shrugged. "All of the lofts have their own ensuite bathrooms and kitchenettes. Once Sorhyu's upstairs, she won't have to leave til she's better." He waved at the nearest spiral staircase. "I can probably replace one of these with an elevator too. I took over the apartment beneath us as well, so we have four floors of space."

"Ff-Four floors?" Misato blinked, and sure enough she spied the stairway leading _down_, just to the right of the entrance. She missed it on the first turn through the new space. Shaking her head, she focused back on Asuka- who had an actual _problem_. "I guess either I'd move in with you til you're better, or you stay here, Asuka-chan... What do you think?"

Still in her plugsuit, Asuka set her jaw and frowned. Her hair was limp and frizzy, windblown by salty air. Misato needed a shower too. And food.

Finally the girl opened her mouth to speak, but _Rei _cut her off. "Asuka-chan and I can share a loft- they are nearly small apartments in and of themselves after all."

Blinking, Misato willed her brain back into gear and worked at the suggestion, pulling at the almost non-existent cons and nearly overwhelmed by the abundant pros. She looked over at Asuka. The girl's one visible eye shot Rei an unreadable look, but it faded to something close to an almost pleased acceptance. Misato could tell the girl was still more than a little frustrated though- not _sad_, but being an invalid for nearly a month hadn't done Asuka any favors either.

From her place next to the couch, Asuka cocked her head and narrowed her eye. "You did the space saving stuff here too, yeah?"

Shinji nodded, pointing out the conceal-everything cabinets and acknowledging the same upstairs. "I haven't touched your actual apartment yet." He waved at the common wall. "I was hoping to talk to you about it later."

With the potential crisis averted, Misato felt another yawn coming on. She stretched again, and unlike her jaw, she relished the long line of pops along her spine. Shower, food, sleep. If she didn't get up off of the couch she might never leave... Of course, Shinji apparently had a different idea, glancing between Misato and Asuka. He nodded once, before darting off past a dividing wall toward what Misato _hoped_ was her bathroom. The boy came back a bit later with a box of over-the-counter medicine, pain-killers.

"You two both need to sleep- Don't worry about eating or anything, just sleep." He pushed three caplets into Misato hand and fixed her with a look that told her arguing wasn't going to get anywhere, nor any of her normal tricks and charms. "You and Sorhyu'll want those. I can't prescribe anything so that's the best we've got."

He took a deep breath and smiled, tired but bright enough to light up the room regardless. "Past that, I'll take care of... well, breakfast, for all of us. What do you want? Anything. Sky's the limit."

Misato blinked, and found her mouth watering. Shinji had thrown down the gustatorial gauntlet. "Ah.. uhm... Beer-battered shrimp, those rib-things you did once..." She found herself rattling off dishes as they came to her.

A cool blue eye meanwhile gave the boy a calculating look, while Asuka shook the pills in her palm. Misato knew that glint in the girl's eye, the stuck out lower lip and that tone. Even in the wheelchair, Asuka broadcast her mood at the ten-thousand watt range. _Challenge accepted. _

"Deep dish Chicago-style meat lover's pizza. French fries, Bacon-cheese burger. Double-Chocolate milkshake- and a black forest cake..."

Shinji let the order wash over him, even as Misato lost track of exactly _what _Asuka had been asking for. He just gave the pair an oddly decisive nod and headed for the kitchen, grabbing the phone along the way. "Got it. I'll need to make some calls."

For a long moment the two girls and one woman watched the Third Child pull increasingly elaborate appliances out of the kitchen, phone wedged against his ear and shoulder while he worked. Eventually Misato shook her head, and with an effort bordering on herculean, heaved herself out of the couch and toward Asuka. "Let's get you upstairs."

Rei meanwhile _fidgeted_, caught deliberating something. She took a step toward Asuka then back, until she finally settled on holding the wheelchair steady while Misato eased Asuka's bare arm over her shoulders.

Still, Rei smiled faintly, enough that Misato could hear it in her voice. "I should warn you Asuka-chan, that I will not be your only roommate."

The redhead downed the pills dry and rolled her eyes, hobbling alongside Misato toward the stairs. "Ugh, more Ikari girlfriends..."

"No, they are not." Rei let the rebuttal hang for a long second. "The cage is too small."

"_Hah!_"

* * *

><p>It had taken a bit of doing, but between Rei, Asuka's good leg and Misato herself, the three of them had made it upstairs and into Rei's room. The redhead was going to have to suffer wearing her plugsuit a few hours longer, but she was more than tough enough, now that they all were in the home stretch. Misato had shuffled into one of the two unclaimed lofts, peeling clothes off before the powered door had even finished closing.<p>

The last thing she heard before collapsing on the bed herself was Asuka's faint moan. "_It's like a cloud!"_

* * *

><p>Thirty minutes later, Shinji stood in <em>his <em>kitchen and checked his internal clock. Section Two had already jumped at his request, and the first wave of black-suited agents moved into the kitchen like ghosts, leaving paper and plastic grocery bags by the twos and threes. The orders from specialty grocers and choice cuts of meat from the butchers would take longer to arrive.

Before, every appliance and surface had surpassed even what money could buy, seeing past the simple hurdles like marketing unnecessary features. He'd made a restaurant-grade space and had enjoyed it thoroughly. Now, every tool had been turned and tuned to function along his ideals. It was a fancy way of saying he had rebuilt the common stove or mixer into sublime tools of the trade, understanding them down to their core concepts. They were the best and brandless.

Still cradling the phone, Shinji thumbed in a new number, calling Kensuke. The boy's job as a research assistant to NERV earned a salary, and by extension, a cellular phone. Shinji was speaking before Kensuke even took a breath. "Kensuke, I need a favor- head to the garage lab and find my second book of alchemy notes. I need you to make a few doses of that stomach-soothing formula I figured out."

"Shin-what?" The boy on the other end cut out, and Shinji remembered he was probably somewhere at school. "Now?"

"Yes now, skip last period if you have to- Sorhyu and Misato got home earlier this morning. They need that medicine and I'm too busy cooking." Switching grips while he kneaded dough, Shinji didn't so much sigh as exhale. "I'll be calling everyone with the news, just help me take care of this okay?"

Kensuke hung up with a note of confirmation, and Shinji made up a plan to call the others. Toji and Hikari, then Ayumi. Stopping himself, he mentally reversed that order. He'd have never heard the end of it if he called her last for such a homecoming. Thinking about it, he probably should have kept that Kaji guy on hand too. He was probably feeling the same hunger and exhaustion. It didn't take long to call Ritsuko, telling her to dig the man out of whatever hole he fell into. Even better, Shinji had everything he needed to make all the chocolate cakes.

A familiar black-suited and dark-skinned shape dropped a bag of premium import sausage on the kitchen island. Shinji turned and blinked down at Deja. He smiled at his primary defender and pulled the meat into the growing whorl of food and sunfire corona.

* * *

><p>When Misato woke up, the sun had turned the sky brilliant red and orange, and the thin clouds over Hakone cast faint shadows across the hills. Her loft-bedroom had a wall-to-wall window that levered itself open by some unseen signal, becoming a glass awning for her own private patio. The breeze hit her bare skin and she shivered, trying to dig deeper under the sheets and hide from the light. She didn't want to get out of bed, get dressed, or do <em>anything<em> but sleep for years. The western style bed made that a _really_ attractive option too. When she'd hit the cushions, it felt like a thousand hands were holding her aloft in all the right ways.

Ten minutes of trying resulted in her just getting tangled up in the _silk_ sheets. She kicked them away and groaned, feeling every ache and sore spot. The painkillers from earlier took the edge off, but there was no better cure than rest... and she still had a debt to catch up on.

Knuckling at her eyes and yawning, Misato took another look around. It seemed like the kids had _meant_ for her to take the room, because a dozen or so carefully packed boxes were piled up along the walls, with the rest of her worldly possessions. She eyed the skateboard and let out a wry grin. _That_ had ended pretty well for Kaji, she remembered.

It took a bit to find a box full of her clothes, leading to her grabbing a towel, shorts and a thin tank top before stumbling out into the upper hallway. Asuka probably needed a shower as much as she did. Wrapping a towel around her middle and checking the rooms one by one, Misato found Shinji's still-spartan place. The boy's loft was light on furnishings, but Misato got the impression that was temporary. Across from his room was an empty guest bedroom, the last door had to be Rei's. All together, they were basically four studio apartments wedged into a bit less room than her old apartment beneath them.

Meandering around the living space and into the bedroom, Misato found Asuka sitting up on the bed. The girl was a mass of winces and cringing, trying to work a pair of scissors through her released plugsuit. Her eye-patch and neural headset hadn't budged a bit, though.

She looked up when Misato stepped closer, jerking her head at a futon across the floor. "Rei woke up before I did, guess she's downstairs."

"Right..." Misato nodded, holding the towel up with one arm and her knock-around clothes in the other. She sat down next to her pilot and smiled softly. "Want some help with that?"

Asuka just handed her the scissors and sighed. "Please, thank you and all that is good in this world- I need to get _out_ of this thing."

Tugging at the loose smart material, Misato smiled a bit wider and started cutting through the circuits and supports. "Red-hot, skin tight and sexy not working for you anymore?"

The redhead did an impressive show of crossing her arms, despite one being bound up against her side. "I'll die and be buried in a plugsuit- I don't want to _live in one _for two weeks ever again."

Misato's hesitant snip made the girl shiver, and the look Asuka gave her was something akin to panicked reassurance, short of a frantic waving of hands. "I'm in no hurry to die for my dimension either, I'd rather make the Angels die for theirs."

Making a few final cuts, Misato pulled the ragged strips of suit away and nodded. "And that Asuka, is why you and I get along so well. You up for a shower, before we head down? I think we can both fit."

"God yes."

* * *

><p>Hot water washed away soreness like little else. The only thing Misato had against the little ensuite showers was that they weren't actual baths- no way to really get a good long soak going. As far as convenience went though, they were hard to beat. The three weeks heading home aboard <em>Over the Rainbow<em> had beaten out a lot of the awkwardness with harsh realities and concessions. Before the fleet, Asuka would have been too proud and prudish to bathe with anyone else, but the showering conditions on the fleet didn't leave much room for beggars or choosers. Knowing each other let their hygenic alliance form out of convenient habit. Sudden luxuries like hot water on demand or soap that lathered... in a lot of ways, it felt like a dream.

Asuka for her part hadn't complained- in fact she'd gone well past that into being outright _helpful and understanding_, considering how injured she was. Misato had to admit she was a little worried about her girl having lost some of her fire, but at the same time, an off week or two wasn't unexpected. Tugging her wet hair back over her shoulder, Misato tried not to frown as she looked over her pilot, and the hash of angry red lines along her thighs, disappearing past the bottom edge of Asuka's red towel. There were other marks all along her arms and back too, some still stitched up.

The fleet surgeons were good, but well, battlefield conditions. "Don't pick at your scars."

"M'not." Asuka's hands hadn't been moving, but Misato felt the need to say so anyway.

Looking up, Misato spied a familiar home-bottled miracle and smirked. "Didn't you call this vomit, when you first saw it?"

Asuka glanced in the mirror and at the tube of home-brewed shampoo. "Puke, actually. I admit I was wrong about that... the fleet knows puke better than anyone." She scrubbed her face with a twice-repeated handful of water, as if washing away the thought. "Inescapable."

Smiling, Misato spread some of the thaumaturgical soap into her hands and nodded. Hard to believe she'd even _think_ the word thaumaturgy, or spend a good chunk of her time using the sleeping massage trick on Asuka or herself. She re-wet Asuka's hair with her free hand and the extendable showerhead, and just _knew_ Shinji must've made it by hand from scratch.

Asuka groaned when Misato started working in the lather, and like that _weeks_ of salt air, unwashed LCL and general stress seemed to melt out of the girl's hair and spirit. "Gonna have you do this for me when your hands are better, you know that right?"

"Fair's fair..." Asuka's head lolled forward, and Misato switched gears from shampoo to proper massage. The redhead let out an unintelligible grunt while her shoulders dropped.

Unfortunately, it couldn't be all good news. "I might have to cut some of your hair."

The girl stiffened, but didn't turn or lift her head. Misato heard her indignant, dismayed squeak all the same."W-what?"

"Just a bit at the ends! An inch maybe." Misato took a moment to smooth away some of the foam and pull a lock of hair forward, to show Asuka her ragged split-ends. "See? Just a little, might make it easier for you to take care of."

Bit by bit the tension drained out of Asuka's neck and shoulders, and she let out a faint sigh. "I guess..."

Misato smiled and wrapped her arms around Asuka's shoulders, hugging her close and not caring that she got a chin and chest full of suds for her trouble. "It'll be good, I promise!"

Having said that, Misato reached for the showerhead and set to rinse.

At sea, being _dry_ was a luxury. With heel-toe shifts and hot-bunking for most of the crew, when people got to take a shower, they squirmed into their uniforms while dripping wet and charged back to duty. Back _home_, Misato and Asuka had the chance to _towel off_. When the older woman had gotten done with Asuka, the girl's hair had _poofed_ into the most amazingly adorable frizzy mane, magic shampoo or no. It was quickly tamed by hand and brush though.

Finding clothes for Asuka wasn't difficult either- a pair of soft cotton drawstring shorts wouldn't catch on the wounds and casts, and keep everything nice and breathable. The same went for an impressively airy, oversized T-shirt. With Asuka sitting on the bed once more, now clean and dressed, Misato stood proud with her hands on hips, declaring her mission accomplished. "Feeling any better?"

Asuka's tone was flat as glass and absolutely parched. "Like I've been washed out of dogshit cavern on a tidal wave of headaches."

Misato swung around and landed hip first on the bed next to the girl, throwing an arm around her shoulder. "Asuka, lording over all those poor sailors has had a terrible influence on your vocabulary."

Despite being wedged against Misato's side, the girl didn't struggle as much as she might have. "You spent more time around them than I did!"

The lilt Misato put in her voice was calculated to devastating effect, and Asuka groaned into the crook ofher shoulder at the reminder._"Window-shopping~" _

But spending more than six weeks at sea with Misato _and_ an at-sea navy was more than enough to teach Asuka all kinds of comebacks.

"At the pawn shop." She huffed, hair bouncing slightly. "Who was the one with the terrible influences again?"

Misato just hugged the girl a little harder before standing up. Coming to a halt, Misato held an arm out for the girl and smiled again, earnest and reassuring. "You ready to head downstairs?"

Asuka strapped her eyepatch back on with one hand and blinked. "You're going to go out in that?"

Misato glanced down at her shorts and blank tank top, before giving the girl a teasing grin. "Coverage equivalent to a candy wrapper is the privilege the home and hearth, much like eating ice cream out of the carton or simply going nude outright!"

The redhead rolled her eye and smirked. "Naked would be better- at least people wouldn't _try_ to look."

"That might be true, but still, we're home!" Misato grinned, hugging herself and rocking back and forth on one heel while Asuka gave her a wan smile.

"Home." Asuka nodded faintly, testing her good hand. "Downstairs, one arm on the railing, you on my bad side?" The older woman felt her heart swell up with relief at that, nodding with a sly smile. "I thought every side was your good side?"

That earned a scoff, but Misato had become accustomed to that as Asuka's way. Never one to show flagging morale, though the girl certainly appreciated the levity. Together they eased out of the studio-loft and into the hallway, but stopped.

Misato blinked, then glanced down at the stairwell. "Do you smell that?"

Taking an experimental sniff, Asuka nodded. "...Not sure what." Her good eye went distant, and Misato recognized it as her eyepatch taking full attention. She focused back on Misato and shrugged. "This thing doesn't have gas spectrometry- go figure."

Making their way downstairs was easier than heading up, considering gravity's ever-present helping hand, and Asuka only slipped once. She caught herself on the rail and bit off a snarl, even as her eyes screwed shut and tears threatened to spill out. Misato didn't make a big deal out of it, something she'd learned over the past month. That wasn't the same as _ignoring it_ though, and she just waited for Asuka to take her arm once again.

The smells were getting sharper, and now Misato heard voices. Shinji's increasingly dominant sound, or Rei's own light speech. It didn't take long for her to note Ritsuko, or some less familiar voices- Shinji's friends? She wasn't sure either way. The remodeled layout of the apartment erased the old echoes and threw off her sense of the space, so it took her a second to turn away from one wall or hall. Twisting the other way, Misato rounded on the kitchen, and could only blink at the sight.

It was damn near a _party_, and the only thing missing were decorations. There was a brief moment where Misato remembered she was wearing even _less_ than her usual sleepwear, but then the smell hit her nose like a sledgehammer. She absently pulled the tank top back up around her shoulders with a free hand, but it slid back down when her fingers went slack.

_Is that an apple pie? An actual apple pie?_

Any further thought she had to going back up stairs to change died messily in the face of those aromas.

Shinji stuck to the kitchen counters, glowing softly and only breaking away long enough to deliver another finished plate to the dining room table. The table itself could have seated sixteen people, but Shinji had made enough food to cover every free inch of space.

Past that, she saw the guests- Ritsuko and Kaji, both nibbling on a plate of appetizers around the marble-top kitchen island. Shinji's friends had turned and bowed at her and Asuka's arrival, forcing Misato to blink rapidly. Her mind took it all in with snapshots, little snatches of the movement and conversation. She'd celebrated an American style Christmas with Asuka once, and _this_ 'morning' blew those out of the water.

Then her mind caught up and seized on a series of very important facts. No more galley food. No more baloney sandwiches. No more powdered eggs and milk, or instant mashed potatoes. Misato found her legs giving out for the second time in twenty four hours, and Asuka was slumping down right along side her. Everything they had asked for was on the table, visibly delicious and _waiting_.

Shinji, Rei and Kaji were suddenly _there_, at their sides at the bottom stairway. They kept a hand on their arms and shoulders, even as Misato and Asuka found a seat on the nearest step. Shinji was the first to speak, but Misato reached out to put a hand over his lips.

Asuka pulled off her eyepatch and let the tears flow free out of both eyes. "Third... Just let us have _this moment_."

The silence stretched out across the apartment for a handful of seconds, with only the sizzle of meat in a pan to punctuate it. Then, Misato couldn't help it, and neither could Asuka.

They burst out laughing.

* * *

><p>Misato, Kaji and Asuka had been given places of honor at the head and sides of the table. The fourth was left over for the guests, while the returning heroes had their choices of comfort food spread out before them. Heated pans, containers and other warmers kept everything piping hot and ready to serve. Asuka hadn't stopped crying since descending the stairs, and for once she didn't care.<p>

Before they started loading a plate, Ikari pressed a white tablet into their hands, nodding once. "Thaumaturgy pharmaceutical- It'll help keep your stomachs settled with all the rich food."

Asuka watched as Misato popped the pill without even asking a question, and Kaji took that as enough reason to follow suit. She stared at the little thing between her fingers... Then glanced at the... She couldn't even _pick_ something to name from the table- she wanted it all. Her stomach growled, and that clinched it for her. Asuka tossed the tablet back and swallowed. It went down easier than she expected, but another churning growl from her middle was more than enough reason to put it out of her mind.

Instead Asuka turned to the food and started dishing up. Ikari had been good on his word- better than she hoped or imagined. The German cuisine she missed or the American food she had come to love back in college- it was all there. The bacon cheeseburger he had crafted was three times as big as her fist, top bun off to one side and the whole thing waiting to be stacked with whatever trimmings she wanted. Crisp lettuce, savory tomato- she could go for _the works_. The bacon was _still steaming_ as she watched.

Golden crispy fries joined the burger, then some bratwurst and Sauerkraut- stereotypical she knew but it was _comfort food dammit_. Eventually the plate got too heavy for her to lift with just the one arm, but Kaji was there without even being asked, helping her pull the tower of food back into eating distance. Even cut in half, the main-course burger was a glorious mess to eat, and Asuka felt her eyes roll back into her head with the first bite. Asuka smiled into the mouthful, lips and cheeks smeared with gourmet sauces and her own happy tears.

It tasted like bloody victory.

* * *

><p>Hours passed, and Misato wondered if Heaven had moved into her stomach and summered on top of her taste buds. It was an agonizingly strained metaphor, but she honestly <em>did not care<em>. She stretched languidly, braced against the chair back and again relishing how her spine popped. An attentive male audience hadn't hurt either, and after _Rei_ had let out a window-shaking belch, no one there had any more illusions about the female half of the species. The pedestal was well and truly broken.

She traced a finger over her bare stomach and sighed. Everyone here had seen her at her worst already, so no need for much in the way of pretenses. Everyone in the apartment had been pulled into the crazy NERV life. _Breakfast_ had felt more like meals with old friends, or old soldiers. It was nice to just let herself relax...

Something cold appeared in her open hand- a premium import lager. Misato blinked and looked up to see Ritsuko smiling down at her. She had faint bags around her eyes, but the blonde's smile was full and honest. "Ikari-kun packed a cooler," She raised a crystal goblet. "And I broke into your wine cabinet."

Misato cocked her head to the side even as she worked the can open with one hand. She took a savory sip and hummed. "I have a wine cabinet?"

Ritsuko just jerked her chin at a particularly handsome bit of furniture set into the kitchen wall. "I think the First and Third emptied their disposable income for this little get-together."

The dark-haired woman felt the sympathetic ache in her own mental wallet, eying the table full of gourmet leftovers, most of them still delightfully hot and savory. "I'll pay them back. I'll even pay them back before the war's over and then I'll _win_ the war."

"I think you will too, on both counts, Katsuragi." Ritsuko toasted her friend with a thin, sparking smile.

With beer in hand and good company, Misato was content to let the evening wear on. The sun had set and the stars were coming out in force, and the lights of downtown Tokyo-3 were shooting up into the sky over the Hakone region hillsides. She sipped her lager and hummed. Looking out across her kitchen, the living room... Her kids had bought a _new _TV, a giant one at that, and Aida-kun was fussing with something near the bottom console. The rest of them settled into their pairs and trios, mingling some ways and not in others.

Asuka was a bit like oil in water, it seemed. There wasn't any anger there though, just a distance between the redhead and the other kids. Asuka was tough, sitting firm on her couch and attentive. She wasn't going to break over something so stupid as not being the center of attention, not after the last month. Kaji hovered outside in the meantime, wreathed in cigarette smoke and standing like a guardian in shadow. Misato had to admit it fit him a lot better than the spy or charming rogue.

Still glancing around, Misato tried to match her old apartment with the new expanded space. Her room was gone, the hallway and the old spare bedroom and storage were replaced, by what she hadn't found out. The kitchen was miraculous, with everything hidden behind a panel or clever folding cabinet. Something nagged at her though, like it was missing. Double-oven, gas range, check. Sink, refrigerator behind some hidden panel, wine cabinet, more counter...

"Where's PenPen's fridge?"

Misato hadn't meant for her voice to carry so far, but the whole party stopped, nearly a dozen pairs of eyes locked on her. Still, she sat up and cocked her head, glancing at Shinji, master of renovations. He just pointed at what had been the hallway toward his old room.

Summoned as if by magic, the hot-springs penguin waddled out into the party proper, with a newspaper folded under one flipper. The penguin looked up at Shinji and blinked a tiny, dry eye at the boy. "Wark."

Misato blinked when Shinji let out out a short laugh. "Sorry, I should have woken you- I did set aside some top shelf for you though."

Everyone watched as the penguin gave Shinji a one-wing salute, hobbling off to a corner of the kitchen that Misato couldn't see past. He came back a moment later with a plate full of handsome looking fish. PenPen stared down the crowd, as if daring them to try and take his meal. Now Misato knew better than most that PenPen was damn smart, smart enough to beat her at poker, enough to work a TV or his powered refrigerator door...

"Shinji..." Misato cocked her head to the side, blinking. "You don't drink enough to talk to penguins without it looking bad, what gives?"

"Oh, I can understand him just fine these days." He waved his hand at his head and for once, willed the gold brand to appear on his brow. It didn't outshine or scour the apartment, but it made his point all the same.

Rei jumped in from her place a top a bean bag chair before Misato or anyone else could ask the next question. "He translates for my rats as well, and has taught them basic arithmetic."

Misato just mouthed the word 'rats', but shook her head. Priorities. "You can understand PenPen?"

Her favorite boy just nodded. Misato glanced between him and PenPen, thinking. The penguin was happily downing one fish after another, blithely ignoring the conversation happening quite literally over his feathered head. Well, time for _one_ mystery to get solved.

"Shinji~" Misato slid out of her chair and stood up to her full impressive height of five foot three and bounced, smiling broadly. "Does PenPen have anything he wants to say to me?"

The boy scratched the back of his head and nodded, mumbling. "He can understand _you_ all just fine, how else can he watch the news or read the paper..." He looked down at PenPen, who was now suddenly very much paying attention.

One by one the various party goers started to gather around Shinji and her penguin-roommate. They all watched, enraptured, as a bit of winged pantomime carried into a one-sided conversation, punctuated by a 'waaaugh' or 'wark' here and there, Misato found her eyes flicking between PenPen and Shinji, and noting the boy turning an increasingly incandescent red.

PenPen concluded his declaration with a firm nod, giving Shinji a pointed stare before jerking his head at Misato. His eyes locked on hers, and if he had been red before, he skipped scarlet and crimson and went straight into beetroot. His jaw worked once, twice, until finally he just rapidly shook his head and clamped his mouth shut.

Misato just whistled, grinning impishly. "I think I get it, say no more."

There was a long moment of silence then, when everyone else caught up with the idea of Shinji being able to understand a penguin.

Through all of this, Asuka had twisted around to look over the back of the couch. She smirked faintly up at Shinji. "I admit, with all this and the penguin being apparently missing, I was thinking you might've cooked him up by mistake."

The tallest teenager sighed explosively and made a visible show of getting the color and mortification out of his cheeks. Misato blinked at that. She knew better than most how easy it was to short his brain out. Glancing at Ayumi on the other bean bag cushion, Misato wondered just _what_ had happened while they were gone...

Huffing faintly and still a bit red in the face, Shinji shot Asuka a sly, knowing look. "No, my diet's mainly Rambo movies, after all."

* * *

><p>The thing that made Misato return to consciousness was the painkillers wearing off. Four weeks of stress and aches didn't go away with two nights rest.<p>

The thing that _woke her up_ was the sound and smell of a western breakfast in her apartment.

Wriggling deeper into the couch cushions, Misato opened her eyes a crack and smiled at the uncovered windows. The sun played over the hills and roofs of her neighborhood, leading to a gradually brightening dawn. She glanced at the warm weight wrapped up against her side and grinned a bit wider. Asuka was a pretty good blanket, it seemed.

A quiet background sizzle injected new life into the apartment, and bit by bit, people picked themselves up from where they'd fallen. Most of the teenagers had begged off on curfew, taken home by Ritsuko and Deja. Misato and the pilots meanwhile had found something comfortable enough to settle in and sleep off the party. Asuka shifted, stretching hesitantly and blinking with one uncovered eye. She gave Misato a sleepy stare, unfocused and uncomprehending. Something under that mop of red hair finally clicked over hard enough to make Asuka cringe. Muttering, she untangled her arms from around Misato and winced, pulling at her eye patch.

With both eyes bare, the pilot looked up at Misato again and sighed. The older woman just nodded, all too aware of the same pains. Ignoring the inevitable bluster, Misato smirked and leaned in to smooth down Asuka's bangs and press her lips against the girl's head. It was good to be home.

Sliding off the couch and to her feet, Misato nodded and helped the girl get situated, helping her lay down. This led to her grabbing the TV remote for Asuka and a spare, apparently hand-woven blanket to throw over her legs. While the sun climbed higher in the sky, Misato nodded to herself and spun about, wondering where to go. She and Asuka needed more of those painkillers, for one, but where had Shinji gotten them...

Wandering past the kitchen, she glanced at Shinji, still hard at work at the stove. The first thought that came to mind, Misato cut off with a wry smirk- teasing could wait for later. Pills, now. Passing by a dividing wall, Misato almost ran chest first into Rei. Instead they stopped just shy of each other, and Misato barely had to look down to see bleary red eyes and long blue hair piled up on one side. The girl ran a hand over her head and tried to tug the bedhead back under control.

Peering around Misato's side and into the kitchen, Rei gave the tiniest indication of a frown, and her voice dropped down to a whisper. "I enjoy Shinji-kun's cooking, but... Perhaps Ikari is taking your return home as an excuse to 'handle everything', even if it is just at home."

Medicine all but forgotten, Misato nodded and tugged Rei further into hallway for the apparently somewhat-private conversation. Turning the girl around until Misato could help with Rei's hair, she hummed. "He enjoys it though. I'd never want to take it away, but he does... overdo things, sometimes?"

"Time management has been a frustration of his these past months... I believe he's already started preparing our lunches and dinners, as we speak."

Finished having worked out the snags, Misato nodded and wrapped her arms around Rei's middle, hugging her from behind. "So you're thinking maybe he needs a little more balance in his life?"

Hesitating at first, Rei just laid her hands on Misato's and squeezed, before speaking. "More or less. Perhaps a male influence? He has been surrounded by a... credulity-straining number of women for the past year."

_She says that sort of thing on purpose..._ Misato shook her head and let out a quiet little laugh. "There's nothing wrong with being domestic..."

The blue-haired girl leaned into the hug even more, humming. "But there is more to life than being such, Misato-san."

And perhaps Rei was right. Misato tucked the girl's head under her chin as she mulled it over. Shinji really _did_ do right by all the women in his life, and he tried to in a way that would make a girl smile in all the right ways. A positive male role model would probably do wonders for the boy too. Maybe help him be a bit more assertive... Of course, the question would be _who_.

The universe was in the mood to provide, it seemed. A new shadow poured into the hallway, and it resolved as Kaji Ryoji, complete with a steaming mug of coffee in hand. Misato blinked once and stared at the man, then down at Rei, who looked up at her and blinked right back. The man just stared at the pair, lost and confused.

Finally, Misato looked back up at Kaji and sighed. "Rei, this might just be a case where the cure is worse than the disease."

* * *

><p>The 'main floor' apartment space had roughly four areas after Shinji had gotten through with it, one of which was the hallway leading to some still empty spaces and the main bathroom that Misato still hadn't had a chance to look at. The kitchen hadn't moved much, only expanding slightly into what had been Misato's bedroom, and the rest of what he called an 'open concept' design.<p>

In the actual living room, Asuka had turned on the TV and filled the space with the sounds of early-morning programming. Cartoons, infomercials and the early-bird news reports were enough of a cover that Misato felt it safe to discuss... matters with the UN Inspector. She'd sent Rei off to join Asuka, before tugging Kaji to the table by his grimy lapel. He hadn't had a chance to change since the fleet returned.

Shinji kept bustling along in the kitchen, insulated from everything else in the apartment.

The last section was the dining room, and it wasn't so much a room as a rectangle of hardwood floor and handsome handmade table, surrounded by chairs. Feeling the cool wood of the chair seat against her bare thighs, Misato winced. She hadn't changed since yesterday either. Crossing her arms over her chest, she huffed. "Eyes up, Kaji. We're not in college and there are children present."

"_Children_, maybe." Kaji just toasted her, smiling over the rim of his mug. She didn't mistake the English word he used for what it was. "You and I were late for that kind of thing anyway."

Misato just let out a snort and resisted the urge to cross her legs, to do anything that'd give him more ammunition. "We came home in the middle of something, didn't we?"

The dark-haired man nodded, taking another sip of coffee before he answered. "More than a few somethings."

Well _that_ was cryptic, as usual. Misato scowled a bit harder before shifting, quietly putting her hands flat on the table and rising up. If he wanted to play at his coy little spy game, fine. Time to flip the board. Looming over the man, Misato _dared_ him to ogle her lazy-day tank top and shorts. Doing it slowly hadn't made it any less effective. Kaji blinked, but his eyes for once _did not_ wander.

"I don't know what you're into, _Inspector_, but I know that the Sub-Commander locked you up _for your own good_." She leaned in close, keeping her voice low and eyes locked on his. "And I do know I can very much make _anything_ you do a living hell if it endangers my pilots or my mission."

Kaji stared right back, a little wide-eyed, but steady. "I suppose I can understand that. I'd rather not step on anyone's toes either, so..."

He trailed off, shrugging with one arm. Misato settled back in her chair, absently pulling a loose strap back into place and sweeping her hair back over her shoulders. The rest of the apartment hadn't even noticed the little demonstration. Kaji had made a fairly open proposal with that hanging statement, and now Misato had to make the call. Leaning against the chair back, Misato chewed her thumb, wondering.

Not that Kaji had anything approaching good timing. He looked down at his coffee and hummed thoughtfully. "The brew Shinji made back during that MAGI crisis was better."

Misato knew better than to indulge the man in his tangents, but found herself curiosity overcoming her general wariness. Cocking her head to the side, and more than a bit bemused at the sudden change in topic, she asked the obvious question. "Did you make it or did he?"

"I did, with his machine." He pointed with his mug at the rebuilt espresso contraption, holding pride of place on the counter next to the fridge. Turning back to Misato, he gave her a grin that brought up _all kinds_ of memories. "So Katsuragi, what are the terms of my imprisonment- chained to your wall, or your bed? I should warn you though, I'm still a snuggler."

There was an awful, extended period of _absolutely horrible_ silence. The sheer audacity- that _incorrigible man-pig_. Hot blood rushed up to her cheeks and started to spread down her neck and past her collarbone, leaving the rest of her chilled and goosefleshed. A thousand and one comebacks all tumbled through Misato's mind in the span of a heartbeat, even though some part of her knew he expected it, _wanted_ the old spars to start again. She took a quiet breath and started to count to ten, declaring her skin unto iron.

But somehow, _Shinji_ saved the day. "Do adults actually talk like that, or is it just you?"

The teenager had snuck up on them like a breeze, standing on the opposite side of the table and yet still towering over Misato and Kaji both. He'd set down a fresh mug of coffee with one hand and pushed a cold, unopened can of import lager over to Misato with the other. Instead of retreating to the kitchen, he sat down, even as Misato found herself cracking the tab on autopilot. Normally he gave her the stink-eye about drinking in the morning, but it seemed like he was still happy they were home.

Kaji meanwhile gaped slightly, and Misato _relished_ the look. It was so hard to catch Kaji off guard. He took the new mug and blew away the steam, taking a careful sip. He shot bolt upright, licking his lips and whistling. "Now _this_ is what I remember, Ikari-kun."

Shinji just gave the man a polite nod before turning back to Misato, giving her an apologetic look. "This probably isn't the best time to talk about it, but it's been _months_ and you're finally back but..."

More things changed, the more they stayed the same, it seemed. Misato laughed softly into her beer, waving. "Shinji, easy! As serious as you are, the only serious thing I want to hear about is how serious you and Ayumi-chan are."

The man and boy sitting at the table just gave her a near identical flat look, then Kaji shook his head, grinning. Shinji just sighed. "Misato, that was terrible. And I think we're fairly not-serious?"

Misato sighed, overblown and dramatic. It felt _good_ to be home, to be doing the familiar things, Kaji excluded. Shinji though had changed, even if he'd gone a little red there at end. Instead, Misato couldn't help but notice things, like how he sat up straighter, and looked a little bit more attentive. His clothes were different too, handmade like nearly everything else in the apartment and expertly tailored. He looked... professional, almost. Like he wasn't just thinking about today, but the next day and the one after that.

It was an almost _guarded_ look, and the Shinji she'd known two months ago had to _hide in the Geofront_ to avoid her reading him.

Something was bothering him though, and Misato could hear the worry in his voice. "You helped design the fortress-city, right?"

Blinking twice, Misato nodded and wondered where he was going. "Indirectly. When I was in Officer Candidate School, Tokyo-2 and 3 were the big theoretical exercises, and all the classes did simulations and theoretical papers on it. We didn't know about the Evangelions back then, or the Angels directly, but almost all my plans were outside the box or something."

Taking another sip of her beer, Misato hummed thoughtfully. "I was known for stuff like Operation Yashima, against the positron Angel? Back in twenty-oh-eight, everybody was locked into the idea of mobile armies charging out to meet the enemy, or asymmetrical warfare. When Tokyo-3 was proposed, most commanders had to fall back on old castle strategies."

Winking, she toasted Shinji with her half-empty beer. "I was one of the few who remembered the fortress-city sat in a country with good roads and railways"

Shinji was quiet then, staring at his hands. He glanced up at Kaji, then back at her. "So they built the city based on your papers?"

"Some, I was brought in around twenty-ten for more on-sight planning, but I was living out of UN housing or hotels most of the time. I moved in here-" Misato waved lazily at the apartment, smiling. "The day before I went to pick you up from the first Angel."

That got a weak laugh out of the boy. "I remember, and I remember the mess..."

After he trailed off, Shinji looked down at his hands and sighed. To Misato, it sounded like some aching pain had just let go. Tilting his head back up, he fixed blue eyes on her brown ones and nodded. "So... they never told you."

Misato just cocked her head to the side, absently tugging an errant strap back up over her shoulder where it belonged. "Tell me what?"

Shinji took another short breath, and his eyes cut towards Kaji, who'd been watching the discussion with what Misato knew was his patented lack of interest. Meanwhile, Shinji's hands drummed on the table, and he exhaled. "Tokyo-3's a sham. If it's not helping the Evangelions, it's not worth using..." He waved his hand at the walls, past them and towards the city itself. "The anti-angel bunkers, the civilian shelters? You could take them apart with hand tools... "

A lot of thoughts ran through Misato's mind, most of them unimportant. They weren't in the place to discuss that kind of thing, but as far as timing went, sooner was better, when it came to her city. Home for less than two days and they were already dealing with a crisis. Another cheerfully insistent part of her reminded Misato that she wasn't _dressed_ for that kind of discussion either, and her tank top slipped off her shoulders again to prove it.

The cotton was mocking her, she was sure of it.

The last and most pressing thought was the _question_ hidden in all of that. Had _she _known about the shelters. At her open and honest look of confusion, Shinji laid it all out for her. Misato felt the slow roil of betrayal and revulsion build up in her gut with every word. He'd stumbled across it all thanks to a black-market scam, war profiteering in the middle of Tokyo-3. Politics and budget cuts made it possible, and that lead to his dealings with the established, entrenched journalist regime in the fortress-city. A true corporate organ.

Misato opened her mouth to answer, but Kaji beat her to it. "Katsuragi never knew about it, but I saw it on one or two inspection tours. NERV is kind of like hot water in a pot- the lightest stuff rises and evaporates, forgotten."

Misato blinked at that, and found herself staring at the man like he'd grown a second head. She could _enjoy_ his presence when he was being a father to Asuka, but now he brought out his _mission_. She looked over at Shinji to see his reaction. Bewilderment, apparently. Misato regarded all the looks and expressions that swept over Shinji's face, even as his eyes cut from her to Kaji and back. It was almost understandable though- Shinji barely even knew Kaji, aside from what she'd already told him.

That lack of knowledge, and then realizing that _Kaji_ knew more than even Misato herself... The dark-haired woman shot the boy an encouraging look, reminding him she was there, that she had his back. Finally, the boy gave Kaji a decisive, if distant nod. Misato touched her fingers to her lip and smirked, knowing that was his problem-solving look.

Still, it wasn't all sunshine and roses. The ticking clock out in the living room reminded her that the sham-city was still out there, and they still needed to _do_ something about it. Her dipping mood must have been obvious, because Kaji took it upon himself to assist. In the least helpful way.

"Well, about your previous offer, Katsuragi..." He smiled and spread his hands wide, almost sprawling in the dining room chair. You make it sound so appealing, how could I say no?"

He didn't even have the decency to wait for her reply. Instead, Kaji smirked, reaching up to tug his collar and first shirt button open. The red tie was already lost to the Pacific some weeks ago. "Is the part where I ask how the rent is due?"

Misato just gave him the most parched, level stare she could muster. Flatter than a mirror and dry as a bone, she drawled. "I don't take advance payments."

She shook her empty beer and turned to Shinji, still lost in his planning. A small part of her grinned inwardly at his almost protective scowl, hidden beneath a faint blush. "Shinji-kun, could you maybe get me another beer, and reheat those steaks from last night, with some eggs? I think we both could use a pick-me-up after all this."

The teenager nodded once and pulled away from the table, but not before his little glare heated up a bit more. Kaji just seemed to let it roll like water off a duck's back, patently unconcerned.

Propping himself up on one arm, face cradled in hand, he gave Misato an oddly wistful look. "Well, if I don't win your heart back after all this, I'm happy to know someone's going to take good care of it."

* * *

><p>A good breakfast was not good enough. Even an <em>excellent<em> breakfast wouldn't have covered it. The sheer sense of recognition he felt they deserved, it felt bigger than the whole world- even the planet itself. In his mind, he felt his arms stretch to encompass that whole impossible weight. Ikari Shinji started to believe, not just in that it was _possible_, but that he really _could _hold the world, for himself or those who deserved it. The thought didn't scare him anywhere near as much as it might have, even three months ago.

Sorhyu and Misato deserved it, or at least the small sliver he could give and bend to their needs.

So he'd coaxed his fellow pilots and commanding officer out of the apartment, once mid morning rolled around. Sorhyu had eased into her wheelchair and Misato pushed, while Shinji was more than a little glad neither of them had a chance to look up at the building roof. Yesterday, they'd almost slept through even seeing the front door. Rei had seen a glimpse from the ground, but she was more than patient. Together, the four of them made their way to the elevator, and Shinji found himself talking. Laying out what he'd done over the months, leaving out some important details like his after-school activities... He didn't need to weigh everyone down with that more than he already had.

Hands and arms moved, he gestured and smiled, and there was a curious thought in the back of his mind that told him _you don't give speeches_. The rest of him came back and said the first and only time he'd given one, Misato had been standing behind him. The talent and verve was coming out more naturally, and drawing on even a minor trickle of his power didn't feel so... awkward. Shinji watched the anticipation building up in red, blue and brown eyes, leaving three of the most important women in his life hanging on his every word.

_That _kind of scared him, a little, but it also made him feel like the tallest person in the room.

_Wait._

The elevator was a bit crowded, considering Sorhyu's chair, but nobody seemed to mind. Misato was in the center, wedged with Rei and Shinji to either side, hip to hip to hip.

While the old pulleys and cables lifted the cab up the two floors, Shinji scratched the back of his head. "So like I was saying, I moved the thaumaturgy lab down into the garage, so I could work near Rei and just, not be so alone."

"But then I had all this space on the rooftop and well, we're one of the tallest buildings here so..." He timed the line just as the doors slid open, and he knew their jaws had dropped.

A hand on Misato's back nudged her and Sorhyu forward, rolling out of the elevator and onto flat, irregular stone pavers. Awe rolled off the girls like steam, even Rei was lost, looking up and around at the bamboo walls that surrounded the expanded rooftop. The rooftop tar paper was gone, as were the massive steel-enclosed fans on almost every building.

In their place and half-obscured by thin mist was an almost mountain retreat. Misato kept pushing Sorhyu ahead, moving smoothly along the path and over the wooden footbridge. Fast flowing water burbled over rocks beneath them, and the older woman twisted, whipping her head around left and right. Shinji could almost _hear_ herlist the features in her mind. Heated, steaming pools. Waterfall showers, bath-house and attached bar. Private places to sit, soak and stay for _hours_. There was even a raised deck just about ideal for sunbathing.

Finally Misato turned, but not before twisting Sorhyu's chair and locking the brake. She fixed him with a wide-eyed, gaping stare. "Shinji, why is my rooftop a hot spring?"

Shinji smiled broadly, matching her classic, sunshine grin with one of his own. He opened his mouth to answer, but then _Rei_ was there, throwing her arms around his midsection. She clung like a magnet and squeezed, hard.

She looked up while he looked down, and Rei gave him a tiny, earnest grin. "This was not for me, but I am enthused regardless."

"It's for all of you." Shinji laughed and ran a free hand through his hair, waving at the sprawling resort with his other. "Two of you are active pilots, and Misato- you've been managing everyone at home and at NERV for almost two years now. I've had two _months_ to think about how to pay you back for that."

Looking back up, he locked eyes with Misato and nodded, more than ready to drive his point home. "You have a job that demands superhuman effort out of you, so as your superhuman friend I felt it necessary to build you a superhumanly great means to cope with it. Because I care."

Sorhyu cocked her head to the side and smirked, while her uncovered blue eye seemed to shine with something other than fury. "I think it's a bit more than _care_, Ikari."

To that all Shinji could do was shrug. "Well, I can't care any _less_ than this, so..."

Anything else he wanted to say died in his throat, because Misato had launched herself off the footbridge and slammed into his chest. The sudden impact of fifty-some kilograms of Tactical Operations Director and his sheepish stance was enough to force him backwards, reeling on one heel and whirling dangerously. Shrieking, Misato laughed into his chest as they twisted around together while Shinji unconsciously flexed his soul and body to buoy the two of them on preternatural grace. After that, finding sure footing was an absolute certainty.

Moving like he'd practiced his entire life, Shinji dropped low and hooked his arms behind Misato's knees and back, all but tossing her airborne as he straightened. Rei was just off to the side and clasped her hands, gently swaying with shining red eyes. For the blue-haired girl, that was positively _ecstatic_. Even Sorhyu smiled, looking like an entirely different girl. Misato meanwhile landed with a ringing peal of laughter, throwing her arms around his neck, holding tight and curling up to plant a firm wet kiss on his cheek.

Reeling, Shinji felt the band of red stretch across his cheeks, but he still held her close, smiling and laughing.

With his brain high on affection and euphoria, he almost missed Rei's endearing little smile, or Sorhyu's knowing look. He _definitely_ missed Misato sliding out of his arms and hot-stepping deeper into the pool complex. When he finally did start paying attention to what he was seeing, Misato had already cheerfully peeled off her faded grey T-shirt and knock-around tank top.

As Misato tossed her shirts aside and asked Rei to help look for towels, Shinji let out a weak laugh and took a step back. Misato may not have been a _mystery_ but she was still a _novelty_. However, lacking a suitable alibi for the occasion, a hasty retreat while her back was turned was beginning to look like an _excellent _idea.

He glanced down at Sorhyu, still on the bridge and in her chair. She smiled thinly and shook her head. Shinji sucked in a quick breath and clapped, rubbing his hands while giving her a respectful nod, "Right- everything should be straightforward. If you need anything, I'll be downstairs, getting the mail or something."

"What I need-" Misato half-turned to look over her shoulder, catching Shinji's eye and tossing a wink his way. "-is for you to enjoy this too."

* * *

><p>When it came to his hobbies, Asuka could unabashedly admit that Ikari knew what he was doing. The hot spring complex was expansive, taking up the entire roof and extending out over the parking lot and surrounding property. Everywhere she looked, Asuka saw more than enough of... <em>everything<em> to make their day. Part of it was bath house, kitchen and mini-bar. Another part was a deck for sunbathing and handling a grill. And every thing she examined showed her a new way to use stone, wood and water. The high bamboo walls blocked off the outlying urban slice of Hakone, save for the side that faced the hills to the north-west, toward Downtown Tokyo-3 and Mount Fuji.

She couldn't even get in the water, but just _being there_ was relaxing.

In the pool just to Asuka's side, the nominal adult spread her arms out wide and leaned against the pool edge, letting out a long, satisfied sigh. "This is the _life_, isn't it Asuka?"

Of course, Misato would have already hit 'relaxed'. Asuka cocked her head to the side and smirked, eyeing the floating tray laden with gold label alcohol. Relaxed and on her way to outright inebriated. The older woman sank deeper into the water with a husky breath, practically glowing. Back with the fleet, Misato had proven more than once that good times were best shared, making a vicarious example of herself. She was a strange friend, but a good one.

"Get back to me about that in a week." Asuka smirked, sitting spring-side in her wheelchair with a pile of envelopes and magazines in her lap. "After I get the casts off and can actually join you."

Holding a saucer to her lips and tipping it back, Misato toasted her, smiling broadly ."I'll hold you to that, Asuka."

The pilot could only smirk a bit wider at that and nodded, before turning back to the half-sorted piles in her lap. Junk and bills, as inevitable as death and taxes. Ikari actually _had_ gone down and gotten the mail like he said, though Asuka knew an excuse when she heard one. Point in his favor at least, not taking advantage of Misato's... Misato-ness. Rei hadn't stayed long either, only helping Misato explore the rooftop complex for a bit before saying she had to leave. Awkwardly and a bit hesitant, her friend had made a point to hug the half-dressed Misato _and_ _then _wrapped her arms around Ikari when he came back to drop the mail off.

Finally, she'd given Asuka a look the redhead couldn't quite place, not pity or contempt, but some kind of downcast thing. Rei had glanced at Ikari's retreating back and Misato's distracted smile, before letting out a morose sigh and leaving.

It wasn't the homecoming Asuka had been expecting, to say the least. She ripped through the next letter a bit faster than strictly necessary, spilling some paper shreds into the water just beneath her feet. Misato didn't seem to notice at least. Asuka sucked in a low breath and willed her hands to relax. It was _probably_ nothing. Rei had the whole raised-by-nobody thing. Some missing social cue, nothing to worry about.

Asuka wasn't happy about needing reassure herself in the first place.

Suppressing a sigh, she consigned the last envelope to the 'junk' pile and set aside. Licking her lips, Asuka hefted the stack of glossy, glue-bound goodness and settled in for a great morning of brain-rotting fluff. She'd saved the best for last. First in line was a high-class fashion mag with a decidedly late-eighties bent, the wraparound glasses and out-there styles were very much a product of Misato's era. Asuka let out a low laugh, paging past more than a few disastrous looks and spying some diamonds in the rough- Misato had to have gotten her black mini _somewhere_ after all.

One rag gave way to another, and Asuka giggled at the gossip and sickeningly saccharine pulp reporting. A guilty pleasure to be sure, but an immensely enjoyable one regardless. Down time was a very important aspect of a healthy lifestyle. Glancing out the corner of her good eye, Asuka watched Misato bask in the steaming waters without shame. Asuka let out a teasing little snort. Hard to get more 'down time' than that.

Tossing aside the last two magazines, Asuka blinked and stared at an iconic, red-bordered cover. _TIME_ Magazine had survived Second Impact largely intact, and she'd seen the cover often enough back in Massachusetts. Asuka had to wonder how or why Misato got a subscription. A white envelope had been taped to the front, addressed to Misato and stamped with Section Two's simple numerical identifier.

Well, that explained how, but not the why. Sneaking another look at Misato, Asuka weighed her options. Sneak a look now, or hand it off...

That wasn't even a choice. She pulled off the envelope and screamed a second later.

Asuka saw herself on the cover of _TIME Magazine_.

It only took a few seconds for her to mark the time and place, and a memory of an everyman with thin brown hair surged into her mind. The photo was of her, standing plugsuit-clad on the carrier deck during the long run toward Panama and the Caribbean. Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, she stared down at her image. Caught in the middle of turning at the hip to face the camera, it was a soul-searing three-quarters shot of her from head to toe.

The blue Pacific ocean and skyline stretched out behind her, and she was a black and red slash against the horizon. The wind had pulled her hair back away from her neck and face, while her leather coat hung down almost to her knees, leaving her sleeves to bunch up around her wrists. She should have looked heroic, or imperious, or defiant, or any number of other things that such a dramatic shot should have entailed. Instead she was anything but.

The Asuka in the picture looked _dull_, like she'd been drained of color and life until she was gaunt, skin and bones.

Asuka willed herself to keep her jaw from clenching. Looking down at her own uncovered legs, scars or not, she was built like a _gymnast_. The photo made her look a full foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter- like a delicate little glass _bird_. She knew without seeing that the light had gone out of her eyes, just like the blue uncovered eye in the photo.

A warm, wet weight settled across her shoulders, and Asuka blinked. She finally noticed Misato that had shot out of the bath and to her side, asking what was wrong. Along the way, the woman's dripping arm had wrapped around her in some directionless gesture of support. Misato locked her eyes on Asuka's good one, and she followed the stare down to the glossy cover.

Seeing Misato's mouth turn down into a thin scowl was enough for Asuka to grab onto, shoving the shock and dismay aside for much more productive _fury_. She flipped the magazine open and found the cover article, eye flickering over the words and spread photographic spread.

"What the fuck is this shit." Asuka let out a rough, shaky hiss. Flipping through the twelve pages of text and photos. "None of these are my good side- and they didn't even have the decency to find one where I was _smiling_."

The pattern held true, too. There were a few shots of Misato looking model-gorgeous out on the carrier deck, interspersed with the apparently declassified pictures of the battle itself. Blurry frames of the Angel arcing through the air over the carrier, or the ships exploding when it attacked from below. There wasn't any sign of the white Evangelion, and only a single shot of _her_ machine, mauled and unpowered after the battle had ended.

"Fuck you- I _won!" _She growled, flipping the pages faster and faster. "We fucking won that, screw you!"

Every turn was even more damning. "Goddamn camera-jockey asshole! We kicked it's ass and you do this to me?!"

They had _immortalized _Asuka at her lowest, and played her for a 'heartbreaking story of a child-soldier'. Frozen instants of her sobbing into Misato's chest and swaddled in blankets, before being hauled off to medics. The actual article went on a sensationalist tangent, declaring and decrying NERV as some hellish military-industrial regime. A 'technocratic pseudo-nation backed by its unnatural war machines, piloted by unwanted or unwilling orphans'. The pictures and text missed the triumphs, like how the crowds around her Eva had been cheering. None of the times she smiled through the tears, or the crew lifting her stretcher over their heads like she was an incarnate goddess.

Instead it was just a long attention-demanding screed, tearing at NERV's reputation for a sellout printing.

Then Asuka saw one of the call outs, and read the caption, pointing at a shot of her being carried belowdecks for treatment. She spoke it out loud, toneless and disbelieving. "Tragic Doll-Soldier taken in for repair. Is the cost too great?"

Asuka flung the magazine into the water, swinging hard enough to rise halfway out of her wheelchair. "Maybe it should have _eaten _you instead, shithead!"

Misato shifted around, and Asuka distantly noted the woman's hair had fallen out of its messy bun. She took a moment to pull Asuka's chair around and set it against some low-lying rocks, cut at just the right height to serve as a pool-side bench seat. Then she waded back into the pool and plucked the _magazine_ from its watery grave before coming back alongside. Shaking out the sodden pages, Misato stretched the pages out between them, and Asuka heard the woman hum thoughtfully. Then, something warm and wet touched Asuka's leg, and her head shot up to fix Misato with a look. The older woman didn't turn away from the article, but one bare calf brushed against Asuka's uncovered shin.

"I didn't approve this. I'll have to make some calls about this..." Misato turned the page and bit her lip, before finally looking up. "Still. Asuka."

All Asuka could do right then was _huff_, crossing her one good arm over her chest and whipping her head to the side. "This _sucks_. I can't even _do_ anything about it!"

Throwing her hand out, she tried to direct all her rage into her hand for paper-incineration purposes. When that didn't work, she again wished her eyepatch had a built-in laser. Denied both, she settled for running a hand through her hair and letting out a harsh, rasping breath.

"I can't write in for a retraction, because even if I _were_ emancipated, I'm still fourteen, and that'd just make me look even _more_ childish." Asuka growled, just shy of seething. "I can't ask NERV to do anything either, because that'd make _everyone_ look bad, needing the big bad NGO to wipe my nose. Anyone digging too deeply would probably use it as an excuse to question the validity of my degree, so _that _is useless too!"

Asuka sighed and growled again, wishing they'd never let that photographer fly off at Panama. The older woman couldn't help but point out that it was probably the editiors call.

Misato didn't say anything further, but managed to be a supportive presence regardless. Asuka watched as the woman paged through the soaked article, humming with Asuka herself in the wheelchair and Misato on the bench seat, they had maybe an inch of space between them, sitting perpendicular and almost knee to knee. The closeness was nice.

"Well." Whipping the magazine closed with a flick of her wrist, Misato leaned around and gave Asuka soft look. "I think you covered the bad stuff. As far as the good, I've got your back."

Asuka blinked once at that statement, feeling the light come back into her eyes. The anger had drained out with her last bit of snarling, leaving her to look down at her lap, and the arm still held in a cast. Meanwhile, Misato stretched languidly, letting her eyes drift closed and throwing her arms skyward. To Asuka, it looked like _nothing_ could bother the woman. Granted, that fit with what Asuka already knew.

Still, Misato approached problems in such _weird_ ways, sometimes. Like by _not doing anything_. Or at least not doing anything immediately. Realizing that, Asuka found herself growing increasingly grouchy, building into a proper swell of anger.

She crossed her good arm over her chest and stewed. "Do you not _get it_, that the new face of Project E is a sob-story?" Shifting her hand to press it flat against her collarbone, she turned to Misato, wide-eyed and expectant. "That _I'm _one?"

After that Asuka fell silent for a moment, breathing fast and deep, but even. Misato's easygoing attitude had faded halfway through the rant, and even just thinking about it made the anger surge. They had the _unmitigated gall_ to steal her thunder and replace it with blatant emotional manipulation. She wasn't the conquering hero they would have preferred, so Asuka was sacrificed to some other altar.

"So," Asuka huffed. "This means my social _and_ professional life are effectively _over_."

Opening one eye by a crack, Misato smiled despite Asuka's rising ire and flicked her head toward the girl's body. The answering snarl made Misato raise her hands, palms out and placating. Shifting in her seat, and turning half away, Misato looked out over the the open wall toward the hills limited skyline. The late-morning breeze picked up and teased through Asuka's hair, but had a lot more trouble with Misato's wet head. The silence gave Asuka a chance to calm down too, and she let the frustration drop along with her shoulders.

Glancing sidelong, Misato offered Asuka a sly little wink. "You know, I was scouted once? For a racing magazine of all things."

"Huh?" Asuka's elbow slipped, and she almost pitched out of her seat.

"As a model? Covers and photo shoots, the works. I'd signed up with the UN the day before, but I had the chance." Smiling, Misato struck a quick pinup-pose. She slid out of it with a laugh, before tapping at her lower lip and looking up through her bangs. "Granted, if I'd taken it, I wouldn't have settled for just sitting pretty on a car hood- I'm a _driver_."

Asuka felt her eyes turn upward while she thought that over. A sudden and all-too-clear image formed in her mind; a glamour shot of Misato, done up in the trendiest clothes and behind the wheel of the year's hottest electric car.

The mental image seemed to smile at her, and Asuka let out a bemused little snort. "Yeah, I could see that. What's your point though?"

"No point really, I was just reminded of it." The breeze picked up again, and had a better time playing through Misato's hair. "But you could say that I made my own image, regardless of what everyone else saw in me, just another pretty face with a parasol and go-go boots."

"So as far as this-" She waved at the discarded magazine that sat between them. "You can fight that bad information with good, and sometimes you can't rush it."

Twisting halfway to better face her again, Misato stared into Asuka's eyes, level, intent and dead serious. "It sucks, but here's the strategic situation. You're a minor, and technically employed as a special human asset by NERV. We _do_ pay you, but it's locked up behind so many bureaucratic dead ends that you can't actually be considered on payroll."

Misato's voice and eyes had claimed every bit of Asuka's attention, and she continued uninterrupted. "So what this means is that the normal ways you'd fight this kind of thing don't work- you already know that, and I don't need to repeat it."

"The other factor is that I'm the Tactical Operations Director. My responsibility is to keep you pilots in fighting shape." She nodded at the magazine again. "I don't see you as some pitiable kid being tortured for gain. You're one of my soldiers, and you've _acted like one_ for so long, I don't want to see you slip because you lost your temper over some bad snapshots."

A hollow feeling caved out inside Asuka's chest, as she was yet again reminded of Misato's _actual _genius.

"But because you're a soldier, I could order you to take the best treatment available to you. The best being the other pilot three floors down. I won't give that order, though. You've made some mistakes in the past, but you've proven yourself more than capable of making educated decisions from available information. " She held up a hand when Asuka opened her mouth to reply. "Even if I don't fully agree with them sometimes."

Asuka stared at Misato for a long moment, and the hollow feeling from earlier filled in with some kind of flushed redness and the thin fingers of _honest pride. _The warmth uncurled in her chest, and something warm and wet tracked down her cheek, welling up beneath her eyepatch. Misato didn't say anything when Asuka ducked her head, letting her hair fall on either side of her face. Standing, Misato moved around and gathered the girl up in her arms. After a few seconds, the girl realized she could count the woman's heartbeats.

The late-morning sun tracked across the sky as they sat there, and Asuka gave up on staying dry. "I'm _healing_, not crippled. How hard to I have to squeeze to make people see the obvious?"

"Okay. Make my own image?" She half-growled into Misato's chest before pulling away. She sat up straighter in her chair, ignoring the tear tracks on her cheek. "I am Sorhyu Asuka Langley. I'm _the_ Evangelion pilot, and one of _three_ people on the _planet _who understands the Absolute Terror Field."

It was slow, and painful, but Asuka stood and pushed the wheelchair aside, even while Misato rose with her and kept a steadying arm handy. "I'm not _weak_. I'm not _broken_, and I'm _not _some little _soldier dress up doll!"_

Misato beamed at that and tugged Asuka in for another hug, standing upright this time. Easing over to the rock bench, Asuka settled down and sighed while Misato joined her.

They sat thigh to thigh, and Misato kept an arm around the girl's shoulders, warm and ever-presently reassuring. "I think that's the Asuka we both want to see... and I really don't want you to ignore that some of the best treatment in the world is downstairs."

"It's your choice still!" Misato added, before Asuka could open her mouth. "I just want what's best for you, is all."

Absently pushing one foot into the steaming water, Asuka was too concerned with washing off the mental weight to make any further complaint.

"So..." Misato reached out with one leg, catching the forgotten floating tray edge with her big toe and sending it spinning in the water. "I have to ask- what _is_ the deal with you and Shinji- I never got the full story from either of you."

Asuka groaned, kicking a wave toward Misato as she huffed. "_Gott_, you make it sound like some gossip-rag scandal. It's his attitude- he keeps pissing me off."

"Well, obviously." Misato's reply was _painfully_ dry, before warming with friendlier tones. "But _why_ exactly."

"Because he doesn't _do_ anything! I keep seeing him spin his wheels and just sort of take things as they go, rolling over for everyone." Asuka had thrown her good arm out with fingers splayed, trying to articulate the sheer _absurdity_ of it all, staring at Misato and hoping maybe she had an answer. "I didn't think it was possible to have outright super powers and still lack a spine! I'm a competitive bitch I know, but I can't stand to see people waste their potential either. I was angry with Rei for the same thing back when I tried to punch the Commander!"

She slumped in her seat, letting her hands fall into her lap."I don't get how either of them could have just stood there and taken that bullshit."

"Oh my God." Misato blinked once, before holding a hand to her mouth and snickering. "This is adorable. You've been pissed off _on his behalf_ this whole time!"

Asuka recoiled, voice going shrill while Misato leaned in, sly and teasing. "Wh-What?! No I haven't!"

The dark-haired woman closed the distance, blatantly violating personal space and smiling unrepentantly. "You totally have! You just said so like two seconds ago. It's nothing to be ashamed of, Asuka. It's just... cute!"

Leaning back and almost off balance, Asuka blanched for a moment before scowling. Misato held onto Asuka's gaze for another few seconds before grinning, eyes closed and looking like the cat who swallowed the canary.

Finally, she pulled all the way back and cocked her head to the side, openly curious. "Well.. Is he bothering you now?"

"Not _really... _ He's not pulling stupid stuff like getting his hands all over my apartment or clothes without permission." Asuka looked out over the hot springs and drew in a lungful of steamy air. "And this is really nice, that we all can use this."

"Right... So the obvious question is why aren't you interested in asking him for help?" Misato slid in a bit closer, and Asuka watched as Misato's hand wandered to a bare patch of skin just below her own breasts. "I mean, he fixed _me_... What's stopping you?"

Asuka snarled. "_Because I don't understand it!"_

Misato shot back with a little yelp, moving as if Asuka's voice had burned and blinking owlishly. Asuka herself wasn't anywhere near finished venting.

"I mean if you want to just take it on faith that's fine, it works for _you_. Your past," She reached out to poke Misato in that same patch of unbroken skin. "-Is gone along with that scar. But I see all this stuff he does for you and everyone else, and I go _what the fuck just happened?"_

"I mean it works, it totally works!" She waved at the hot springs, proof positive of such. "But I can't make heads or tails of it, and _he_ can't tell me how it works because then he goes on about _soul muscles_ and I just want to pull my hair out!"

At Misato's uncomprehending look, Asuka launched into what she _hoped_ was a sensible explanation. "The Soul doesn't have muscles- we haven't ever been able to map it until recently thanks to Akagi, but I know for a fact that humans _cannot_ do what he does with their souls. We don't have the structures for it..."

She trailed off then, thinking. "... And if he does, I have to wonder if he's even human anymore."

Misato frowned at that last comment, but Asuka waved it off, saying that a person was a person, and that was more important. Even if he was still a wimp.

"Don't hold anything back now, Asuka, just let it all out." Misato recovered quickly, laughing while she threw a warm arm around Asuka's shoulders once more. "Now, I have to ask, did you _tell him_ this?"

Asuka just gave the woman a helpless shrug, at an honest loss."I tried! It didn't work!"

The smile Misato gave her promised rueful things. "Okay. Did you tell him in a _civil and calm manner_."

"_I'm always civi-_! " Asuka stopped mid-word, inflection dropping out until her tone went flat and body fell slack. "...Oh. No. No I never quite managed that."

Misato just smirked, leaning back against the warm rocks and sighing. "You could probably start there then."

* * *

><p>Rei liked to think she was an efficient person. It was better to say that she had a certain economy of thought and motion instilled in her at a young age, and even now, it was too useful a trait to simply discard outright. The process was ongoing, gradually evaluating the old pieces of herself in context of the new, and changing factors in her life. Logic and the careful sequential tracking of events had kept her going through the years, in the face of her own problems. With the benefit of hindsight, Rei was able to determine her old state of being as <em>depressed<em>.

The _current_ Rei was hungry, and she considered it much more efficient to take some leftovers from the kitchen than to bother Shinji for a brand new meal. Tapping a particular cabinet panel, Rei watched as the refrigerator revealed itself. The cabinet panel retracted away, and the appliance swung out smoothly on weighted tracks and pivots. She had never been immersed all that deeply into popular media or movies beyond the occasional video game or low-rent movie, but the redesigned kitchen nevertheless made Rei feel at ease about how her home life was beginning to reflect the Geofront's advancements rather than the uncanny 'modern' technology widespread throughout Japan.

'Dished up' as Misato would have said, Rei cradled the containers of cold cake and lunch-stocked _bento_. She ran her fingertips over the hand-engraved panels, and again Shinji came to mind. Rei welcomed the tangents when they came, and relished the way they lit up new corners of her perception. She hadn't checked in on her pets today, either. Easing out of the kitchen, she caught a flash of red in the living room.

Rei felt her lips curve down, and her mind seemed to dim with uncertainty.

Retreating, a quick trip upstairs was all it took to see her five rats, still in their cage. They seemed to perk up and squeak as one as she sang their names, but for the life of her, she still couldn't tell them apart. It wasn't certain if it was the teaching methods Shinji had used or their own developing personalities, but try as she might _Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre and Cinq _had never responded to the same name twice in the same order. Eventually Rei had simply accepted they _were_, after a fashion, and the notion continued to tickle her as they neatly lined up at the cage door in preparation for travels abroad. They were remarkably well behaved, preternaturally so perhaps.

She opened their cage, and the ten pairs of paws scampered up her arms to lay across her shoulders. The infusion pump and LCL reserve under her shoulder weighed more than they did. The little noses started touching her jaw and ears, or played with her bangs while she made her way back downstairs, and Rei smiled the whole way.

Lunch, pets, and her car waiting in the garage. Simple things for a simple day.

* * *

><p>Boxes had begun to pile up inside the garage. Empty ones, others filled to the brim with paper packing material, and some had yet to be opened. Litter however wasn't a problem- industrial-ready bins and barrels for machine shop detritus made it easy to keep things tidy. Moving over to the workbench, she cleared a space for her rats to sit and watch. They explored a bit at first, weaving through the parts and tools. Rei could see their noses and eyes peak over the table edge, sniffing the new and strange scents. Deeper in the garage itself and sitting in pride of place, her Skyline gleamed under the work lights, almost poised to get out and drive.<p>

Standing with gloved hands on her hips, Rei beheld her Absolute Territory and considered it sufficiently hers.

Now the _reason_ for all the boxes was simple; custom orders. Her particular model of car was nearly a decade old, and the industrial needs of mankind had shifted away from high-performance automotive production. It had been something of an _experience_ buying the magazines and catalogs she needed. The man behind the counter hadn't expected Rei _or_ Misato that day. They were two months out of date, though, and Rei considered herself confident to explore aftermarket upgrades.

In the meantime, she had an air intake to rebuild. The process was straight-forward, almost procedural. Like she'd noted before, routines were much too useful and comforting to discard outright. The five rats watched from their designated place on the table, eager and attentive, yet still marvelously well-behaved. Each part had it's proper place, added to the whole at the proper time. Blinking once, Rei frowned at the assembly before leaning over to check the manual. Perhaps it wouldn't be as simple as she expected; there was another necessary component she needed... Looking back at the half-assembled intake, Rei felt her lips quirk over to the side. She might need to pull the intake apart, in order to account for the new development.

Regardless, she could work and think at the same time. Hunting through some boxes let her secure everything she needed and resume work. Even as she pulled together the interior piece, she considered how to install it. Was there a way to put it in place without fully disassembling the intake, or maybe only partially... Rei's fingers worked, and her mind gradually evaluated a few solutions, discarding them one by one. Eventually she set everything down and sighed. Disassembly was the only option.

Her pets squeaked in their container, eager for some form of attention. Hearing that reminded her of all the other suddenly pressing and previously ignored needs. Stretching with her arms above her head, Rei frowned at the half-constructed intake and sighed. Muscle complaints- rectified... Letting her hands drop to her side, she sucked in a slow breath and let it out, humming faintly. Finally, she glanced up at the clock and blinked.

Nine O'clock.

Rei's shoulders went slack. "Huh."

* * *

><p>Hyuuga Makoto pulled his glasses off and rubbed his face. His fingers sank into the bags under his eyes before moving to the bridge of his nose, working away the pair of divots etched in his skin. When he was finished, he leaned back in his chair and sighed. Maybe it was time for something different, with regard to eyewear. The frames were about as un-stylish as one could get, but they'd served him for nearly half a decade now. Perhaps a certain returning division-head would notice a change...<p>

..._Nah_.

Snapping his glasses open with a flick of the wrist, Makoto slid them back on his face and nodded, ready to get back to work. For the past two months, he'd been seeing the inside of his office far more than he considered healthy, so much so that he and Maya basically paid Shigeru to drop their laundry off at the washers, and pick it up. Doctor Akagi was thinking about joining in, so long as the guitarist evaded the workload that piled on everyone else. Maya had all but taken over handling of the MAGI, while the head of Project E scurried from lab to lab, trying to balance a thousand different projects without her protege.

Makoto himself had basically stepped into Major Katsuragi's shoes- if an Angel had attacked, he would have been the Tactical Operations Director. In the meantime, he basically led Section 2, as both NERV and pilot security. Most of it was a rubber stamp job, and the various team leaders kept the paperwork to a minimum, for a government agency. It was a point of pride that NERV attracted and _retained_ the best and brightest in every field, including former military.

One particular memo crossed his desk for the past eight weeks, and each time, Makoto had to shake his head and sigh. The request was simple and sensible, but unfeasible; Section 2 wanted to properly stock their armories and, in their words, 'generate more tactical assets'. Unfortunately, even Major Katsuragi couldn't wrangle the budget enough to equip them the way they deserved. When it came to NERV, the Evangelions were first in line for procurement. Makoto scratched out a reply and moved it to his outbox, but at least _this_ _time_, he could reassure the security teams that Misato was back.

Eyeing the stack of papers that represented the extended A-17 order, Makoto sighed, and hoped Major Katsuragi would take over sooner rather than later. Even after NERV stepped away from the United Nations, they still held each other at arm's reach, and their mutual bureaucracies had to know how to play nice with each other. Negotiating through the appended or adjusted chains of command as well as payroll and assignment took hours, but when it was finished, the UN Pacific Fleet wouldn't suffer under miscommunication or poor discipline.

Too bad NERV couldn't solve it's own problems with some paperwork, trusting a monolithic organization to make sure its needs were met. They _were_ the many-headed hydra, and had to deal with one head stealing food away from the others. Money and personnel had drained into a particular black hole in the Evangelion cages, sworn to more secrecy than usual after their shifts. Granted it was a polite fiction- everyone _knew_ there was a white Evangelion somewhere in the Geofront, but further speculation spread like wildfire. Water cooler talk would have been pretty nice right then, but Makoto wasn't getting away from his desk for a few more hours yet.

Working or not, he couldn't resist a little musing on his own. Evangelion construction was something of an open secret, requiring the extensive cloning of numerous organs, and of course needing the proper genetic blueprint to start those. After that came the cybernetics and lastly the armor, bolted or chemically fused into place around the tightly packed flesh. So knowing that, he wondered who could built it. Units 03 and 04 were under construction in Boston and Nevada respectively, and China had a number of presently closed bases stocked with prefabricated parts, both organic and cybernetic. He'd also heard the white Evangelion had the phrase 'Mass Production' stamped across it's remaining arm. Maybe the Commanders had finally given in and licensed out the production techniques...

Makoto shook his head and looked back at his work. Or at least he would have, if Maya hadn't burst through his office door.

"Lieutenant Hyuuga- the reports you wanted." Maya bustled in with a wan smile, dropping a pair of folders on his desk before bowing.

He reached for the papers, grinning himself. "Thanks! I might get sleep at home tonight, because of this."

At that, the young woman huffed. Her cheeks puffed up before she let out a sputtering breath. "There's no chance of that happening for me. I'm so glad Major Katsuragi is coming back in soon- I don't think I can stand these sixty hour weeks much longer."

"Tell me about it." Makoto stretched, throwing his arms back above his head and groaning. "Everybody's hurting for a vacation, or even just a weekend off. Still, it's been months since the last Angel attack."

The woman shook her head, wide eyed. "Weeks- you know Asuka-san killed one while the fleet was deployed."

Makoto blinked, sitting upright. "We never got a pattern blue report for that."

"That's because most of the satellite tracking system is under the UN's control." Maya shivered faintly. "Not that I want it back- the monitoring duty shifts are much nicer when they're just focusing on Tokyo-3."

Settling back in his seat, Makoto nodded faintly. Finally, he cocked his head to the side, noting the bags under the woman's eyes. "Are you alright...?"

Maya nodded, putting on a quick smile and standing up straighter. She swung her arms, all sunshine and cheer, but the effort faded along with her grin. I'm fine, really! Just..."

She trailed off for a moment before sighing, finding a near by patch of wall to lean against. "Just my boyfriend broke up with me- saying I wasn't making enough time for him."

Makoto nearly felt his jaw drop, but managed not to make an ass of himself. Indignant, he stood up, scowling. "Seriously? He broke up with you over _that_? He's a _moron_."

Maya just let out a weak laugh, before offering him a sly and somewhat somber glare. "Don't get any ideas now, Hyuuga-san."

He just raised his hands at that, laughing. "No ideas- none whatsoever."

Laughing a bit harder, Maya knuckled at her eyes before pushing away from the wall. She bowed again and thanked Makoto for the breather. Considering he needed the break just as much as she did, he considered them even. The door swished shut behind her, and Makoto was alone in his office once more. Finally, he turned back to his desk with a wry little smile. Next up on his to-do list was a request from an incoming UN inspection team, asking for updated floor plans.

* * *

><p>Nothing was going to stop Misato from enjoying the last twelve hours she had off before returning to active duty.<p>

Towel-clad and barefoot, Misato moved through the apartment with an unashamedly hedonistic intent, making her way to the actual bathroom. The rooftop hot springs were _amazing_, of course, and had soothed away more than a few lingering aches. That being said, Misato was in the mood to lock the door and soak the rest of her cares away. The only stops between her and the hand-built custom bathtub were the fridge, and Shinji. With the former, she pulled out the last three cans of that import lager, aiming to enjoy them in the tub.

With the latter, she gave the boy a jaunty, towel-shifting wave and laughed, declaring him a miracle worker. When he asked her why, Misato grinned. "Because when we got home, I never wanted anything to do with water for the next week if not more. Turns out you _really _have a way with plumbing."

Only slightly red-faced, Shinji had just smiled back and waved her on, only warning her not to mess with the settings too much- they were something of a work in progress.

* * *

><p><em>Hotels<em> didn't have baths anywhere near as fancy. Or bathrooms. Waterfall shower with secondary heads, and a contoured tub with whirlpool jets. Misato was absolutely certain it could fit six people comfortably, or maybe eight if they were five-foot-four like her. Washing went like a dream, and the bath itself filled in less than a minute- the tub walls themselves were heated too.

Misato just stared at it for a long moment and shook her head. "Shinji, you just are too good for words."

As for the settings he mentioned, there was a seamless and slick glass-fronted console that stubbornly resisted condensation. After a bit of fussing and setting everything to low, Misato settled in for that soak. Two beers later, Misato sank a bit deeper into the tub and let out a gusty sigh. The corners of her mouth curled up in a sly little smile, and she glanced left and right. Reaching for the console, she let out a soft little laugh. He_ really had a way with plumbing._

* * *

><p>The past few days had not been very kind to anyone in Tokyo-3. Misato's return to tactical command was a lot like any boss coming back from a long vacation. Misato was at NERV morning, noon and evening, if not staying in the Geofront overnight for another marathon review and planning session. Some people had slacked off, certain procedures had been put in place for too long. NERV was competent and disciplined, but still only human. The telltale slips and bureaucratic hassles had a stubborn kind of inertia, and the lack of forward momentum had soaked into the whole city.<p>

Even Shinji noticed it, walking around downtown with Ayumi, or in armor, helping with that week's industrial disaster. _Ennui_ wasn't the right term- the people around him were lively, eager to work. They moved with new direction, but everything went in halting fits and starts. Fuyutsuki-sensi was distracted at school, and the lethargy even seemed to flood the apartment.

Rei attended school, regularly as clockwork, and only ghosted into the apartment to eat, sleep and tend to her pets. Once, Shinji considered heading down to the garage to keep her company. But, when he got there and saw Rei's absolute concentration, he realized he didn't have the heart to interrupt her. Stuck in the apartment, Asuka had taken over the living room and filled it with books- most of it from her own collection with a few choice supplement from his own- though he was sure Misato volunteered the books on his behalf. The redhead was gearing up for her first lesson as a tutor.

Shinji himself had been pushing out directives to his own division, but he realized in a very real way that his own assets were frozen. He could imagine plans and proposals sitting in several dozen distinguished email in boxes, 'politely' ignored. Still, he tried not to dwell on it, and focused on things he could control. There were always meals to cook.

The only reason he hadn't started dinner was because Sorhyu had wrestled herself up to the kitchen table.

He was about to ask if she was alright when the girl fixed him with a blue-eyed look. The _last_ time they'd had any particularly meaningful conversation... Shinji clamped down on the memories and the frustration, waiting.

"I want you to do your medical X-ray trick." She cocked her head to the side, scowling. "That's still one of the things you do right?"

Shinji found himself nodding while he took a seat, frowning despite himself. "You've had me use on you once... but why now? I thought you were alright?"

The red-headed pilot was impassive. "Because now is the time I've decided to ask you about it."

"Okay, but it's really just doing the same thing a doctor does only faster..." He trailed off and was about to unleash the tiniest erg of his reserve, but stopped when he saw the look on Sorhyu's face. The signs of discomfort were plain on her face- elevated heartbeat, and she'd been forcing her breathing down to something approaching calm and regular. There were half-a-dozen other tells, most of them etched in her tense muscles and stiff fingers.

Finally, Shinji blinked and leaned back in his chair. "Are... Are you alright?"

A particularly purple flush worked its way up the girl's neck, and the earlier signs doubled over as she crossed her good arm defensively. "Of course I'm _not_, or else I wouldn't have asked. Go on, get it over with."

Shinji let an eyebrow quirk up, her gaze had turned away from him, as though she were looking for some method to bore through the kitchen wall. _She's acting like she expects me to just... _Well, he couldn't exactly _describe _what she was expecting, but Sorhyu was bracing for _something. _He wondered if she'd always been so put off and tense about his powers, or if his own focus on her bad attitude had blinded him.

The whole realization hit him in the time it took to snap one's fingers. Shaking his head, he coughed lightly and did his best to look her in the eye. "I won't do anything, if you don't want me to. I figured that out at least."

Sorhyu held onto his stare for a few ticks of the hallway clock. After that, she forced herself to relax, letting out a long-held sigh. Her scowl went a little watery as she scrubbed a hand through her hair, trying to tame some errant frizz and comb it back off her shoulders. Glancing away, Sorhyu let out a wry little huff and admitted she'd kind of like to shower alone sometime in the next few months, if possible.

When she said that, Sorhyu turned to face him, and the little quirk of her lips grew into a full blown smile. As for the exact reason she was grinning at him, Shinji had only the slightest idea. Feeling a weak smile of his own, he figured it was a good idea to just sit back and not overthink things, just yet. Whatever he did, he figured it'd be a good idea to keep doing it. Sorhyu took his silence as a sign to plow ahead, growing more serious by the word.

"Fact is, I could sit in an entry plug right now and be a hundred-percent combat effective." She waved at the arm still in her sling, shrugging. "But I can't be the pilot NERV needs like this. _The_ pilot."

Sorhyu sighed then and drummed her fingers on the kitchen table. "Everything's a battle, even public opinion. I need to get back into fighting form because people can _see that_."

Nodding again, Shinji reached up to rub his mouth, humming. Perception he could get... Clearing her throat, Sorhyu shot him another increasingly confident grin and waved with her good arm, telling him to hit her with his best diagnostic shot.

About five silent seconds, later Shinji stood from the table and all but lunged for the kitchen phone, to Asuka's nervous protest. "Hey! Where are you going now?"

His finger was already on the direct line button, a straight shot into the Geofront. "I'm calling Misato. You both need to hear this."

* * *

><p>Misato had arrived about half an hour later, which Shinji <em>knew<em> was faster than legally possible. The dark-haired woman couldn't break those kinds of physics. Still, she'd arrived in a whirlwind of concern, declaring that her pilots were the main priority, and that _time was made_. The look she gave him and Sorhyu told him not to ask.

So Shinji settled in to explain his diagnosis. In a word- bad. In several words, it was a miracle she was even sitting in front of them right now.

The list of injuries and trauma was extensive- a _career's_ worth of hurt and damage, as opposed to a single thirty-minute battle. Sympathetic damage from the Evangelion itself had been the least of Asuka's problems. Her combat at sea had exceeded the kind of forces LCL was meant to cushion against- and even then it and her plugsuit still saved her from the punctured lungs she would have gotten when the Angel's tail smashed into her Evangelion. Misato and Asuka both turned increasingly ashen, as Shinji rigorously described enough injuries to fill the infirmary back at the Geofront.

Broken bones, torn muscles and sprained tendons. Deep-tissue or even skeletal bruising, damaged organs and a whole host of minor hairline fractures. Sorhyu had been attached to a bottle of painkillers for the constant aches and pains. While Shinji was laying everything out, Sorhyu in turn started recalling when and where she got each ding and dent.

Her bandaged hand was a wreck from _catching herself_ after being flung off her Evangelion's shoulders, while her excised rib had been pulverized on impact with the cyborg's outstretched palm during freefall, and so on. All of these things Asuka was all too welcome to illustrate with gestures, however gingerly, and no small amount of pride. Misato had been blown away by the sheer amount of punishment Sorhyu had endured, and _Shinji_ was left dumbfounded by the kind of combat she subjected herself to.

It was something of a learning experience for all of them.

Finally, Shinji reassured them both that the fleet doctors had done everything right- it was just that he had a much deeper understanding of medicine than they did. They were foremost concerned with _stabilizing _her, and how Asuka was still holding together in that chair thanks in part to a mess of scars and old stitches was testament to that.

He had to point out that had Sorhyu not been in such incredibly good shape as a result of her brutal training schedule coming out of her hospital stay, the damage could have been a lot worse. Her irrational stubbornness actually saved her life. He didn't _say_ it exactly like that, but Sorhyu accepted the implied compliment with an almost feral grin.

So all things being equal, a mainland hospital would have taken care of most of the mechanical injuries short of physical therapy, but the absolute worst of it was the _untreated_ _nerve damage_.

Sorhyu had fixed him with an even stare, demanding he explain without even opening her mouth. He didn't make her wait. Compressed spine, lingering damage from surgery, and a whole host of other 'kinks' in her nervous system. Half the reason she couldn't walk was that her spine wasn't sending strong enough signals to her legs. It was something of an oversimplification, but neither pilot or Major called him on it. More surgery could fix it- maybe- or he could, certainly.

Misato laid a hand on her forehead and let out a sympathetic groan. Pitching forward in her seat, she sucked in a quick breath. "Alright, I'm bringing back- no. Shinji, you're going to _make_ some ice cream tonight. _I'm_ going to find us some stupid movies we can throw popcorn at when I get back."

She pushed away from the table and grabbed her jacket before moving around to give Sorhyu a half-hug from behind. The pilot struggled a bit, mashed against the older woman's midsection and letting out a resigned little huff. Looking back up, Misato threw Shinji a thousand-megawatt encouraging smile, offset by the melancholy note in her eyes. Finally, Misato unwrapped herself from Sorhyu and made for the door, promising she'd be back before midnight.

After the door slid closed, the clock's constant ticking seemed deafening. Sorhyu hadn't moved from the table, but Shinji could tell it wasn't by choice. She fidgeted in her seat and almost utterly silent. Moving into the kitchen, Shinji grabbed something fast and easy to make while punching the oven up to pre-heat. The delay and simple action gave him enough time to think... _Right, ask the obvious question._

The over timer dinged and he pulled the hot glass dishes with his bare hands, barely feeling the heat. Sorhyu watched his every move, but for once didn't feel pressing scrutiny, letting him set the table without comment or incident.

"So..." Shinji took his seat and tugged his own plate a bit closer, hoping the open ended question would work. "What exactly do you want?"

The redhead sat up straighter, and her uncovered eye narrowed. Stuck in laundry-day T-shirts and shorts, she somehow still managed to dominate her half of the table with sheer presence. "I want to be able to walk- to throw a punch and play games and pilot my Eva. I want _out _of this _goddamn chair."_

Rocking in her chair, Sorhyu grabbed a fork with her good hand and skewered a hunk of roasted beef. She looked him right in the eyes and scowled. "I want to make stuff _make sense_."

She chewed fitfully, and her scowl shifted into an expression Shinji couldn't quite read, but her tone was something like bleak resignation. "I _don't _want a demigod _throwing dice _with my spine, dammit."

Blinking, Shinji could only tilt his head at the girl in askance. "Pardon?"

"Oh. Einstein and Quantum mechanics, or something..." Shivering, Sorhyu shook her head and huffed. When she noticed his own curious look, she sighed and let out a shiver. "Don't worry about it. Just, soul muscles..."

Wisely, Shinji decided to keep his mouth shut.

* * *

><p>After dinner, Sorhyu wheeled herself back into the living room, inching past the stacks of book and manuals. Shinji had to admit, she'd piqued his interest. Granted, that aforementioned interest felt something like nails on a chalkboard or ice cubes on his spine. Following after her, Shinji flopped heavily into one of the ever present beanbag chairs and waited. The barest bit he <em>did<em> know about her told him it wouldn't take long.

Five minutes of silence later, he coughed into his hand. "Ah... I don't mind waiting, but if we are, I could do something?"

Not rushing or waiting for an answer, Shinji eased up and wandered over to a recessed cabinet, pulling out an expensive bit of ocean-damaged leather. A thin film of _ichor_ had clung to it as well, bleaching the dark hide a kind of cancerous pink. Sorhyu's eyes lit up at the sight, and Shinji gingerly handed it over.

Spreading the jacket out over her lap and smiling, she looked up and gave him a questioning look. Shinji just shrugged. "I can fix it if you want- good as new or better."

Mercurial had apparently been a word invented for Sorhyu alone, because her little glint of cheer shifted into a possessive scowl. Her fingers dug into the leather, and Shinji watched as she forced herself to relax. A few seconds later, a bolt of inspiration seemed to strike.

"Part of me just wants to say no outright-" She her good shoulder, lifting the jacket along the way. "I mean I've seen you fix stuff a dozen times now, I _know_ it works, but I just can't _not_ ask how- I _need to know_."

Dropping back into the cushion, Shinji gave her a helpless look and showed his palms. Well, I _don't_ know, so...?"

"And that's my problem with you!" Sorhyu wrung the jacket harder and gave him a narrow look. "You take it all as-is! I cannot imagine how anyone like you could have something so life-altering dropped into your lap and not be utterly consumed by obsessively trying to find out _what it is, _and by extension, who-and-what _you are_."

He couldn't call the frown that decided to etch itself on his face _unexpected_. A fairly large part of him sprawled back on the cushion and wondered, mulling over just how insulted he should be. Sorhyu was _confusing_, and he still didn't fully understand what she was getting at. Sorhyu must have seen the uncomprehending look on his face, because she sat up in her chair and fixed him with a level stare.

"Ikari Shinji," She sounded his name out in low, even tones. "You took an apparently divine vision at face value, experimented for a while and then just persisted as a semi-spiritual carpenter-chef. _How can a thing like you exist?_"

Shinji didn't have an answer. "I-I just do."

"_And that drives me nuts!"_ Asuka slumped back in her wheelchair, letting out a short barking laugh. "I can't even get angry about it anymore- it's _that _absurd. You're absurd."

Staring at her for a few seconds, Shinji let out a quiet, hesitant sound. "I... I don't exactly understand, Sorhyu."

The girl let out a wry laugh and pitched forward in her seat. She reached up to massage her temples, and her hair spilled over her shoulders to hang like a curtain. Finally, she looked up and gave him an odd, little chagrined look. "Right. Calm and civil..."

"I want to understand how you fix this," Sorhyu threw the jacket and he caught it just as she finished speaking. "With your soul."

Shinji felt a cold chill creep up the back of his neck, remembering the _last_ time... "I told you this already- though. They're techniques, I move parts of my soul around and it's like flexing a muscle-"

"No. Just no. Souls don't have muscles." She shook her head cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Ikari, you and I are going to hand Akagi the Nobel prize she deserves for figuring out the soul cameras, but I can tell you right now that no human on this earth can _feel_ their souls without help. Rei can because she's a hybrid, _you_ can because Akagi said you have a _third_ thing jammed in there. Our souls aren't built to be felt or used. They _reflect and contain_."

Scowling himself, Shinji let the jacket drop while he stood up, crossing his arms and setting his jaw. "Well then what do you want me to say? It is what it is."

Visibly clamping down on her mounting frustration, Sorhyu clenched and unclenched her hand before taking a deep breath. When she was finished, the girl gave him a surprisingly agreeable smirk. "You've proven you can understand things faster than regular people right. Figured out MAGI assembly language in an afternoon?"

Shinji scratched the back of his head and drawled. "Y-yeaaah..."

"I want you to- I've _wanted you_ to apply that same bullshit genius _to yourself_." She let out a resigned sigh and shook her head, laughing. "Granted you really _shouldn't_ try to measure a ruler with itself- but we can use you to get started. Figure out some experiments such. Philosophy is such bullshit like that."

Letting his hand drop to the side, Shinji opened his mouth to answer, but stopped and shut it with a click. His jaw worked even as his mind turned Sorhyu's suggestion over and around. He didn't even notice when he started speaking.

"That's... I'm not sure what's _in here_," he put a hand to his chest, before reaching up to wave at his brow. This time he willed the disc of gold to appear, glowing faintly. "Every time I've looked just a little bit closer, I just keep finding more questions, or the answers I do find..."

He shook his head and sighed. "There hasn't been that much wrong with me to bother with self-diagnosis, other than my sleeping problem, and... the quarantine zone."

Sorhyu just nodded, neither knowing about that awful week or likely caring if she had, and plowed ahead unhindered by his hesitation. Cocking her head to the side, she fixed him with one cool blue eye. "Physician, heal thyself."

Shinji stared at her for a long moment before deciding it was a good idea to sit back down. He landed hard on the beanbag, moving enough air to ruffle the papers littered all over the living room.

And Sorhyu wasn't done yet either, wheeling a bit closer. "Whatever you are now is beyond everything we've ever known before. There's no technology or theory for it yet. Misato can't figure it out for you, and neither can Akagi. _I_ could, maybe in forty years... But Ikari, think about this-"

She leaned close enough to look him right in the eye, unflinching and absolutely honest. "If you're not strong enough to take your own power and bend it to your will, then what right do you have to use it? If you don't, then who does?"

Staring right back, Shinji cringed and gave her the only answer he had. "I... I'm not sure."

Sorhyu _grinned_, with teeth and cheeks and an eye that was almost gleefully crinkled shut. "_That_, Golden boy, is the best place to be. Because _now_, we can start asking questions."

Pulling back into her own little bubble of personal space, Sorhyu gave Shinji that much needed time and distance to breath and think. A half-dozen unknown and unknowable feelings seemed to drip and flood through his mind alongside the more understandable things like _frustration_ and _indignation_. Even at her most positive, the girl just somehow set him on edge- but, considering the past half hour, maybe it was mutual. Shinji shifted in his seat, staring straight ahead and barely blinking. Questions... He'd needed to start asking more of them. He'd resolved to even _do_ that nearly a month ago... He let out a tiny sigh and let his head drop forward.

The jacket was still lying on the floor between them. Leaning over, he scooped it up and gave it a shake. "Do you still want me to fix this?"

Somehow, Sorhyu made her bog-standard wheelchair look like the seat of an emperor. Smirking down at him, she waved grandly, and for the first time, Shinji didn't think of the nickname as an insult. "Go ahead and work your magic, Golden boy."

It wasn't going to take long to fix the jacket. Less than an hour. "So... there's a lot of intuition involved? I have to guess and check at a lot of what I'm doing, and make sure I don't trip over a given technique."

Sorhyu watched, eyes locked onto the coat that was spread out on the floor. Shinji's arms glowed with golden fire, and where his fingertips touched, the leather seemed to uncurl and grow more lustrous- fresh as the day it was stitched. "It's not to say that I'm clumsy- I used to be, for a few weeks after I Exalted. I can _pick_ the wrong technique now, but I've never slipped and used the wrong one."

Drawling, the girl just kept watching. "With you so far..."

Shinji let out a short cough and nodded. "Well, this technique, it's like a lot of the healing I can do- it restores rightness to things. I'm... not rewinding time, but I'm telling the jacket to be what it was, to be _perfect_ again. I can do the same thing with limbs or scars."

"I think that was worse than the soul muscles." Shinji looked up to see Sorhyu cringe, but she waved him on. "Keep going, don't mind me."

"Right-" Shinji shook his head and cut himself off. No need to put his foot in his mouth. It was a little distracting, trying to maintain a running commentary while he worked, but the particular power he chose at least behaved consistently- a constant sort of expression and tension on his inner reserve.

His hands wandered down to the bottom seams, and he looked up to ask a question. "While we're here, is there anything else you want done? I could tailor it too, so it fits."

Sorhyu just shook her head. "I'm going to grow into it."

Shinji couldn't help but stare at her for a few seconds. The absolutely indomitable tenacity Sorhyu could pull out on a whim was almost terrifying. She probably wasn't even thinking about him healing her either- she just that confident.

Nodding, Shinji considered the jacket before him and decided to chance one more question. "And what about the uh..."

Words simply failed him to describe it, so instead he waved at the half-restored jacket, before reaching up to wipe his nose.

The redheaded pilot nearly cackled at that, giving him a smirking look for his discomfort. "Hah, the smell? We washed it like eight times, but that's the smell of victory, Ikari. Stale as it is."

He fixed her with a sour look, and her joking resistance crumbled, content to sit back and watch him work. "Okay okay fine, superhuman senses. Though I'm not over the fact you seem more content to use this incredible power of yours as _instant dry-cleaning."_

The glow around his arms faded at last, and Shinji let out a small little sigh of satisfaction. Still, just fixing the jacket didn't seem to be enough... Grinning, Shinji dropped the restored jacket in her lap, already inspired. "Hold on, I have an idea."

There were stashes of supplies squirreled away all over the apartment- he hadn't gotten around to moving everything into his section of the garage workshop. A year ago, he would have been a little surprised at having some scrap leather and a dozen spools of thread just lying around. Spreading the materials out on the floor before Sorhyu's feet, Shinji knelt and willed out another familiar expression of power.

The sunfire glow returned with a different, more constructive character. The thread unraveled and seemed to dance between his fingers as he stitched the leather without needle. Sorhyu hadn't taken her eyes off the display once, calculating and intent. When he was finished, he showed her the result.

At her curious look, he shrugged. "I saw something like it in a book once."

It was a band of leather sized to fit around a jacket sleeve, embroidered with red, white and grey, edged in oranges, blacks and greens. Sorhyu's victory over the Angel and the white Evangelion she'd carried home, immortalized. She looked up at him with a wide, uncovered eye. "I'll take it."

She ran her thumbs over the badge of honor, oddly silent.

Then she raised one dark red eyebrow and smirked. "You and Rei need some as well."

* * *

><p>He'd relied on intuition to the exclusion of all else for almost two years now.<p>

Staring at the stacks of books piled as high as he was tall, Shinji looked to them like the weighty tones of enlightenment they were always meant to be. Yesterday he'd had impressions and gut-feelings. Today he had not just an idea, but a _goal_. The study of opiates and their effect on neurochemistry- an introductory look to the topic admittedly, but a relevant one. Even after the first hour of devouring the books, he'd felt his internal reserve respond, tease out new potentials and draw inspiration from his own personal enrichment.

And in doing that, he realized something then. His nature, a key point that had eluded _everyone_ to this day, was that of _will_.

His own, for starters, then the wills of others put upon him. Shinji began to comprehend that he was a creature of circumstance in an increasingly profound way. He learned by example and influence, driven by the exigencies of his own desires. He learned to bypass tools by working with them and finding the physical implements wanting. In that way he discarded the superfluous element with an almost instinctual expression of his own power.

It was much the same for nearly every other technique he knew, short of a small handful that were even more basic, followed by the tiniest tricks he could muster, like the control over his brandmark and corona, or being able to will himself to stop bleeding. In the past, he'd simply not recalled _learning_ anything, but now he knew it as well as a normal person was always aware of their arms and legs.

Just recently he'd drawn upon power when presenting the hot springs, but he'd given less than three speeches in his life- even informal ones. The more he thought about it though, the more he looked back to his time practicing music. There was a certain flow and rhythm to everything, qualities that were shared across disciplines. It wasn't unexpected either, there had been all kinds of research into skills at one thing applying to something else. Shinji just hadn't expected it to apply to him.

He hadn't been alone in his research, either. Kaji-san loitered around the apartment and drank Shinji's coffee while Misato was stuck at NERV, and the older man's presence was... curious, and just short of awkward. The UN inspector was a veritable treasure trove of pre-Impact experiences too, full of recent wisdom and parables.

One evening, Kaji looked out over the apartment balcony and said "The kanji for woman literally means 'one is far away'. The divide between men and women is greater and deeper than the ocean."

Shinji had been working in the garden and let out a tiny huff. "I'm alarmingly close to over five women and I hardly understand anything."

Other days the agent played question and answers games, still stealing more coffee and gradually wedging himself into the apartment as a fixture. It cheered Sorhyu up like little else, and Shinji had to admit, he liked her acting happy than not. As for the games, they were curious at times, but always interesting. He'd ask questions about the Geofront or experiments Shinji happened to be running, only to segue into the Evangelions and their technology.

Drifting into that topic invariably got Sorhyu involved, and Shinji was more than a little amused to realize that not even Kaji was immune to the girl's prideful streak. Not when the man blundered on a technical detail and she tore a strip out of him both ways for the mistake. Even stuck in a wheelchair, the girl was able to back the man into a wall and make him swear to not speak of things he couldn't understand in her presence.

Finally, after half a week of research and gentle experimentation, Shinji had some _tests_ to perform.

* * *

><p>"So how does it all work again?"<p>

Shinji had been hearing that question a lot. If the redhead were saying it to anyone else, they would have fallen off the Evangelion's torso armor and into the twenty-meter high pool of refrigerated coolant. Shinji didn't even budge- his toes were wedged in just so and no amount of bending, flexing or distraction could make him fall.

As for _why_ he was clinging by toeholds to a half-destroyed Evangelion, there was something of a story involved. What had started with the jacket detoured into the medical research and meditation, and _that_ lead to a few interesting revelations about the things happening in NERV. They still had the best facilities for practice and access to the best minds, even if a fraction of the research staff were still caught between terror and loathing whenever he passed. Even on a skeleton crew though, Shinji still had a degree of official power in NERV, and set his loyal remnants to work with Tactical Operations, gearing up to retrofit the shelters and defensive structures.

Having set that in motion was great and all, but Shinji was left that afternoon with a lingering sense, like an opportunity waiting to be explored. Something Kaji had said to him stuck his mind, about the Evas...

After finishing with his division and caught by the inspiration, Shinji cut through the Geofront and headed for the Evangelion cages. Sorhyu had tagged along, too slow to keep up with Misato's frantic rush through the complex, and none of her UN retinue were allowed that deep in the Geofront to accompany her. All the while, he repeated his first and greatest understanding of her character in his mind.

_Mind her boundaries and ask permission. Don't assume._

With that firmly fixed in his head, Shinji had made the simple offer: direct the resources of his research division to repairing her Evangelion- resources which included his own blatant magic. Even as she rolled herself down the halls and stayed on his heels, Shinji could _see_ the conflict, waging war across her expression as she gave him a steady, one-eyed look. Finally, like with the jacket, she nodded.

When they reached the cages, Ritsuko's technicians and engineers had been crawling over Unit 02, but it only took a moment to deploy his divisional authority, stating in no uncertain terms that he'd handle the Evangelion's repair. The scientist called later to thank Shinji for the reprieve and freed up manpower.

The seed in Shinji's mind, the one that Kaji had planted, was very simple; the Evangelions _were alive_.

Immediately upon diagnosis, Shinji was confronted with the alien sensation of _not knowing_. The puzzle and all its pieces were laid bare, and the blank sections told him volumes just by their absence, but he still lacked context. The other most eerie thing was not the absence of a soul, but a reflection of that missing soul in the body. Rendered like a familiar tree hybridized with an unrelated, alien sapling, and grown into itself a thousand times over... and how it seemed very similar to _Rei_.

But a _comprehensive_ diagnosis wasn't necessary for repair work. Their cybernetics were a juxtaposition of agonizingly painful restraint and suppressive constraints, and vitally important support structures- the Evangelion itself had no natural vascular system, save for the veins in its massive eyes and few other places.

After the crew had been dismissed, Shinji leaped off the main gantry- just like the one he and Sorhyu had screamed across months ago- and landed on the damaged Evangelion's chest. The ceramic composite flaked away under his shoes to reveal the original flexible alloy weave and the gaping spans of ruined flesh.

Severe muscle trauma was _easy_.

The gestures and mudra he made were largely mnemonic devices, tricks he used to harness his internal reserve and direct the power into the task at hand. He felt Sorhyu's stare weighing him down, but he kept focused on the work. The sinew and long cellular structures rebuilt themselves of their own accord, almost boiling into shape. At the same time, the Evangelion's flesh seemed to _resist_ his efforts, but he couldn't figure out how or why. It might have been something to do with their passive square-cube violation... Shinji reminded himself that he probably should look into that. Eventually.

Bit by bit he restored the Evangelion's ravaged pectoral musculature and cybernetics. As he worked, the sunfire corona bloomed around him, locking him in an oversized candle flame that forced his singular audience to shield her eyes. The Evangelion's unprotected skin darkened, showing an unexpected melanin response.

And all of that culminated in the question. "So how does it all work again?"

"I can do the work of one man in an hour- a bit more than that but..." Balancing on a repaired ridge of torso armor, Shinji turned halfway and shrugged. "I also don't need tools or raw materials. It's a blatant violation of mass and energy conservation, I know."

From her chair-bound perch on the gantry, Sorhyu just gave him the slightest smile. "Not that blatant, thought I might call it vulgar. You _are_ spending something inside yourself, right?"

"Pretty much. Ritsuko managed to capture the smallest bit of power I can unleash, and I know a few of my techniques and tricks can use that same amount." He wiped stained hands on his pant legs, thinking. "My diagnosis trick takes about the same amount as effort as what she's got in her little container."

"And how does that one work?" She leaned forward in her seat, propping her chin up with one arm, elbow on her knee. "It's your magic X-ray, right?"

Shinji shook his head and found another perch to sit on, not at all concerned his foothold was about as wide as a pencil. "It's not really an X-ray, I just see someone's symptoms just like a regular doctor- I checked. I just do it faster and I don't need to get out a stethoscope or make you take off your shirt."

If she noticed the slip, Sorhyu didn't show it. She scowled regardless. "That makes almost no sense. Your powers have too much logic. They're... They're too _deliberate_."

Nodding, Shinji rubbed his chin. "That's... That's a really good point. Ritsuko's found some weird stuff too, like how I have that combat stance of total victory."

The girl gave him a sour look, but he waved his hands, rushing to explain. "She recorded it all and I watched it too! I have a technique that _tells people_ I'm going to win. That's not even what it actually _does_, it's just a side effect."

"Combat powers, healing powers, cooking powers, computer powers. Repair..." She started ticking points off with her good hand, extending her fingers up her cheek as she counted. "You are only magical ventriloquism short of being the worst comic book hero I have ever heard of."

For once, Shinji managed to read the dull, flat look for what it was-_ dry wit_, and laughed despite missing the foreign reference. Switching grips and springing off the Evangelion's chest plate, he landed on some hanging cables.

They hardly moved under his weight. "I've got a perfect balance technique, too, if that helps."

Sorhyu looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. She didn't move in her chair though, and Shinji hadn't ever seen her cover her casts and bandages. "That... really looks like fun."

Shinji scratched the back of his head and looked away, laughing weakly. He hardly ever thought about _fun_ ways to use his abilities. Or even just having fun in general. Fun was something that happened to other people, and they sometimes dragged him along for the novelty. Even music hadn't been precisely fun for him, before Exaltation or after.

"I... Really haven't thought about it like that." He finally admitted, offering an embarrassed shrug.

"And like many things, that explains _so_ much, Golden boy." Sorhyu let out a wry sigh before giving him a serious look. "So you can do the same thing to a person?"

She pointed at the once-red Unit 02 and it's mostly repaired torso. Shinji nodded. "I've restored almost a hundred lost limbs over the past year, Ritsuko's included. There's no injury you've suffered that I can't fix."

"Right- so how does that work?" Leaning back in her chair, Sorhyu cocked her head to the side and waited.

"Well... I heal people. I restore the rightness to things." Any other day the repeated question would have been irritating. Today though, Shinji just gave her a shrug. They were the best answers he had at that moment, and his inward reflection hadn't gleaned much yet. "I can tell you that all modern medicine, throughout the history of mankind? That _treats_ people. I can actually _heal people_."

Sorhyu gave him an odd sort of frown. More contemplative than hostile or displeased. "That's an actual meaningful distinction, too..." She looked up at the repaired torso on her Evangelion and chewed her lip. "That's... That's really big, Ikari. It doesn't tell me _how_ though. We need to a step back from the what."

Thinking, Shinji shifted in place on the cable and hummed. "I'm... Understanding something. I'm demonstrating a _skill_. Skill in medicine, as power? I am _that skilled_. So skilled as to diagnose with a glance. So skilled I can build a table without tools. Skill that can repair broken glass as if it had never been cracked."

The cage fell silent at that, save for the muted rush of liquid that lapped against the Evangelion's hips, and the faint squeak of the cable Shinji swung from. Shinji watched as the girl mulled his proclamation over. Thinking about it, he owed even _that_ much of a revelation to her in the first place.

"Alright," Sorhyu started drumming her fingers against one thigh, looking off to the side. "I don't need a big production made out of it. Just get me walking and back in fighting shape."

Her setting terms shouldn't have surprised him, seeing as she'd already refused treatment for her eye almost a year ago. It did though. Shinji felt his jaw drop and work soundlessly. He looked down at the girl, uncomprehending. "But- why?"

"Because you don't need to drop everything and waste a lot of unnecessary effort!" She cut him off before he could reply. "You don't exactly have a _messiah_ complex, but you tried to drop everything and fix my eye- and I know Rei's talked to you about respecting _her_ decisions."

Shinji nodded weakly. "I know but-"

She cut him off mid-sentence, sharp and insistent but not unkindly. "I'm trying to say that _I can wait_ for non-critical treatment. You know what triage is, so."

"Triage is why you're stuck in a wheelchair in the first place!" Shinji huffed, incredulous. He could understand her point well enough, even if the logic hit him in an uncomfortable place. Efficiency at great cost... He suppressed the shudder. Sorhyu didn't notice and kept talking.

"Well that's because I was on a ship with regular doctors and not bullshit magical ones! They worked with what they had and I'm not upset about that." She paused for a moment, thinking. "Listen, how many people can you treat a day?"

Shinji raised a hand and waggled it in that universal some-or-other way. Suddenly self-conscious, he hopped off the hanging cable and landed on the gantry a few yards away from the girl. He could have walked on the rail, but showing off probably wouldn't have been a good idea. "It depends... I have to work on a per-injury basis. There's no "all hurts restored" technique- or I haven't figured out one yet."

"Might be something to investigate later- but separate injuries are all treated individually?" Shinji gave her a hesitant nod, and Sorhyu plowed ahead. She wheeled around to face him, one good arm strong enough to move every bit of girl and chair. "Right, I'm covered in like _twenty_ injuries. You could treat a bunch more people or work on research or do _anything_ that has more utility than fixing some surgical scars."

Finally facing him, she sighed again and pulled off her eyepatch. Despite having an interrupted connection to her brain, the eye tracked and 'saw' things just as well as the other. Her face looked vastly more open without the black wedge of plastic, and she gave him a deliberate, honest sort of look. It seemed a little forced, like she wasn't used to making the expression.

"I think of all the things I've ever had a problem with about you, helping people was the least of them." Her lips quirked up and she shook her head. "That was a really odd way to say it. I mean that I'm surprised you haven't _helped yourself_ very much. Wanting to help others isn't a bad thing, I just think you take it too far."

Shinji had the decency to wince, remembering the apartment debacle, or the several days of blistering invective about liberties taken with a girl's wardrobe. Misato had enjoyed the tailoring, but she also treated propriety less like a proscription of behavior and more like a challenge to be smashed.

"Well..." he coughed and leaned aside, wrapping his hands around the guardrail and taking care not to crush it. "I guess that's true, but I haven't ever really needed to stop until you said something."

Sorhyu smirked faintly from her place on the gantry, sitting several strides away. "I'm surprised you managed to keep going this long, honestly. I would have figured Japanese politeness would have caught you up _months_ ago."

"Misato."

"Point to Golden Boy." Sorhyu ran a hand through her hair and caught a finger on her neural headset, she pulled it out and shook her head, sending her hair falling around in loose waves, She reset the band and pulled her hair up in its customary bunches. "I don't want special treatment, Ikari. I just want to get back in the fight and back in an Evangelion where I belong."

* * *

><p>It took him about four days of study and experimentation, but he was able to bring something to Sorhyu that made her sit up and take note. So much so that she managed to keep Misato from falling asleep as soon as she entered the apartment.<p>

Bemused and drowsy, Misato had descended from her suite clad in a tank top and cotton shorts, flouncing onto the couch and cuddling up next to Sorhyu without care or permission. Fascinated with the byplay, Shinji watched the redhead bristle and let out a surprisingly good-natured growl, like a cat getting ready to play. Pointedly ignoring how Misato hung all over her, Sorhyu maintained an even, patient look and waited for Shinji to get on with his revelation.

Scratching the back of his head, Shinji let out a short breath. "I figured out a transcendent massage technique- different than the one I taught NERV. This one's actual magic and not, science-magic."

Misato perked up at that, blinking rapidly. The anticipation in her brown eyes chased away the exhaustion with a will, unashamedly eager. Shinji could tell she was making a show of it, for her benefit as much as his. She leaned forward and smiled while Sorhyu rolled her uncovered eye. Fortunately the girl already had an overview of Thaumaturgy from Kensuke, of all people, so Shinji didn't have to explain _that_ preconception-shattering subject.

Clearing his throat, Shinji tried not to pace while he was explaining. "I've already checked it on myself and some lab rats back at the Geofront, but I haven't actually tested it on a _normal_ person yet."

Looking at Sorhyu, he gave her a little shrug. "I completely understand not wanting to be a test dummy here, but I figured I'd ask if either of you had any ideas."

"Try it on me!" Misato bounced in her seat, pumping her fist in the air and rocking forward.

"I'm not sure you qualify as normal yourself." Sorhyu scoffed.

"Very funny." Misato said, her smile taking the sting out of the sarcasm.

The girl just shook her head. "You're going to volunteer, just like that? ... He just said he's been _massaging _himself and _rats _for gott knows how long now!"

Misato's smile widened, meeting the younger girl's gaze. That earned a deeper scowl.

"That was not as dirty as it sounded!" Sorhyu let out a volcanic hiss. "Nor is it a particularly glowing recommendation!"

"Why not? He could easily make it one~" Misato just gave the girl a beaming, megawatt smile before turning back to Shinji. "Besides, every trick he's figured has been awesome or great for us in some way, I'm up for the experience!"

Blushing slightly, Shinji just watched the girl roll her eyes again, but she still smirked. He found himself grinning too. Raising his hands, he laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. "So... How would you like to start?"

"I could lie down-" Misato just wriggled back into the couch and smiled, wrapping an arm around Asuka's side. "But this is comfy too. Whenever you're ready, Shinji."

Nodding, Shinji wriggled his fingers and let the somewhat unfamiliar shift inside his soul unfold. Stepping closer, he pressed his fingertips against her forehead and drew a lazy trail for a few seconds. Misato's eyes drifted closed and she let out a pleasant hum while Sorhyu pressed a bit tighter into the couch arm, looking increasingly uncomfortable with just how comfortable Misato was getting.

After he pulled his hand away, Shinji held his breath and waited. Sorhyu leaned around Misato's side to examine her face, intent and dripping with a kind of casual dread. The older woman's eyes were still closed, and her breathing was slow and even, doing things for her top that in Shinji's mostly objective opinion deserved a medal. A bit of amused aggravation followed on that thought- it wasn't _his_ fault he was taller than everyone- or that she was sitting down.

Looking over at Sorhyu, Shinji just shrugged and gave her a helpless look. It wasn't like he knew _exactly_ how the trick worked- or it's full effects. She shrugged back, and they fell into a reasonably amicable silence.

Then something warm and affectionate thumped into his midsection.

His chin dropped down into his neck, and all Shinji could see was Misato, pressed firmly against his middle. Half-lidded brown eyes turned up, and a sly, liquid grin followed. "...Heeeyyy..."

All Shinji could do in reply was let out a dumbfounded grunt and take an unconscious step back. Misato's free arm shot out to wrap around his back in a drunken arc, before pulling tight with surprising strength. She almost dragged herself completely off the couch, hanging on only by the edge of her seat and the curve of her spine. Shinji arms shot up in the air, like everything from the waist down was scalding hot and getting warmer. He felt the muscles in his legs lock up tight, and the blood in his veins could _not _stay frosty when wrapped in one _Katsuragi Misato._

"_Ooooooh_." Misato _purred_ as her cheek rubbed up and down his stomach, grinning into Shinji's shirt and the muscles beneath it. She spoke slowly, lilting and crooning drowsily. "This feels _niiiiiiiice_..."

The half-dazed Misato continued talking even as she cuddled a teen on each side. "I mean nice-nice. What you did. Not just you. But you feel nice too. Doesn't he, Asuka-chan?"

The girl was struck frozen, wedged against Misato's side as she crooned. Every other word was carefully enunciated, and Shinji watched Misato form the sounds with her mouth like they _entertained her_. With no answer coming from Sorhyu, Misato rubbed her cheek against Shinji's belly once more. She let out a sleepy giggle when his abdominals shivered, letting out a long hum of approval.

Shinji felt his cheeks grow even hotter with every inebriated compliment, even as a little laugh bubbled up beside it. "I could bounce a quarter off this. It's _that nice."_

Her arm wrapped around his waist afforded Misato's hand an opportunity to freely wander up along his back, sending inadvertent shivers up his spine... which ended in a sharp squeak from him as her hand suddenly dipped down. All he could do was hold absolutely still while Misato continued to take her playful liberties- _this_ he'd brought on himself, it seemed, and he'd bear the burden with all the quiet dignity he could muster.

Then Misato somehow managed to sneak an arm under his shirt and pull it completely off, and he found himself immediately regretting his habit of always wearing something that _buttoned down_. Especially considering how easily she whipped it off. Whatever dignity he had rapidly converted into a feeling more akin to _what the hell do I do now!? _She'd also done all this while still half-wrapped around his midsection, sitting on the edge of the couch and with her other arm around Sorhyu's middle. The remaining rational parts of his mind were already musing on a way to make the button-threading unbreakable for just this kind of circumstance.

And he wasn't one to go without his shirt much anyway, meaning the blush started to creep down his neck. Shinji brought his thankfully free arms up to cover his chest by reflex, but Misato was still there, wedged in as the most affectionate of personal space invaders he'd ever known. His eyes cut to Sorhyu, and if he had to guess, they were sharing the _exact _same mortified expression.

Meanwhile, Misato just grinned at his consternation and pressed against his stomach again, humming. "Always wanted to do that-Ayumi is a lucky girl I tell you right now, don't you think Asuka-chan~? I mean, look! Or feel! Feel works too!"

She didn't wait for Sorhyu to reply, and the arm hooked around his body kept Shinji firmly in place. Misato didn't seem to notice, rambling on in laughing tones. "We didn't have guys like _this_ in college I can tell you right now. Ritsuko and I would have had some _fun_ if there were, you have no idea."

"The two of you should be able to have fun too! All the fun like I'm having! And!" Misato chirped at Shinji first, then turned to face Sorhyu and focus every bit of her attention on the girl. "If I were as hot as _you're_ going to be, Asuka-chan, I'd have to beat guys off with a stick- and the girls too! You're going to have _so much fun_ in a couple years! So jealous! You both need to loosen up! Ooh! Idea!"

While she'd released him physically, Misato continued to dominate the living room by sheer _presence, _forcing them to follow helplessly in her dynamic wake. Shinji felt smaller, more condensed but somehow in a positive way, even though he couldn't quite get himself back into forward motion. Misato's 'idea' proved to be playing with Sorhyu's hair, pulling it up and piling it around the neural clips in new and interesting styles.

The redhead tried to ward the older woman off with the one good arm, shrieking and laughing despite herself. Misato had finished pinning one dumpling-mound of hair around Sorhyu's right-hand neural barrette when she slipped, flopping face first into Sorhyu's chest and laughing

Caught between mortified giggles and disbelieving, amused horror, Sorhyu turned one bright blue eye to him and _pleaded_, with her voice going high and needy. _"Ikari! Stop this crazy thing!"_

It was enough to snap Shinji out of his stupor, getting his brain back into gear and started _acting_ as opposed to just standing there like a pile of hormones and mortification. Magic smoothed all courses, and Shinji moved with the speed and efficiency he'd rarely thought about but very much appreciated. Driving forward with his arms outstretched, he slid his hands between the pair with a lunge, twist and shove, trying very much to focus on the technique and not the fact that they were both drop-dead gorgeous.

Pankration didn't have a technique accounting for that.

Then again the techniques were developed involving naked men, which could have accounted for the oversight.

A warm body and warmer giggles tugged Shinji away from the brief tangent and back into the moment. Misato clung to his left arm for a moment, hanging as he raised it away and toward the far end of the couch. Her grip was weak though, and she slipped off his forearm to drop down and bounce in the cushion, giggling the whole time.

Sorhyu meanwhile decided to treat Shinji like a mountain and _scaled_. With only one mostly functional arm and leg, she somehow managed to clamber up his _other_ arm and crawl across his back until she sat with her middle braced over his shoulder, hissing to herself about _cracked ribs_.

The older woman seemed to realize she was suddenly alone and pouted, hugging herself and shivering. "Not fair Asuka-chan! You should get your own hug-supplier! Rits was always good for it after a pinch..."

Then she seemed to brighten, put-down expression fading in the face of some new amusement. Laughing and squirming, the woman tried to right herself but couldn't, so she slumped back down and hugged herself again, beaming up at the boy. "Mrgle- you'd be fun to wrestle, Shinji-kun... Y'should teach some other guys how you wrestle. Wanna wrestle a hot guy... n'lose."

Then, Misato _blushed_, beetroot and turning her head away. "Not Kaji. He's a bum. Doesn't deserve to be awesome..."

Shinji felt Sorhyu's hair spill over and brush against his face and chest before he heard her voice in his ear. Her breath was _scalding_. "What did you even _do?!_"

He kept an eye on Misato while she giggled and raised her arms up high, wiggling her fingers under the ceiling light. As to her question, Shinji could only give her a helpless, tight whisper. "I don't know! it's supposed to be an opiate response, but I thought she could handle it!"

Strong fingernails dug into his arm but didn't do much more than remind him that Sorhyu was _strong_. Her teeth snapped uncomfortably close to his ear when she hissed back. "Misato's a functioning alcoholic, not a morphine dependant!"

"I never did drugs in college!" The two teenagers turned to Misato, who had wriggled around until head and shoulders hung down off the couch, letting her hair brush against the carpet. She waved her arms, giggling. "You can say I 'xperimented, but not that kind!"

Rolling over, Misato crawled off the couch and toward one of the beanbag cushions she so vehemently preferred. Shinji held his breath, and he felt Sorhyu do the same as the woman shifted, throwing her arms and tangling her legs around the bag. After a long, tense moment, they heard the first of many gentle snores.

The redhead let out a wary little croak. "Is she asleep?"

Shinji called on the tiniest bit of his reserve and nodded, discerning the entirety of the woman's current condition. "Yeah. If it holds to pattern, she'll be drowsy for five hours."

Sorhyu let out the breath she'd been holding. Shinji couldn't see it, but he could hear the dumbstruck fascination in her voice when she spoke. "...I think it says something about her that all she does is pinup poses, even when asleep and on an opiate high."

Tonelessly, Shinji just shook his head. "No, no this is an improvement- she used to be a real slob. Hardly any natural grace at all."

After a long thirty seconds of watching Misato snooze, dead to the world, Shinji asked the obvious question. "So, what do we do now?"

"Now? Now we get out of here before she wakes up and thinks you have a thing for redheads. Or _her_ 'remembering' having a thing for redheads."

* * *

><p>Shinji had left a spare room on the 'living floor' of the apartment, across from the indoor bath and spa. Back when he'd been remodelling the various spaces, he couldn't think of what to do with it, so it was left empty and unfurnished. Now that Sorhyu had agreed- bargained down to the bare minimum of treatment, he realized he could make it his office. A clinic outside of the Geofront, and one not as rigidly controlled.<p>

So he'd refurbished it in a few days, building the necessary tools, tables and benches, making sure they were as lavishly comfortable and as well designed as the rest of the apartment. Granted, some of his design choices made it look more like a resort spa than a proper medical facility. A hot rock oven was positioned in one corner just off the wall, poised for maximum aromatic airflow. He had to do a lot of things like that, eschewing traditional medicine in favor of more ritualistic trappings.

The last thing he needed was the patient, and Sorhyu had wheeled herself in and taken her place with barely a word. Looking her over and noting the flouncy t-shirt, Shinji swallowed heavily. Blushing and stuttering for a few seconds, he explained that he needed direct access to her back and spine for the treatment to work. That was to say, bare skin. Sorhyu gave him a long, sour look before nodding. Scrambling upright, he all but lunged for the privacy screen he'd made and pulled it alongside the futon mattress. Boundaries, always respect the boundaries...

Bereft of her prosthetic and with her shirt bunched up around her shoulders, the redhead leaned just far enough around the privacy screen and Shinji himself. She stared past the crook in his arm. "What are _they _doing here?"

He turned and followed her glare across the clinic, blinking owlishly. 'They' happened to be Misato, Rei and Ayumi, sitting on the floor with a spread of finger foods stretched out between them. The older woman was grinning toothily, eyes sparkling with barely contained glee. Shinji turned and gave his girlfriend a shy smile, shrugging. Ayumi just waved, while Rei was apparently ignoring them all, focused on the food.

The oldest woman let out a melodious laugh, leaning back with her legs folded crossways and hands on her knees. "I figured Ayumi would want to know nothing untoward was happening."

Sorhyu was quiet for a long moment as she fussed with her shirt, staying angled and behind the screen as to maintain her dignity. From his perspective, Shinji could see the side of her face, and he watched her eyes thin down to razor sharp slits. "Why are _you_ here?"

The Second Child shoved the screen aside and held her shirt to her chest, giving Misato a baleful look as she settled down on the futon. Misato's eyes crinkled shut and sparked, while her eyebrows waggled in a manner most suggestive. "To make sure nothing untoward is happening!"

Sorhyu threw her face into the pillow and groaned. "_You're untoward!_"

Misato just laughed harder, all but folding over into Rei's shoulder while the girl's lips quirked up in a tiny smile. Ayumi played a quick sketch, mouthing the words _Boke _and _Tsukkomi_, before tilting her head toward the bickering brunette and redhead. Shaking his head, Shinji resolved _not_ to say anything. It fit _so_ well though. Turning back to the argument, he cleared his throat and gave Misato a pointed look, sighing softly.

To Sorhyu, he winced but had to remind her that the more she squirmed, the longer it was going to take, no matter what Misato happened to be saying. Finally, he raised his hand and told her it was time for the general, albeit magical anaesthetic.

Looking over her shoulder, Sorhyu gave him a wary look. "You worked out the kinks right?"

Shinji just nodded, before a sly little grin crept its way across his lips. He inclined his head at the oldest brunette in the room. Smirking a bit wider as Misato blushed beetroot, Shinji fired the shot Soryhu couldn't. "After Misato worked out some of hers, yes. I had to go back to the drawing board though."

Sorhyu flashed a tight, honest smile past her shoulder, before turning a slightly more feral one at Misato. Finally she nodded and laid her head back down on the pillow. "Okay, hit me."

It was hardly any effort, physical or otherwise. A touch against the base of her neck was all it took. Shinji leaned back, wary. "So, does it feel like morphine?"

"Oh yeah- better even." The redhead drawled, worming her way deeper into the pillow and mattress, but he could hear her through the cushions all the same. "Bottle this stuff, Ikari, seriously."

He let out a short laugh at that, before taking a closer look at the damage. "I'll see what I can do, Sorhyu."

With the girl undressed from the neck down, Shinji finally had a chance to _see_ her injuries, instead of just diagnose from improbably observable symptoms. With her hair pulled away from her neck, Shinji had a clear view of her back and spine from the head down to her waist. The bruises were almost all completely gone, leaving only the faintest yellow blotches across her back and sides. More pressingly was the faint swelling along the vertebrae, stubbornly refusing to align. The surgical scars were heavy along her side where her ribs had been reset and the one removed. The angry red had faded, but they were still a little raw looking.

Focusing on her spine, Shinji turned to the tools of his trade. He'd already decided to ignore scalpels and saws... Thinking about it, there was something missing. Or maybe not missing. He looked up at the intensely curious Rei and Ayumi, while Misato just gave him an encouraging toast with her can of ginger ale. The Geofront medical and research staff had always been attentive, but less... Aware of him, as a person. Looking down at Sorhyu, he realized that it wasn't something _missing_, but something added.

"Just so you know, this is going to take a few hours. I have a way to make it go faster, but I can't use it right now." While he spoke, Shinji started to tap out points on the girl's back, preparing her internal vital structures for the work to come. "Trying two techniques at once is like trying to... play two instruments at once, or something."

Misato spoke up for Sorhyu at that point while Rei and Ayumi split their attention between the snacks and medical efforts. His girlfriend watched his hands much more closely though, visibly curious. The dark-haired woman cocked her head to the side. "Don't you have a 'go faster' power?"

"I do, but I decided I'd rather bypass tools- I don't think Sorhyu wants me working on her with scalpels and bone saws." Shinji counted down Sorhyu's vertebrae, from the base of her skull down. Judging by the trembles, the girl was _ticklish_, even with his little trick dulling her senses.

The girl groused from her place on the floor, chin propped up on pillow and staring straight ahead. "Damn right I don't."

"Scalpels and bone saws are not agreeable things."

Shinji looked up at Rei's whisper-quiet statement, blinking. Of all of them, she probably had the most experience with surgery, for good or ill.

The five of them fell silent after that, and Shinji focused on the work. He had to make sure all of Sorhyu's muscles and tendons were in the right positions and relaxed just enough for the next step. Along the way he couldn't help but ask her how it _felt_, admitting that most of the time his patients were drugged and unconscious. She shifted, mulling over the answers bit by bit and grumbling. Sorhyu told him in some ways, it felt like feeling the sun heating her from back to front, and in others she couldn't even say. At that point, she huffed about 'soul muscles' and sighed.

Apparently abhoring a conversational vacuum, Sorhyu shifted again and fixed Ayumi with a look. "So, how've-" Shinij's knuckle found a tight spot- "-exams been?"

"Oh, the usual!" Ayumi chirped, waving her hands dismissively. There were times Shinji envied his girlfriend's easy-going aplomb.

The redhead let out another grunt. "That's great. So that means- the school hasn't burned down either."

"Not for lack of trying! Interesting times, and everything." She turned to Rei for confirmation, and the red-eyed nodded decisively in reply.

"Yeah. Yeah..." Sorhyu drawled again, settling back down into the pillows while Shinji worked. Judging by the look in his girlfriend's eye, there were certain, increasingly obvious needs he wasn't satisfying. Needs like an appreciation for harmless gossip.

Ayumi continued on, smiling prettily. She hiked herself forward closer to Sorhyu and almost gushed. "Everyone has been pretty convinced for the past couple months you tested out to become a model! In Europe or something."

Sorhyu let out a rude noise at that, sputtering derisively. Misato meanwhile muffled laugh with one hand. "Flattering, but give me a _break_. I'm too busy getting shit done for that kind of crap. Besides, I've had my fill of being a cover girl."

Judging by the look on Rei's face, Shinji wasn't the only one confused. Ayumi fortunately stepped up to ask the obvious question. "... What?"

He couldn't see it, but Shinji heard the little smile in Sorhyu's voice when she settled down again. Half-speaking into the pillow, Sorhyu just made a slightly drowsy sigh. "Heh, neve- _Ikar_-_eeeeiiiiiwhatthefuck?!_"

The girl went rigid, back arched with her shoulders up and pressing her hips down into the floor. The first damp square of cloth clung to her lower back, just above her spine.

Shinji leaned back on his hands and splayed thighs, wincing. "It's salt water, and a safety precaution. It's part of that ritual treatment technique I mentioned."

Sohyru squirmed against the futon, and the red flush crept down her neck past her shoulder blades. "Why _cold_ though?"

Not that she could see it, but Shinji pointed to the bubbling pot of water sitting near his knee, and the disc-like massage stones inside. "So it'll work better."

Huffing, the girl grouched and wriggled back deeper into the cushion, shivering. "F-Fine... Just, warn me next time."

"How exactly does the ritual work?" Rei spoke up again, quietly still. Shinji followed her eyes to his own hands and where they hovered over Sorhyu's back and shoulders.

Thinking about it, Shinji realized the question came from a somewhat unexpected source. At the same time, it made a certain sort of sense. Rei was concerned about her friend- that they _were_ friends had been clear even to him. Shinji considered himself the least able to read someone else's mind, but Rei made it easy for the people she trusted- if they knew how to look.

Glancing down at Sorhyu, he realized these were the questions she _would_ have asked.

"It's hard to explain... and it changes depending on the situation. I'm just seeing lots of shortcuts to get the end I want." He pointed at boiling pot of water. "Here I'm going to put these hot stones on top of those wet pads..."

Staring at the rocks and the pads that dotted the redheads back, Rei blinked. "And how does that work?"

Shinji shrugged. How could he explain the unknowable skill and rightness... "I'm basically using all this as a path to get Sorhyu's bones and muscles to do what I want. I'm not really controlling cell division or whatever, but I'm helping her body do what it wants to do anyway.

Snarkily, Sorhyu shivered again. "That's... Fine I guess. But couldn't you have just put them on my skin like a normal massage?"

Shinji just shook his head and told her no. "I calculated their thermal behaviors and the evaporation rate of the salt water-" He reached into the boiling pot and pulled out a thumb-sized stone with his bare fingers.

He held up the steaming stone between his fingertips, nodding to himself. "If they touch your skin, it will burn you down to the bone."

Sorhyu pushed herself up on her forearms and elbows, craning her neck over her shoulder. "Oh. Okay well whenever you're ready golden _bo_-"

The redhead's voice cut off completely, and she dropped like a rock- face first into the pillow. Her hair splayed out around her head in thick waves, and she let out an unintelligible grunt. A thick plume of steam shot up from the girl's back where the stone had dropped, and Shinji felt his magic shift into the fore. Sorhyu huffed into the cushion and tried to rise, pushing one shoulder back up into the air. The muscle and bone beneath her skin trembled before giving out in a rush, and the girl collapsed in a liquid sprawl.

He watched with no small amount of pride and relief as the swelling around her spine shrank down before his eyes. Her muscles fluttered, and he directed her body to nudge and tug her vertebrae back into alignment.

Panting, Sorhyu managed to lever herself up enough to look over her shoulder with her good eye. "What the fuck was that."

Shinji hemmed and hawed for a second. "Uhh, two of your vertebrae were fused when you got here. And... now they aren't?"

The girl's voice dropped down level and completely deadpan. "... I gotta stop asking you these questions."

Stubbornly, Sorhyu managed to roll her head to the side and speak clearly past her hair. "I don't think any of you appreciate how weird it is to _hear and feel_ my spine popping and cracking back into normal alignment."

"It's perfectly normal-" Shinji assured her, laughing lightly. "I expected it to work like this!"

Misato, Rei and Ayumi all just stared openly, but they smiled too. It really was going exactly as planned, conversation aside. Shinji had to admit it was _nice_ though, to have a more direct and connected experience with someone he was treating- healing.

"You say this is normal, Golden boy..." Sorhyu slurred drowsily, not at all invested in the invective. Shinji just smiled and added a second and third steaming stone, flash-drying more of the saltwater pads. The association of conductivity with nerve impulses was enough to make the ritual behavior work.

Somehow, the girl kept talking. "...n-normal. Nothing normal 'bout lying half naked on the floor with an audience. And a guy who outweighs me four times over blasting sunlight into my spine, to fix injuries I got punching a _space monster_ with a giant robot."

Misato leaned in then, smiling. "Didn't you kick it too?"

Shinji only saw the side of it, but Sorhyu fixed the woman with a flat, dry look. "No."

With that, the girl collapsed down on the futon and started to snore. The treatment was finished a few hours later. The others stayed for the duration, only grabbing leftovers when convenient.

Grabbing a towel and wiping his fingers off, Shinji turned to Misato, Rei and Ayumi. "So I guess you three want a stone massage too?"

"Yes." "_Yes_." "No."

Ayumi, Misato and Shinji all turned to Rei, giving the girl an incredulous look, though probably for different reasons. Rei just took a demure sip of her tea before answering. "I am not so easily controlled by my hormones as you are, and I have an appointment with the autobody paint shop. I will be dropping my car of there this afternoon."

With that, Rei stood up and left, giving Shinji a small, endearing little smile along the way.

Finally, after a long moment, Ayumi cleared her throat. "So, how about that massage?"

* * *

><p>Three days of treatment had given her back full mobility.<p>

Soryhu _Asuka Langley_ looked at herself in the mirror and considered herself whole, if not a little rough around the edges. The last of her stitches had come out the day before, leaving her with just a hash of surgical scars and some lingering over-the-counter bandages. She pulled one from around her ribs just under the bottom of her bra, barely registering the sticky sting.

"Something like sixty-two scars... " Asuka sighed and looked at her reflection. Basic no-nonsense underwear, neural headset and ever-present eyepatch.

The scars added something, but they also took something away. She traced a long smooth line along her side where they cut out her rib. Ikari grew it back on the second day. Almost every time he'd fixed something, Ikari told her he could keep going, fixing more until there was nothing wrong and it was as if she'd never gone into battle. He could fix scars she'd gotten from training years ago. She'd had to beat the offers off with a metaphorical stick, and verbally shoved him back to the Geofront to do something else constructive.

Still, she'd smiled while she said it. It was hard to really stay mad at someone for wanting to help, he just took it way too far.

Smiling wider at being able to _stand under her own power_, Asuka swayed side to side and relished the feeling of working hips, thighs and legs. Behind her and unseen, the door opened. Probably Misato come to check on her- not that she needed it. She was _fine_. Fingers and toes all working.

Letting her eyes drift closed, she spun in place and exhaled. "Don't you ever knock?"

When she opened them, Rei was standing there.

Freezing, Asuka blanched. "Erk."

Rei just cocked her head to the side and blinked once. "It is my room."

Asuka didn't have a clever answer to that.

Instead, she turned back to the mirror and crossed her arms with a huff. Leaning in close, she uncurled an arm and tugged at her uncovered eyelid. It was the same deep blue as it always was- not a bit of bloodshot. She saw Rei move in the reflection, moving over to her dresser and the cage on top. The other pilot fussed with her mice for a few minutes.

Asuka worked her jaw to one side and scowled at the scene. If Rei didn't want to talk, she wasn't going to either. There were a lot more important things to worry about. Reaching for a box of her own clothes, the redhead pulled out one of her favorite shirts and held it up to her chest. It wasn't so much a question of vanity, but there was a very real concern. Long sleeves or short. Skirts or pants... Her scars might not be _forever_, but they were definitely _here for now_.

Tossing the shirt aside, Asuka let out another huff and planted her hands on hips. Screw waiting. "So where have you been?"

"At school, the garage. Elsewhere within the apartment. Sometimes the Geofront." Rei's voice was clear, even though she wasn't looking at Asuka.

Looking through the mirror into the rest of the room, Asuka crossed her arms and drummed her fingers along one bicep. "Kinda wish I could have gone, you know?"

Rei nodded, but didn't say anything directly. She turned away from the dresser and the cage, absently cradling her five little mice in her palms. Wide empty space and a throw rug stretched out between them in the middle of the studio loft.

"I mean, we used to hang out most of the day, every day, even before all the simulations. You kept up swimming at least." Asuka cocked an eyebrow and tried to smirk, but her heart wasn't fully in it. No amount of glibness was going to fill the two month gap in their friendship. Lamely, she added "It shows."

Rei gave her a wan nod, looking away. "One does what one can, to keep up."

"Else you get left behind." Asuka completed that thought quietly, knowing how unfair it was before it left her lips. Rei didn't deserve accusations, but... The redhead flexed her hands before letting them fall to her side, watching the rodent quintet nuzzle her fellow pilots hands.

She'd rather be fighting another Angel then this. "I'm sure you haven't... replaced me- no matter how cute they are- but Rei, what _gives_."

"I was unsure. Uncertain." Rei spread her arms while the mice crawled up her sleeves, showing her own scalpel thin scars. They were almost invisible. "I am the injured one- never others. I have endured the pain of healing many times."

Looking away again, Rei hugged herself, holding one hand against her chest and fisting up the fabric. It was an awkward motion, but the fact that she made it at all told Asuka everything she needed to know.

"I don't know how to endure the pain of others healing. Of you, Shinji-kun or Misato-san suffering like that." Asuka watched as Rei turned to face her and locking eyes. "I think I'd rather it never come up again, but if it does, I think I have a better idea of how to endure it."

Feeling more than a little numb, Asuka nodded. Well she got an answer at least. A few stinging embers of pride weren't quite out yet though. "Yeah well, you were all over Misato and Ikari almost every day. Since when did you get all hugs and cuddles?"

Rei just cocked her head to the side. "Ah. To that point..."

The girl took two steps forward and threw her arms around Asuka's body and _squeezed_. She pulled back a moment later and let her wrists hang on Asuka's shoulders, with mice whiskers teasing at both their ears.

Then Rei looked Asuka right in the eye and smiled. "I needed the practice."

* * *

><p>Twenty-hour days were hell. Misato was absolutely certain this was a hidden truth of the world and a path to some deep form of enlightenment. Just not one meant for mere mortals. A home-cooked meal and a hot bath were the only reasons she didn't just collapse on her bed, complete with shoes and uniform. The silk sheets called to her, grabbed her tight like a long-lost lover and made all the bad things go away...<p>

Misato opened her eyes and stared at the moonlit shapes that filled her bedroom.

"UN inspection in a week. _Fuck_."

* * *

><p>Modifying the bath tub wasn't difficult by any stretch, he just a handful of raw materials. Fiberglass for the base structure and the waterproof cushioning material that made the tub itself much more comfortable to sit in. He'd already machined the handles Misato asked for the other day, knowing exactly how to maximize their ergonomic utility and install them without disrupting the careful fluid dynamics and... pressure point stim..ul..lation...<p>

_...Dammit Misato!_


	38. Separation

_"The Lord Gaznak has desired to see you die before him. Be pleased to come with us, and we can discourse by the way of the manner in which the Lord Gaznak has desired to see you die."_

_And as he said this he unwound a chain of iron that was coiled upon his saddle, and Leothric answered:_

_"I would fain go with you, for I am come to slay Gaznak."_

_Then all the camel-guard of Gaznak laughed hideously, disturbing the vampires that were asleep in the measureless vault of the roof. And the leader said:_

_"The Lord Gaznak is immortal, save for Sacnoth, and weareth armour that is proof even against Sacnoth himself, and hath a sword the second most terrible in the world."_

_Then Leothric said: "I am the Lord of the sword Sacnoth."_

- Exerpt from _The Fortress Unvanqushable, save for Sacnoth_

* * *

><p>There had been a lot of things going on, and after a long time, Shinji realized he'd taken them for granted. To his new eyes, the world was full of strange patterns that defied most sensible interpretations of the world. Jumping between fortress city rooftops, he counted his landings. On the fifth leap, he started over. <em>Why<em> he started over had to do with numerology, and a strange sort of urge. It was a feeling that _five was good_. That all he saw were nested fives or multiples of fives.

It wasn't like Japan's own quirk about how the character for four could be read as _death_. It was more that there was a rightness, that five fit into new systems and philosophies that Shinji himself had been discovering without even thinking about it. By now he knew the difference though between his distant revelations and active effort. Thaumaturgy, anything he'd ever conceived of regarding those feats and sciences, that had all come from his brain... but it also hadn't.

Instead Shinji felt like a can of soup with the can-opener sealed inside. There had been five directions, five noble earths, five of _something_ that had to do with the secrets locked in his Exaltation. Shinji could accept now more than ever that it came to him as something other than a blank slate- a even a fraction of a lifetime nearly five thousand years long was more than enough.

So Shinji saw fives everywhere. He slid to a halt across one tar papered roof and leaned against a parapet. His Specialist disguise was as good as ever, and the high September sun was hot on his back. He felt more and more comfortable on days like that. Counting off on his fingers, he ran through his ever growing list. Five books in the Torah, and _that_ had been something of a read one morning. Musical theory had the circle of fifths and then the _perfect fifth_ on top of that. The damn number was _everywhere._

Shaking his head, Shinji looked out across the city, idly noting the mask display highlighting and labeling buildings as he panned around. Most days, Tokyo-3 was a mix of civilian and defensive structures, most of the former with some of the most critical latter. Fortress tower, Evangelion access, office complex. Wincing, he remembered he still needed to do something about those shelters. The UN inspection was more important though in the short term...

Turning, he watched the play of his shadow across the rooftop, humming faintly. His mind wandered back to fives, and to things he'd heard and learned over the past year. Shinji folded his fingers up into a fist and _knew_ what power was there, and he knew he'd barely scratched the surface. He let out a short, wry laugh. Sorhyu had told him 'Physician, heal thyself'. Or more directly, to look inward.

So he did.

It wasn't a grand revelation, just a building on what he already knew, but at the same time there was a new kernel of understanding. Like he'd seen in thaumaturgy and that language, fives were everywhere. The classical alchemical metals, gold, bronze, copper, iron and 'Quicksilver', better known as mercury. In... Whatever he would call Tokyo-3, he'd seen things like the five platonic solids. They mingled and overlapped, and it was the _oddest _thing to get hung up on. There was something missing though, so be started again from the beginning, five directions, five noble earths, five pure incarnate essences... five phases of the day. Five daily prayers to the sun. Five times five hours in that span...

Shinji blinked at that. The solar day was twenty four hours. The Solar... The teenager groaned and let his head fall into his waiting palms. Stupid names. Ambling around, Shinji walked up the frame and gantry of a rooftop crane. A brief surge of his own power steadied his steps even as he wandered. A day had twenty four hours, unless astronomers throughout all history had somehow gotten it _wrong_. But what could make a day shorter except time? Something bigger than what anyone understood about time, maybe even the natural laws of the world.

He really did not want to say anything about the prehistory of Earth and mankind. Angels and Impacts and the sweeping changes on what people understood about 'the ways things are' had already upset everyone enough, without suggesting that Time itself had been broken somewhere.

But Solar days... there was something on the tip of his tongue about that. Looking up at the sun in the sky, Shinji hummed. "Why is there a word for me?"

He slid down the crane's angled framework down to the cab and hopped on top of it. The thin sheet metal roof didn't even budge despite a couple hundred pounds of pilot and armor. There wasn't any question about his Exaltation carrying _information_, but why had it carried definitions? Why had he seen _a god_ and it tell him something he barely understood?"

"Solar Exalted..." Shinji let out a long breath. "Zenith Solar... Why Zenith?"

The word itself was simple, describing the highest point reached by a celestial or other object, or the time at which someone or something was the most successful. _He_ was sun-themed, against all logical convention, but that in itself had a logic. There can't be a theme without logic, some external force or factor... and that factor had _named him_.

Zenith. Solar.

Shinji looked up at the sun once more and frowned. "What the hell is a Zenith?"

The sun did not reply.

* * *

><p>"And in local news, solar activity continues to manifest in numerous aurora and magnetic stor-"<p>

Standing tall and proud in the center of the living room, Sorhyu Asuka Langley scowled, mashing the TV off button with her thumb. "Unscientific dreck."

Turning, the redhead smiled the sunniest of smiles and greeted her first and only student. Wright had arrived minutes ago, clad in civilian clothes and looking almost depressingly like _Ikari_ with the white button down and black slacks. Being an obvious foreigner protected him from some of the stigma against extensive and obvious tattoos, but then again, _foreigner_. The snarling beasts crawling over the sailor's forearms were juxtaposed against almost gleaming gold ink scales and Sanskrit symbols.

Still, kindred spirits. Asuka smiled wider as Wright took a seat on the couch. He shot increasingly apprehensive glances at the spread of books out on the coffee table, or the worksheets she'd pulled from the college laptop and printed from Misato's home office. The device itself passed around the apartment as time and inclination permitted, and today it was all Asuka's.

"So!" Asuka clapped her hands and rubbed them together, not at all caring that she looked more and more like a mad scientist with a fresh new experiment. "We are going to meet for tutoring every weekday after I come home from school- you had better appreciate that I am taking three hours out of my busy schedule to do this."

"Of course, ma'am!" His Japanese was terrible, but his English was impeccably American. "I really do appreciate you helping me out..."

He trailed off and glanced at her stocking-clad legs, obviously confused. "Ah, may I ask how you're up and walking?"

The cover story was surprisingly easy to say. "NERV research and advancements in medical science-" She waved at her scuffed up black eyepatch and smirked, making her uncovered eye crinkle and gleam.

He answered with a dumb nod, taking in the sun-lit apartment around them. "Well shit, girl. I mean, Miss Asuka. These uh, NERV folks don't do nothing by halves, do they?"

That earned Wright a smug scoff on Asuka's part as she dug through the assorted papers. "Not in the slightest, but this is only a temporary arrangement anyway."

Still, she couldn't resist a small smirk as the navy man struggled with the lavish enormity of the living room. He rubbed the back of his neck "I get you. They've got you hot-bunking it from the Taj Mahal next door or something?"

Grinning, Asuka shrugged. "Some days I wonder."

Dropping heavily onto the other end of the couch, Asuka bounced and reached for the printed schedule. Handing it to Wright, she put on her best professor's voice. "Today is an easy one- we're just going to get a feel for what you know and what you're interested in. I'm going to tell you outright that I won't be getting you your GED."

Wright seemed to wilt under her attention. "Shooting too high I guess?"

Asuka didn't answer directly, instead she just smiled a bit wider. "The opposite. I'm going to get you into university."

The dark-haired man gaped at her for a moment, and Asuka just basked in the dumbfounded awe like a leaf turning toward the sun. It was good to be appreciated. "So, Mister Wright, what _do_ _you _want to learn?"

Rubbing the back of his neck, the man admitted he always had a thing for literature. If it was printed and made him think, he charged after it like little else. Asuka felt her eyes light up at that and whirled in place, almost lunging for her admittedly meager stack of classics. Dostoyevsky, Twain, Salinger... Literary analysis wasn't her specialty but she could do better than _her_ professors- _You're welcome to an opinion, miss Sorhyu, as long as it's mine._

Fingering a twenty-year old copy of Bulwer-Lytton's _Richelieu; _Or _the Conspiracy- _she handed her student the stack of books and watched his eyes light up. That they came from several years of her university reading lists didn't detract from their greatness. The three hours Asuka set aside for the session passed quickly, and Wright was a at times surprisingly insightful. The rest of the time he was thick as cement and barely knew of _anything _before his time. A child of the oughts, as he described it, and his entire motivation to become a navy man. Asuka honestly couldn't fault the logic behind the choice, travelling the world as he had was the easiest way to become knowledgeable at _something_.

Kaji ambled in then, and Asuka resisted the urge to straighten her hair. The pretense wasn't necessary and her goal hadn't changed, but old habits died hard. Toasting the pair with some of Misato's beer, he smiled.

Then he frowned, giving Wright a sidelong glance. "How old are you, Wright-san?"

He tried his best, but Wright stumbled through the Japanese before trying again in English "Nineteen this year, uh Mister Ryoji-sama. Sir.

"That's not too bad then." Kaji shot a meaningful glance at the sailor that Asuka was _certain_ he meant for her to see. "If I find out you ever hurt her, you won't be going to jail. I will."

Asuka heard Wright gulp. "No offense intended sir, but I saw the last guy who tried, and she scares me more than you do."

Leaning back into the couch, Asuka smiled and closed her eyes, content to let her well-earned reputation stand uncontested.

* * *

><p>That day, like most days, the pool inside Central Dogma was empty save for Rei.<p>

The UN inspection neared with every passing day, and with it, the pilots seemed to fall further and further into the cracks. At first Rei had considered it a lucky happenstance, more time to work on her car or to swim. There was however something unkind she could say about too much of a good thing. Floating on her back and staring up at the skylight, Rei tried to keep her mind clear.

She wasn't having much in the way of success.

Focusing on the way her hair was heavy, trailing down into the deeper water beneath her, Rei took a short steadying breath. She rose further out of the water, and the sudden cold against her sides was a welcome distraction. It didn't last long. Rolling over, Rei dove down for the bottom, long used to the sting of chemicals on her eyes. Again the thoughts followed her, and there was no icy clarity of logic and self-delusion to stop them. This time she frowned and let the feelings come.

Clarity of purpose had answered a question for her, one that she hadn't asked, but justified and defined nearly sixteen years of her life. Rei _knew things_, and like she'd told Ritsuko some weeks ago, she was growing increasingly tired of knowing them. Rei owed her existence to a handful of people and a plan that she cared about because of her part in it.

Letting a bubble out past her lips, Rei felt her brow furrow, completely on its own in relation to her mental state. Now, she looked at herself and the life that radiated outward from her. Her Absolute Territory extended past the Commander's plans and the Scenario to unite him with Ikari Yui, or to Initiate Third Impact. Or perhaps that was the wrong way to look at it- her Territory had _shrunk_ in scope, but increased in strength as she found new and closer connections to the world. Eva had been her bond with humanity, but Rei had realized some time ago that now she had a bond with _people_.

Her temples throbbed and she heard the pulse of blood in her neck. The infusion pump whined against her arm but otherwise didn't complain about the ten feet of water pressure. Shinji had made it for _her life_, and engineered it appropriately. Those bonds with people were stronger now, tangible. Staring out into the water, a quote came to mind, turned to her situation as she thought it. _I am stretched between the Scenario and a life well lived._

The need for air was getting too great to ignore. Kicking up off the bottom of the pool, Rei broke through the surface with a splash. The water didn't have an answer for her.

* * *

><p>The private jet touched down in Kyoto-2 International Airport with a pair of muted chirps, followed by a third as the nose landing gear hit the runway. It and a few dozen aircraft of various sizes and types joined the mass of runway traffic. The dense tangle filtered out to the gates, hangars and other marked zones while cargo haulers and luggage trams flit from craft to craft.<p>

Radioing ahead for security and expedited disembarkation, the pilot declared the UN inspection team's presence. As for why Kyoto, there was a not insignificant chunk of airspace under joint JSDDF and NERV control. Control that denied access to any non-military aircraft, no matter the clearance. Most of it was a reasonable precaution, as the fortress city could easily catch an errant passenger liner during an Angel attack.

It was also a firm measure of control, for the only ways into Tokyo-3 were by road and rail. Both were controlled by the MAGI triumvirate, and very few people wanted to deal with a city that could be convinced to _hate them_.

The other reason for Kyoto was the inspection's circuit through the actual administrative and legislative offices of Japan itself. Old Tokyo had been the _de facto _capital of Japan, and it had burned under one of the handful of nuclear exchanges during Second Impact. Kyoto-2 and Tokyo-2 were built as successor cities after the water levels stabilized, the latter serving as a decoy for what would eventually become Tokyo-3.

A fortress-city could have been the seat of government, but in the case of NERV, it wasn't. Ikari Gendo never had any power vested in him by the state of Japan that had not come from his technocratic stranglehold on Hakone. The UN funded NERV, Japan hosted it upon her soil, and Gendo ruled a paramilitary research firm like a small nation, then a company. The records for that transition waited along with the hundreds of ancillary NERV assets outside of the fortress city that the inspection was supposed to audit.

Twelve people stepped off the plane after it taxied to a stop near a private government terminal, dressed in slick, official suits and wearing the lanyard and badge marking them as members of the United Nations Security Council. In other words, they were that which ostensibly oversaw NERV. The group moved with precision and efficiency, pulling their bags of luggage and equipment along on rollers or in hand. Dodging Customs by perk, they still suffered a cursory scan at security.

The first man frowned and stepped through the metal detector, almost as if he knew he'd set it off. The guard gave him an understanding nod and waved him forward so his partner could break out the wand. After a few minutes of confusing results, the inspector unbuttoned his sleeve.

"Well," The guard let out a low whistle. "That's some impressive hardware there. Can't believe what they're coming up with these days."

The next eleven inspections went much the same way, sending the guard's eyebrows rising toward his hairline. He took off his hat and scrubbed his scalp, at something of a loss.

"The world is a dangerous place." The first inspector took pity on the man. He had a thin face with blonde eyebrows and thinning hair. The guard couldn't help but think he was French, by the accent. "I suppose you can say the UN provides an excellent health plan, if nothing else."

"If nothing else." The guard let out an amused snort while the lead inspector pulled out another set of ID. It checked out in seconds, and was more than enough for him. "Carry on then, gentlemen, ladies."

The inspectors bowed as a group and moved on, glad to have the security checkpoint behind them. The largest civilian airport in Japan had an extensive and overwhelmingly efficient connection to the rail system that covered the country. Four over-engineered pairs of tracks stood out amongst the thick transport artery. Evangelion rails.

Stowing their bags and taking their seats, the inspection team settled in for the short ride to their first destination. One of them cracked his neck and nodded. "We'll be ready by the end of the week."

* * *

><p>His old bedroom had been a study in lack of growth. Shinji had let it sit effectively empty for a year and a half, with his meager, once-treasured possessions gathering dust.<p>

The _new room_ he'd claimed for himself was gradually starting to reflect it's owner. Shinji eased through the sliding door and smiled, feeling himself almost decompress into his increasingly personal space. Like the other four suites, it was an open studio space with his bed and closet at one end, and a kitchenette along one wall. Padding along on bare feet, he crossed from the tatami mats to the hardwood floor. Minor scuffs had marked where his feet had worn tracks into the wood, over several thousand repetitions of some technique or other.

Taking up most of the middle space was a model, itself sitting on a table. Faintly tinted glass panes were arranged in cubes and rectangles, with colored stickers and flags marking out points of note. Anyone native to the city would have seen it for what it was- a model of Tokyo-3. He'd started shaping it out of recycled bottles on a whim, gradually marking out the places he'd shored up the city structure. An armory building here, a civilian trunk line there. He'd marked out the angel defense bunkers, but there hadn't been time to deal with them either.

Moving further, Shinji smiled at the presence he'd been developing. He'd taken out the common wall and replaced it with an open bookshelf. Thin gaps between old spines and books propped up at angles showed the upstairs hallway. He had more than enough reading material to keep out casual observers. Shinji reached out and ran his hands along one shelf, counting titles as he meandered. Medical texts, philosophy, art, science, architecture and design. Those gave way to cookbooks, boxes full of recipe cards, alchemy and mythological studies, along with the mass-copy scientific journals. The last stack and shelf nearest to his cello was dedicated to music and theory.

Weeks ago he'd smashed the cello to splinters and had been happy to do it. He had been just as happy to fix it up good as before, simply to give him something to do that boring day. Oddly enough, he hadn't fixed it _good as new_. His technique and magical touch hadn't changed the wood's age or sound, leaving it as he'd last heard it some months ago. Thinking about it, Shinji could only say he understood that 'like new' wasn't the same as changing history. But that much was enough, it was part of _his _history now.

Plucking the cello up from the stand and then dropping into a nearby chair, Shinji smiled slightly. Testing himself didn't have to be frustrating or soul-shattering in their implications. He raised the bow to the strings and let the magic inside him flow out.

* * *

><p>A while later, Shinji headed downstairs to make dinner. He made his way toward the kitchen, only to hear sneezing and runny noses.<p>

He rounded the last corner and blinked. Misato, Sorhyu, Rei and _Deja_ were all sitting at the kitchen island. Well, Misato was sitting cross-legged _on_ the kitchen island. She had a hand-made carton full of his hand-made ice cream half-empty in her lap, while the others had bowls with spoons rattling around inside. Shinji found himself blinking again.

There was a nearly empty box of tissue between them all. Shinji made a _tiny_ mental note to adjust for the acoustics of the apartment next time he played with magic.

Misato let out a little, intensely emotional sob that _did things_ somewhere in the back of Shinji's mind, and he decided that someone could order out for dinner. After they stopped crying.

* * *

><p>They brought the old man out of retirement. Not that they had much of a choice- she wouldn't have gone without Fuyutsuki as mission control. Misato thought back to the tense briefing, twelve hours ago...<p>

_A lion's mane of hair stood out grey with age, and Colonel Fuyutsuki a cigarette in the darkness. "Your objective is to infiltrate the [Gala], hosted by [The Human Instrumentality Committee]. There, you will rendezvous with our agent, codenamed [Bottled Bombshell]. [Jilted Lover] will meet you at the [Gala], while [Sunshine] has already issued your equipment. Retrieve the intelligence and exfiltrate to [**The Secured Operations Facility **_**_Geofront_**_]..."_

Misato grinned into the night's sky and laughed while the wind ran playful fingers through her hair. Wrenching hard on the controls, she cut across the moonlit water in her jet-black jetski and angled for the waiting and oh-so-obvious secret base tunnel. Ditching it halfway in for a scuba insertion, she swam up into the underground submarine dock.

Surfacing, Misato peeked out past her goggles and grinned. Two dozen guards. _Easy_.

Hiking herself up onto the dock, Misato stood in the secret base, looking all but poured into her wetsuit and dripping gloriously wet. Her dive mask went one way and a slow hand tugged the zipper _all the way down_. Above, the security camera adored her, lingering on every curve, dip and sway. When Misato smiled, a tiger roared in the distance, and she winked. The camera melted, glass and plastic all, even as it let out a gusty sigh.

Turning and striding for the elevator, the suit came off in elegant peels, revealing perfectly dry and styled hair. Inky purple silk spilled out around her hips and legs as she neared her objective. Stepping out of the suit legs and into a waiting pair of sleek, glittering heels, Misato smoothed out her gleaming evening gown and grinned.

Only to be stopped by a guard.

Misato just cocked her hips just so and smirked, folding her arms under her breasts and giving the girls a _heft _for good measure. The guard let out a helpless little 'guh' of defeat and fell over. She looked down and smiled. "Gets 'em every time."

The elevator shot upwards through miles of rock, ice and snow, opening on a vast balcony attached to an unmistakably European castle. Handsome men danced with beautiful women- but none looked better than her and Misato knew it. Waiters milled about carrying silver trays and crystal wine glasses. Misato snagged one while the crowd parted for her, pumping her hips as she moved _just because_.

Another man sidled up next to her, and Misato rolled her eyes on reflex. Jilted Lover, or better known as Ryoji Kaji. He grinned and draped a hand around her hip. "You take me to the nicest places, Katsuragi."

Laying her own arm across his shoulders, Misato let out a snort. "And I cannot take you anywhere."

The two super-secret agents turned on some unspoken cue, and Misato took the lead in their inevitable waltz. The band played the violins and shifted into classic rock by some unspoken accord, while wolves howled in the night. Looking over Kaji's shoulder, Misato watched the starlight play over the ocean. Eying the buffet table and open bar, she caught sight of a surprising and familiar face.

Breaking off from Kaji, Misato weaved through the crowds like they weren't there. She hadn't expected Sunshine _out in the field._ Ikari Shinji stood head and shoulders above everyone around him, dressed in the white shirt and black pants of the waitstaff. His hands were a blur and he was wrapped in sunfire, a man-sized candle flame amidst the culinary delights.

Nobody noticed or cared, least of all her.

Catching his eye and waving him to follow her behind a bulkhead, Misato smiled up at her favorite Solar. "I see you tailored my gown again."

Adorably stuffy and oh-so-proper, Shinji just huffed. "The last specifications you requested left absolutely no room for tactical equipment!"

"Perhaps~" Misato just traced a hand down her body and into the _plunging neckline_ before turning and leaning back against his chest. Shinji held his arms high, laden with plates of food and balanced perfectly. Suddenly he was shirtless and _that_ was just fine with her. "Or you simply have a very narrow definition of the term~"

Shinji just clucked his tongue and waved his suddenly empty hands. An elegant sash appeared between his fingers and he draped it around her shoulders. "I have to justify my payroll somehow, Misato."

Misato turned to walk her fingers up his delightfully bare chest and looked into his eyes. "The way you took my measurements, I'd pay you double~"

Then Kaji was there, the frustratingly sexy killjoy. His hands landed back on her hips and guided Misato away, but not before flashing Shinji a thumbs up. The Solar waved the two agents off and bustled back to his kitchen. "Keep your head in the game, Katsuragi. We're on the job."

Snorting again, Misato reached into her cleavage and pulled out her pistol, grumbling. "Remind me in the morning. Our contact's here."

The hidden arctic base was cut into the ice. Kaji heaved the door open and ushered Misato in as 'ladies first'. She huffed and strode forward deeper into the secret research lab. Past huge experiments with giant corpses and floating eyes in jars, she burst into the secure section. Papers flew everywhere like disturbed doves, and the high-slit skirt of her gown whipped around her legs like a striking snake.

Ahead at a computer console, a long-haired and sleek blonde sat pecking away at the keyboard. "Took you two long enough."

She turned in her seat and Misato instantly spotted the mole. On her cheek. That _totally _wasn't suspicious at all. Letting her gun-hand rest at her side, Misato cocked an eyebrow and asked the obvious question. "Bottled Bombshell, I presume?"

Akagi Ritsuko sighed and pulled off her glasses. "The reference is Doctor Livingstone, Katsuragi. Get it right."

Misato just harumphed. "Well you're no fun."

The blonde just shrugged, pulling her hair out of the no-nonsense bun and letting it spill into gleaming platinum _vamp_. Misato scowled to herself and fumed- hair like that should have been _illegal_. Ritsuko slid across the room and plucked a locked silver briefcase from a table.

Standing, she tossed the labcoat aside and stood gorgeously in figure-hugging office-casual. "Here's the intel. We should head back to the **Geofront** now."

Kaji nodded, smiling. "Yeah, get back to the **Geofront **and it's mission accomplished. Drinks are on me."

Blinking, Misato twisted in place, intensely curious. "I think we're missing something here... Ah dammit it's on the tip of my tongue..."

Every window, ventilation grate, closet and desk drawer threw themselves open, revealing machine-gun wielding ninjas. After firing eight shots and making holes in eight different heads, Misato flung herself behind cover to rack the slide on her pistol, scowling as she reloaded. "Right, Ambush- that's what I forgot."

Jumping out of cover and into a diving roll, Misato danced through the storm of bullets, drawing another pistol from between her breasts and firing with both hands. Along the way she scooped Ritsuko up in her arms. The blonde hooked her arms and legs around the lady-spy with every swing and turn, curling into Misato while the brunette gunned down the hordes of men clad in gasmasks and black web gear.

Misato felt the scientist's hot breath against her neck and shivered. "You sure this isn't your fault?"

Ritsuko clung tighter and swung around Misato's hips, holding on with her legs. "No! I screwed up _once_ in college- didn't sell out world defense secrets!"

"It was a pretty big screw up, Rits!" Misato growled and wrapped an arm around Ritsuko's back, hauling her up so they were chest to chest. Ritsuko moved without thinking, steadying Misato's extended arm for a tango-twosome assisted firing stance. Misato pulled the trigger and drilled a hole through a man's heart.

Meanwhile, Kaji had ducked behind a pillar, dropping his pistol. When he rolled out into the open again, he was shirtless save for a double-bandolier of ammo strapped to his chest and two machine guns held arms akimbo. His red NERV tie was wrapped around his head like a bandana. He mowed down the soldiers by the dozens, coating the floor with spent brass casings all the way up to his ankles.

The last bullet-ridden corpse slumped to the ground, leaving a surprisingly bloodless battlefield. Every wall had been blown out to open snow and ice, but nobody seemed to notice or care. Ritsuko clung to her savior and stared into her eyes, while Misato was wondering why the blonde's lips were _so close_.

Kaji dropped one of his massive guns just out of sight and pulled that hand back, suddenly holding a _katana that was on fire_. One lingering bad guy died, sliding in half while Kaji lit his cigarette with the red hot blade. No one had seen him cut.

Misato felt his eyes hang lecherously upon her, and she glowered while he puffed on the cigarette. "Well, I'm feeling left out."

Twisting, Misato whipped one pistol up and fired past Kaji's ear, cutting a few hairs from the side of his head and carving a hole in the last bad guy, really, for sure. She sighed and let Ritsuko go, leaving the blonde to stand perfectly composed.

Ignoring the carnage, the scientist let out a breath and retrieved the briefcase. "So, back to **Geofront**?"

Misato nodded. "Back to the **Geofront**..." She looked around, not entirely sure how they were going to _get there_ though.

Then Shinji stepped through the rubble, still shirtless and glistening slightly from the snow. "You can ride home on this three-hundred foot luxury yacht that I just built with my own two hands."

And so they sailed to the **Geofront **on the three-hundred foot luxury yacht that Shinji built with his own two hands. A magical place where tops were delightfully optional and the sun never set on those who wanted a lineless tan. Buxom, bronzed and beautiful, Misato stepped off the pier and into the **Geofront **train with Kaji, Ritsuko and Shinji close behind.

Stopping at a massive locked gate, easily as tall as a city tower and twice as wide, Kaji and Ritsuko started patting down their swim trunks and bikini, respectively. "You have your key, Katsuragi? I think we've forgotten ours."

Misato huffed and started checking her own swimwear, pouting. Twisting smartly on her toes, Misato moved with a spray of sand and surf, ending up reclining on a lounge chair. "It's not like these things have pockets..."

Suddenly, screaming red warning lights snapped on, and alarms echoed throughout the **Geofront**. Misato immediately snapped to attention, already drawing her pistol from the underarm holster that had always been there. Turning she saw Central Dogma and the command station rise out of the beach, with the rest of the NERV staff all beach clad, decked out in sunglasses with coconuts and little paper umbrellas by their consoles. Palm trees and fruit bars made way for consoles and the big board holographic screen.

Looking up to the Commander, she beheld Ikari Gendo in a pink and blue Hawaiian floral shirt with star-lensed amber sunglasses. He looked down at her and nodded. "An Angel is attacking- defend the **Geofront**, Major Katsuragi!"

Grinning, Misato turned and thrust her fist in the air, bouncing in the most morale-boosting way. "Yes sir!"

Looking out at the screens, Misato beheld her ideal Tokyo-3, armed with the best weapons the world could buy. Three Evangelions waited in their magnetic delivery rails. Off to the side, Misato could catch the cockpit-camera views of the three pilots. Rei, Asuka... and Pen-Pen.

Before Misato could open her mouth, Asuka snarled. "Hey! Don't get me involved in this!"

The redhead's viewport switched off and Misato gave the order.

"_Launch!"_

* * *

><p>Lying in bed at ten after six with the snooze still running, Katsuragi Misato threw an arm over her forehead and sighed. "...I never get to stay for the good parts."<p>

Super-kitchen and stainless steel refrigerator aside, putting away the groceries felt refreshingly domestic. Relishing her _one_ half-day-off that week, Misato let out a long, hissing breath and smiled. Even stopping on the way home to pick up ingredients and perishables from the import grocers was almost a mini-vacation. Eying the main floor deck and microgarden, she smirked. Shinji grew everything else he needed on site.

It took him a few tries to convince Asuka he wasn't going to go for a full capsule farm complete with livestock.

Rei's voice drifted down from the upstairs landing, clear and audible but still whisper soft. "Misato-san? I am experiencing a slight problem..."

Rubbing her neck to work out the kinks from long days and longer nights, which were rapidly beginning to blend into each other, Misato kept her voice light. "Is it bureaucratic, civil or economic?"

"Physiological." A thin, creeping shiver of dread raced up Misato's spine while Rei made her way downstairs. ""My clothes are not fitting very well. I believe I have had a 'growth spurt'..."

Suddenly and without cause or warning, Misato felt an _image _force its way into her mind. It was irrational of course, but the nagging unease, It hit Misato right in that same spot of existential terror as trying to explain sex to a child. Granted she'd dodged that bullet with Rei at least...

Misato went ashen as heard Rei reach the halfway step, realizing in that same moment that Asuka and Shinji might not had that same talk. _That_ horrifying realization punctuated the still forming, stygian image. One of Rei as a grand sphere and undulating tendrils- of her cute unnormality taking on an almost gleefully eldritch aspect. Uncountable eyes and gaping maws seemed to smile from inside Misato's mind and at her very soul.

The image sang, and Misato wondered if the world would end.

Bracing herself against the kitchen island, Misato trembled, turned and waited. One completely normal Rei rounded the corner, with her school uniform skirt ending an inch or two higher than normal and the waist cinching in just the wrong spot. Hugging herself, Rei rubbed her arms and presented herself to the kitchen and Misato.

She dragged her ponytail over one shoulder and ran her fingers along the ends, surprisingly demure and facing to the side. "I believe the colloquial term is 'filling out'."

Palpable relief gave way to a moment of Misato beating her overactive imagination silly. _Rei_ was not going to play the cosmic horror card, she was too cute for that.

And she needed to ease the girl's burden. Placing a hand over her face to hold back an impish smile, Misato willed forward every ounce of sincerity. "Are you entirely sure that's not one of Asuka's old uniforms by mistake?"

From her place, wedged into the living room couch, Asuka grumbled audibly.

* * *

><p>The upcoming UN inspection weighed on all of NERV, but it was heavier in some places compared to others. The pilots enjoyed their afternoons and evenings off, largely left to their own devices. After tutoring Wright, Asuka and Rei celebrated their full and mutual mobility by <em>finally<em> getting around to that long-standing rematch. The stage had been set and the arcade went dark as the audience crowded around the pair, eager to welcome back their racing-lady paragons. Rei and Asuka had not been back in months, and their scores had yet to be toppled on what had become the most popular game there.

Rei had given Asuka a clever sly look while they settled down in the simulator bucket seats, and her hand landed on the game-control stick shift. "Not at all like the real thing, but it _is _only fair."

Asuka's indignant sputtering and her one-second slip off the starting line was music to Rei's ears.

* * *

><p>There was another tradition that had a long time in the waiting. Toji and Kensuke didn't believe in anything like fate, but they couldn't have denied how important their little camping trip had turned out, so many months ago. <em>This<em> time they'd invited Rei along, and Sorhyu had grumbled in no uncertain terms that she be allowed along _next time._

The four of them had a bond though, Toji, Shinji, Kensuke and Rei. It hadn't ever been strong or forged in anything more intense than a night out under the stars and a VTOL ride into the Geofront. The Angel battle afterwards had put it's own mark on them, some deeper than others.

As for their little trip, none of them cared that they were out on a school night, not when Rei had a lovingly maintained car and a NERV stamped license.

* * *

><p>There weren't any lazy days what with the impending investigation, but they hadn't been forgotten either. The Katsuragi apartment found relaxation where it could. The television was on and quiet, laying out the half-heard jokes of a pre-Impact classic while Shinji and Rei had been sinking into opposite ends of the couch. Even a Solar needed to take a moment, after all.<p>

Misato stumbled in then and yawned broadly before she rounded the couch and claimed the center space, but not like a sane person, no. That would require Misato have had a normal thought in her brain that evening. She flopped on that black leather couch, throwing her legs over Shinji's thighs and resting her head in Rei's lap... and for all of that, the two teenagers didn't even bat an eye.

The Katsuragi apartment found relaxation where it could, after all, and it was nice to feel connected.

* * *

><p>"This coffee. Katsuragi I want to marry this coffee. Get ordained."<p>

Misato smiled over the rim of her own mug and shook her head. "Welcome to my every meal, Ritsuko."

The blonde scientist scowled petulantly for a moment before sighing. The crunch was getting to her too. Setting her own cup down she leaned back and stretched, holding her arms high up above her head. "A lesser mortal would be intensely jealous. How are you settling back in?"

"Oh fine-" Misato waved the question off. "Works' piled up, but Hyuuga-kun kept pulling miracles or something while I was gone. I should be fine for inspection. You?"

Ritsuko shuddered. "In my line of work, we have to make our own miracles."

"That bad, huh? Which explains why you're here and drinking my coffee."

The reply was dry, suppressing another shudder. "Scientific process does not preclude sponging off the miracles of others either."

* * *

><p>The cicada were out in force that night, and the wide open doors to the otherwise empty apartment garage didn't do much to keep the noise out. The gradual wind and release of a ratchet was the only mechanical sound in the space, keeping some kind of uncertain time while Rei tightened some part or another. The blue-haired girl was smeared with grease and grit, and looked ecstatic for it.<p>

Asuka meanwhile was content to sprawl across a two-seat couch that belonged in a showroom lobby rather than an actual garage. _Cars_ didn't really do anything for her, but the enthusiast magazines that filled the apartment covered more than just four-wheelers. The redhead turned the page and uncovered eye widened, eying the engineering marvel that spread out across the article.

"Oh..." Asuka poured over the specifications and _grinned_. "..._Yeah_."

* * *

><p>By some whim of cosmic balance, 'The Specialist' only had to intervene with <em>one<em> surface-level disaster that week. A construction crane slipped off its stable footing and ripped a chunk of a building off along the way. He was strong, but throwing steel cables around and hauling solid steel beams up before they could fall was another thing entirely.

A long and sadly out of date habit made him jump the back face of the apartment building, well away from the four-flour suite he'd carved out for everyone. He'd forgotten one critical, important piece of information. Everyone had come _back_ from the fleet.

Submerged in the hot spring, Misato looked up at Shinji in his full Specialist suit and the helmet slung under his arm. "What are you wearing?!"

Shinji just turned and jammed his helmet back on, croaking. "Why can't you wear anything!?"

* * *

><p>After a twenty hour shift, Misato shambled into her apartment and barely managed to get her shoes off. "I want this week to be over. I want this week to be next week. Shinji, invent time travel please."<p>

The tallest and only Exalted teenager was there and helping her along even as he laughed. "I'm not that kind of engineer, Misato."

"And I would call _such bullshit_ if Golden Boy could casually figure out both faster-than-light _and_ time travel." Asuka swung herself off the couch and padded over on bare feet. Rei was waiting in the kitchen, and it was looking like a late night for everyone.

Misato just blinked at her three pilots and sighed. Dinner was already reheating in the oven, and she was absolutely certain Shinji had remade it for her collapsing right after eating. They stayed up late _for her_.

"Okay..." She eyed the three of them even as Shinji eased her into a stool by the kitchen island. "Right- after this UN inspection blows over we're going to do something. I don't know but something. Shinji I love the hot springs but..."

Taking another look at Rei proved to be all the inspiration she needed. "Party at NERV! The Geofront's got all those awesome pools and spas- I can grab day passes for your friends if you want to invite them. Just, something to for us after this inspection stuff is over!"

Shinji, being Shinji, didn't voice a complaint or shout his enthusiasm to the rafters, while Rei just gave Misato a soft, earnest smile that said more than any amount of laughter and glee. When Asuka threw an arm around Rei's shoulder and pumped her other arm in the air, Misato knew she'd picked a winning option.

* * *

><p>Shinji stared at the laboratory space and hummed. The week coming up to the inspection had started to blur into one unknowable mass.<p>

The Geofront was quiet, but active nonetheless. He'd seen crew and technicians reconfiguring the superstructure's interior, sealing up familiar hallways behind prefabricated panels. It was less a question of hiding and more one of guiding, or so Ryoji-san had said. Keep the inspectors moving in straight and easy to understand paths, there were places they didn't need to go or see.

Putting the thought out of his mind, Shinji turned his attention fully to the staging laboratory. It'd been something close to three weeks since the Pacific Fleet had returned to Japan, maybe a bit more. Over that period, he'd split his time between a few dozen projects and taking care of Sorhyu's extensive injuries. As soon as she was ready to move, the girl skipped the remaining treatments just like she said- there wasn't any need for her to look _that pretty_, or so she said.

It was a fair point at least, and he knew enough about the media and one's perceived image to step out of Sorhyu's way.

As far as NERV was concerned, the upcoming UN investigation had minimal impact on the Evangelion pilots. The event was scheduled to last a week, according to Misato and Akagi-sensei, and was intended to cover the Geofront facilities, NERV's corporate status and maintaining its altered connections to the United Nations. The pilots were expected to show up and run through a few demonstrations, and then largely stay out of the way. Shinji was pretty sure it wouldn't be _that_ easy. He, on the other hand, had a lot to do before the inspection began.

Walking around the desks tables displaying the demonstration models and related gear, Shinji hummed again. "I've... been scattershot, huh."

It was true of course. If the room had been divided in half, one was given over to the projects he'd started, or had his division grind out over that week of misery. The MRI prototype, a handful of his industrial and cybernetic solutions... They had been _good ideas_, useful, terrible ones. Shinji sighed and dragged a hand down his face. He wasn't even sure if anyone had told Misato or Sorhyu yet. It could wait a week at least.

Anything derived from Evangelion technology was firmly under Akagi-sensei's division, developed and executed by her. She had also asked him to look over a general synchronization prototype, similar to Sorhyu's eye patch. He kept his coronal flare down, tapping the subtle reserves of arete while he checked the construction.

The initial run of devices were simple mirrored visors, like slightly thicker sunglasses and earmarked for testing by Section 2. Synchronization technology resonated with the _soul_ as a tangible factor, and Shinji could see the design lineage of the Evangelion pilot interface. It looked a lot more comfortable than sitting in LCL for hours at a time.

After finishing in that lab, Shinji headed out toward another secure section, one set aside for his use and open only to a handful of people. The _pilots_ weren't expected to do much over the inspection, but the Specialist had made more than a few waves. Shinji was required to make an appearance in full panoply. Akagi-sensei had finished the updated suit weeks ago.

Tapping his chin, Shinji wondered how much of a show he could get away with.

* * *

><p>Evangelion Unit 00 had been gathering dust for months. Regardless, things still moved forward in NERV. Refits, maintenance and upgrades were a constant reality, and it was the last in that list that brought Rei and Ritsuko together that morning. The cage was empty aside from the two of them, and they stood at the highest level next to the plug access platform.<p>

Looking at the plug itself, Rei tilted her head to the side. "It is different."

"Because it is- this is the Dummy Plug prototype, as well as the first iteration of local memory storage." Ritsuko stuffed her hands into her coat pockets, pressing her lips together.

"Local memory? The transfer system?" Rei blinked and turned to face Ritsuko completely, suddenly interested beyond shoring up her own mortality. "Can other pilots...?

Ritsuko gave the girl a quick shake of her head. "No, no. Without the progenitor supersoul as transcription medium, there's no way to effect full memory transfer. Setting aside the other Children don't have a reserve of bodies and souls to transcribe _to_."

Rei could only give a slow, solemn nod to that. She leaned in closer to the plug. It was...sleeker, more refined than the previous versions. Less pre-fabricated parts and more purpose-built, with the clear signs of a dedicated manufacturing process somewhere. Shinji-kun's grasp of industrial design and fabrication had spread to her by osmosis.

Inside the plug itself, the seat had changed, with an oversized and armored life-support column and what looked like the dummy plug driver apparatus. It's presence said something though, putting her on a knife's edge of utility. If the dummy plug worked, then she would never pilot again, and lose her bond with Shinji, Misato and Asuka. If it failed, then she was still locked in a body that risked failure if her focus and medication wavered. Transferring to a new body... it wasn't a risk Rei wanted to take.

Ritsuko laid a hand on her shoulder, and Rei stiffened, squeaking faintly. The scientist's presence was hesitant, uncertain. "Rei, everything in the recovery system can be triggered manually inside the plug, or remotely from my station in the command center. Everything will get transferred by wireless, or stored in the plug's black box recorders. If you ever feel yourself... Unrecoverable, you..."

The blonde trailed off and took a step back, biting her lip. To Rei it looked like she was making a decision. "I'll make sure you wake up, one way or another."

It took Rei approximately fifteen seconds to fully understand, evaluate and respond to that promise. It took nearly as long for Ritsuko to hug her back.

* * *

><p>On a private airfield somewhere else in Japan, an equally private turboprop aircraft landed. There were only a handful of such planes in the world, simply because there were so few people who required extensive cybernetic life support. A carefully engineered ramp and powered platform let the old man in the powered chair out onto the tarmac. The Federal Minister of Education and Research had arranged a trip to Kyoto-2 for the purpose of interviewing their faculty and extending an invitation to teach at the finest universities in Berlin.<p>

That was of course a smokescreen, but Fuyutsuki Kozo had never actually _left_ the university either, and was a more than viable way to reach the Geofront. While not quite a head of state, Kihl Lorenz's status as an actual minister with portfolio equated him a certain latitude in context of dealing with the United Nations. It was by long-enduring design that the leaders of each sovereign nation and the leaders of the United Nations overlapped more than might have guessed.

Behind him and walking down the more mundane stairs was his agent. Obnoxiously mysterious and infuriatingly young. Wind swept along the airfield with almost nothing to stop it and whipped the boy's grey hair up and around while Kihl huffed. Blessed by fools, their endeavor.

"I am glad that we've come, chairman." The red-eyed teenager used the clandestine title freely, not that there were any chances of being overheard. "My friend has probably left me everything I need to handle the Marduk report..."

The boy trailed off, and Kihl felt the pump in his chest refuse to beat faster. Even petty frustrations were lost to him, even if he wasn't actually _mad_.

"Though... Well" The teenager stepped off the landing and walked over to join the old man, hands stuffed in his pocket. "I suppose it's obvious now- I'm definitely the Fourth Children."

* * *

><p>The UN inspection was coming in five days and twelve hours- Monday specifically. Gendo felt it prudent to keep the time in mind down to the hour, as there was much to do before then.<p>

His desk was empty as usual, but that did not stop him from laying out the exact situation as he knew it. The investigation itself was a SEELE action of some sort, of that there was no question. Slowly drumming his fingers on the table, Gendo took stock of his assets. It took him a few seconds to determine that he needed to re-evaluate matters. He spread out each of his resources in his mind and across his desk, examining each in turn.

When the boy had largely exiled himself above ground, Gendo directed the Special Project division into a holding pattern, ensuring the experienced scientists and engineers were if nothing else frozen, and still in NERV holding. Useful, in the medium term, and worth the effort Akagi expended to maintain them. Evangelion operations were proceeding as expected, and the funds _did_ clear as expected. Two additional Evangelion cages were cleared and ready for units 03 and 04, slated to arrive within the day.

Leaning back in his chair and humming, the Commander turned his attention to the more troublesome agents. Akagi's commitment was wearing thin, and unless he could arrange for her isolation from Katsuragi, there was little chance of him utilizing her fantasies. Frustratingly, he could not quite _place_ the moment in which she stepped over that easy line of complete domination.

Her final use would come down to the Dummy Plug project, and if not her, then Fuyutsuki would do.

As if sensing the pattern that formed in Gendo's mind, the old teacher entered. The grey-haired man eased in through the silent door and made his way towards the side cabinet. A fresh pot of tea was brewing in moments. Gendo let Fuyutsuki putter about. Turning back to his desk and the mental assessment, he frowned. Rei was, and was _not_ a problem. There was as always the final solution, but without a convenient excuse, he would have to manufacture one. Her sudden and intense interest in automobiles was unexpected, but in a way fortunate. Car collisions were a time-honored way of removing unwelcome elements in urban sprawl.

Another oddity had been her decision to leave her hair long, and that one he had no answer to, save ordering her to cut it. Gendo had interrogated the Major, indirectly, on the change. Katsuragi apparently didn't know about Rei's regeneration, but the woman's influence was growing stronger by the day. It was telling in his mind that he believed she would have refused the order, citing the Second's own style. As little as Sorhyu's daughter mattered to Instrumentality, she was having a distinctly _negative_ effect on many of his social and intrapersonal controls. Changing the girl's living arrangements now wouldn't restore the conditioning either. Another reason to wipe the slate clean and start over.

The more he thought about it, the more Gendo realized the root of his thoughts. _Possession_, something he hadn't even felt with his wife. Only a handful of men in the world could truly know how the Commander of NERV felt about Ikari Yui. One of them was in the room with him, and the others were across the world plotting their divine suicide. Rei though... Gendo felt his thoughts turn to a curious place.

"She's nothing like Yui anymore."

Gendo sat up and blinked. "Beg pardon?"

Fuyutsuki toasted him with a steaming cup of steeped herbs. "You have that 'Reminiscing about Yui' look, which now usually means you're thinking about Rei. She's gone off rails. I dare say she's entirely her own person now."

"As difficult as it is to admit, I must agree." Gendo shifted in his seat and frowned behind his beard. "It's becoming increasingly clear that her commitment is suffering under those distractions."

That really was the crux of it. Gendo had allowed her just enough freedom to slip out of his direct control. She had taken up too many distractions, and competing sources of social interaction for him to counteract at any given time. He was bound now to _reasonable_ orders and demands upon her.

The old man nodded and took a sip. "Hence you not once _requiring_ Rei submit herself to the memory transfer machine. I dare say she's logged more hours voluntarily than you've ordered in the past four years."

Gendo confirmed that as true and conceded the point. The girl had awoken a powerful if subtle will to survive. The carefully constructed apathy was long gone. "It has given Akagi more than enough data for the Dummy Plug project, however."

Another sip. "Along with the Committee's little gambit."

That was another concern, but one Akagi was handling. Gendo returned to his musings and let nothing show on his face.

Katsuragi had shown some unexpected utility, bringing her trophy back from the Caribbean. Now though and moving ahead, she was a non-issue at nearly every stage in the scenario. As long as it involved killing Angels, the woman's leash was firmly in hand. That being said, Katsuragi and the boy had developed an odd sort of mutualism that threatened even the Major's convictions. Bemused, he did not care for her tastes, but ignoring it would be just as asinine. The rest of NERV followed her as the glamorous public face, and losing her charisma would be a significant setback. Her exploitation of the A-17 combat order was a strategic stroke, and one Gendo could use without reservation.

The boy however... Gendo sensed Fuyutsuki was about to fall into his old habit. "The Third is nearly out of my grasp as well. Confrontational, but lacking insight. The levers I have are weakening, and there are paths with too high a risk and no reward."

Fuyutsuki was silent for a long moment, and took another sip before answering. And like clockwork, just as Gendo predicted... "I suppose telling you securing his loyalty directly would fall on deaf ears?"

Gendo broke his contemplative pose and leaned back in his seat, not quite sighing. "It has become a trend with you yes, to offer me pointless suggestions. Spare me, unless you can provide me something useful."

Fuyutsuki just shrugged, as if he could let it all rest on the idea of being the archetypal old man. "I laid the foundation for our understanding of a healthy soul. I can't throw stones myself though."

To that Gendo could only grunt. The old man's fixation with healing hearts was the least of concerns now. Leaning forward and lacing his fingers together, Gendo smirked faintly. Perhaps it was time to start acting instead of reacting, and set his problems to solve themselves. The plans started to form in the back of his mind, so he turned to other tasks. Fuyutsuki fell into step as expected, and would execute his orders.

Dispensation for the pilots- their role during the inspection was a concern, and a few moments discussion came to a reasonable compromise: Use Rei and ensure Sorhyu and the boy were as far away from the inspection team as possible. Katsuragi's plan of the Second being the face of the pilot corp was nevergoing to be allowed. The boy's role as the specialist, and their prototype lightning rod...For a moment Gendo considered outing the boy and exposing the charade, idly considering what advantages he could secure. A show of weakness to the Committee might bring them closer for the hidden strike, but that was admittedly unlikely. No, maintaining the current pattern ensured the best returns.

Another important issue was determining the exact mission, intelligence gathering or outright sabotage. There was already more than enough bait in place as per standard operating procedure, so Gendo was certain he would catch something the old men didn't want him to know. A possible avenue to exploit was Rei's own status- removed from the combat rotation for medical reasons. The few dozen failed projects and baroque feats the boy deployed during his fugue would also be useful as distractions. Perhaps he would put the 'Specialist' facing forward, as a test of the boy and his assumed role. It would be an excellent way to judge if the boy is actually competent, or if he's been merely swept along and improvising. If the investigative team discovered much the same, all the better.

There was something to be said however, for a talent at improvisation.

* * *

><p>In a way, Shinji was glad that only other people were real monsters.<p>

What he _meant_ was more that chthonic horrors and stranger things from some stygian underdark were works of fiction- Angels aside. Even the Angels had _some_ science to them, some base in reality that NERV simply hadn't figured out yet. It was hard to call an Angel a monster though, aside from it being monstrous in the obvious ways, and unwelcome in human perception. A fancy way of saying it looked too real to be real, and did not belong amidst buildings or fighting more understandable tanks and aircraft.

Humans though, Shinji realized, were pretty terrible. It was the only conclusion he could reach after someone tried to hit him in the back of the head with a lead pipe. Again.

Granted, he was in a building that had registered as too hot, despite the air conditioning straining at the redline. Heat meant sources, and sources in this case turned out to be a drug lab. Why someone considered _Tokyo-3_ a safe place to run a drug lab, Shinji couldn't say. Maybe it was profitable, or they were just that kind of crazy.

All of that lead to Shinji, clad as the Specialist, muscling his way through a service entrance and past a man with a snub-nose revolver. A good hard shove into the adjacent concrete wall left the man seeing stars and nursing cracked ribs. He took a moment to stomp the weapon into unrecognizable ruin before moving on. Yakuza in Tokyo-3. He barely remembered the first time he encountered them, save for the sound of breaking bones.

Spilling out into a wide basement floor lined with tables, lab equipment and materials, Shinji blinked at it all and sighed. Idiots, the lot of them.

His armor was rated as bullet _resistant_. Shinji himself was more than capable of rendering himself bullet _proof_, barely applying himself. He kicked a table upright and shoved it forward, flattening two sentries and ruining several hundred thousand yen worth of narcotic product. As far as practical skill went, he was three or four magnitudes greater than anyone else in the room.

The gulf in capability left him with a lot of time to think. Swatting some bullets out of the air, Shinji hummed to himself inside the sealed helmet.

With a few weeks of perspective, he was able to look back on his aggressive fugue and see it with new eyes. The main impression that he'd gotten from those memories, that previous existence, had been one of _respect and adoration_. Or maybe adulation, there were a lot of terms that could fit. The woman whom he had apparently _been_ at one point was celebrated as someone who had _killed the horizon_. Then as a genius compared only to a handful of other luminaries, with just as many accolades.

Shinji hadn't done anything like _that_, of course, but as he played over the impressions, he could not help but notice a common theme. One of publicity, worship and awe. Reverence of a woman who summoned the monsters of monsters for science and philosophy. She who drank tea with terrible things. A snatch of conversation had filtered through at one point, and something with knives for teeth gave the past woman a cryptic grin. "Through our suffering; reach Heaven through Violence."

But monsters like _that_ were too weird to believe. Shinji was much more willing to accept that a man could extort someone out of their home, or to force someone to be a drug mule. There were worse things too, but no one dared traffic human beings in Tokyo-3, short of the most insistently above-board gentleman's clubs. Shinji had stumbled into one of those before, thankfully in armor.

Dodging two thugs wielding knives, he couldn't help but note he almost _lost_ the armor on the way out of the club that day.

A pair of hard impacts against his back just over his right kidney reminded him that he shouldn't have been _too_ relaxed. Turning, Shinji scooped one yakuza guardian up into a hold and heaved the man high over his head on extended arms. More bullets peppered his chest and back, but between the armor and his own resilience, he paid their weapons the greatest insult- _being ignored. _One pistol seemed to jam at the unvoiced taunt, suddenly useless.

So again, human monsters with borrowed strength. Hefting the man once more, Shinji threw him across the room, easily twenty yards and into a stack of empty cargo palettes. The wood shattered loudly, and the gathered enforcers and drug cooks ducked at the sound. Shinji glanced down at his own arms, distantly noting the yellow-orange lines set into the armor, trailing in angled paths. They flared at a hidden signal, tracking his own pattern green signature and overlaying his corona with a holographic hexagon of an expressed AT field.

A bullet bounced off his helmet, but Shinji was more wondering if his situation was ironic, or some other word. His power could not help but be _visible_. In nearly every memory he'd gleaned of that woman from before, she had wielded the power in her daily life almost effortlessly and without thought. Shinji was pretty sure he didn't want to be _that_ hedonistic about it, but it said something about his Exaltation, something meaningful.

He was a Solar, and from every hint he saw, Solars did not hide what they were.

As terrifying as those previous memories were, they did help in one respect. They gave him a word for the nameless feeling he'd wanted all his life. First from his father, and then in general. Recognition. To be a Solar was to be recognized as such, and Shinji wanted to be recognized for _himself_. Not as the Specialist, with an AT field hologram and a non-disclosure agreement. Now he had the extra onus of being recognized as an Exalt, but he could handle that. _He_ was an Exalt, and it was now an intrinsic property of Ikari Shinji.

Humming again, Shinji understood the _need_ for secrecy of course, but it seemed so silly now. Rounding up the injured, the defeated, Shinji tied the Yakuza drug lords together with handy industrial chain and bent the links together with his bare fingers. He wasn't going to get any credit for doing this, but that was okay- he didn't want credit for blocking bullets and throwing gang members around.

Or, at least he wanted the _option_ of credit. He had it from his friends, and appreciated that more than words could describe, but he could do _so much more_ without limits.

Leaving the lab and dusting his palms free of narcotic dust, Shinji sighed and looked over his suit once more. Minor damage, nothing he couldn't let slide. Banishing the armor to wherever it went, Shinji headed for the train and made his way home. Even so, there was still something gnawing away at him.

He was the Specialist, the singular Human AT-Field enhancement prototype. A prototype for something that did not exist yet. Sitting alone on the midnight train heading out of town, Shinji frowned. There was a UN inspection in four days. Even if Ritsuko asked him, there was no way he could have made an actual prototype that fast.

His head just fell into his waiting palms. "My fath- _the Commander, _is a fucking _idiot_."

* * *

><p>The rooftop was usually the best way into the apartment after two in the morning. Even with Misato pulling all-nighters and coming home any hour of the day, she was usually too tired for a soak, except that admittedly <em>amazing<em> time Shinji stumbled by her a couple days ago. He shook his head to clear it and let out a wry little sigh. The Operations Director of NERV was too gorgeous for her own good sometimes.

Letting his thoughts drift back to the inspection and the Commander's actions, Shinji _almost_ missed spotting Rei in the hot springs. The girl blinked once, and Shinji let out an awkward squeak as he twisted deftly away. Towel or not, traipsing in on her bath wasn't among Shinji's list of things he wanted to do that night.

Rei shifted in the water and coughed. "It is alright, Shinji-kun. I didn't mean to be in your way..."

"You weren't- really!" Shinji let out a short laugh. As far as roommate hazards went it was an easy one to manage. But since Rei was _here_ and he'd been thinking about it...

"Rei-" He winced, forgetting the honorific, but the girl didn't seem to mind. Shinji sat down on a nearby bench and ran his palms over his thighs. "I was... out doing stuff and I realized something about Him."

The girl perked up at that, and Shinji felt the thick line of tension emphasize the usually innocuous word. Shinji cut himself off there, raking a hand through his hair and sighing. He didn't even need to say the man's name. As far as he knew, Ikari Gendo's number one supporter was Ayanami Rei. Despite that, she _had_ hinted to Shinji more than once that there were _things _going on around them. Things that Gendo had a hand in. Rei cocked her head and looked up at him from her place in the pool, curious and concerned.

Sighing again, Shinji opened his mouth and prepared to vent everything he'd been thinking about for the past hour and a half. Then he stopped, and really _looked_ at Rei. Something finally clicked into place. His eyes rolled his eyes skyward, and he felt like kicking his own head in for missing the obvious.

Focusing back on Rei, Shinji gave her a wry little smile and looked at her with new insight. "For the past hour or so I thought that he was an idiot, but it turns out that I am. The Specialist plan was way too well thought-out before I even _got here_, let alone because of the Exaltation. "There was never any _point _to having a 'human-scaled Eva unit' after all, because I was never intended to fill that role. _You _were."

Shinji waved a hand at his forehead, emphasizing the outlandish word with unconscious habit. He let out a weak laugh, shaking his head. It really was funny, now in hindsight. "You're the Specialist, Rei."

The girl dropped her chin toward her chest and wrapped her arms around herself. Shinji watched her jaw move, like she was chewing on her words before speaking. "That is fairly accurate, Shinji-kun..."

It was then that Shinji got the clear and unmistakable impression of things unsaid. Of Rei whispering with her hunched shoulders and the slant of her eyebrows. Thinking that she was the weird thing he was pretending to be all along. Rei was _worried_.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. From his angle Shinji could only see her cheeks move, but it was enough. Finally she spoke. "I have been... concerned. For months now, or perhaps a year. What I am, and the things I know. They are _heavy, _Shinji-kun."

As strange as the whole situation was, Shinji was honestly happier to _know something_. He moved forward and sat down next to the pool edge with his legs folded beneath him, and laid a hand on Rei's shoulder. It wasn't anything worth stressing over between them, and she needed to know that. There was a large part of Shinji that said he needed her to know that too.

The girl's shoulders dropped in a stuttering sort of way, relaxing and letting her arms sink deeper into the water. Shinji watched, more than a little humbled at how quickly she put herself back together again, turning to face him with a clear and intent look in her eye.

Rocking back, Shinji braced himself on his free hand and grinned. "Well, that's the nice thing about family, even family we didn't know we had- we can help share the burden."

Rei pushed wet bangs away from her face and looked at him with that inscrutable red stare. The springs were so quiet, her normal whisper was almost loud. "Family."

"Family," Shinji nodded, smiling a bit wider. "Gendo doesn't want to be my father, fine. I'd be happy to have you as a sister or cousin, whichever you prefer."

She smiled at that, full and honest, so much so that Shinji wondered if her cheeks hurt. Rei shook her head and wiped her eyes, but didn't turn away. "For now, let's leave it at family."

They fell silent after that. Rei continued to soak in the spring, and the hotter sections bubbled faintly, throwing columns of steam into the air. The stars above were faint, lost to light pollution from the fortress city and their own tiny neighborhood just past the hills.

"So..." Shinji rubbed the back of his neck and let out a rueful sigh. "Normally I'm pretty good about puzzling things out... but there's an awful lot of secrecy in NERV."

Rei was quiet for a long, deliberating moment before she looked back up. "There is, and I would be more than happy to be relieved of my part in it. Ask anything you wish to know."

_That_ declaration sent Shinji's brain spinning up into overdrive. Confronted with the possibility for _answers_, Shinji reached for his power without thinking, effortlessly recalling a few dozen questions or things he'd promised himself to track down or find out. They all fell to the wayside for one reason or another. Even now he had his priorities, and his first one was sitting just a few feet away. Shinji let out a half-laugh and shook his head. She'd already been giving him hints for over a year now, possibly without even realizing it. The amount of trust she'd shown and given...

Shinji decided right then and there that Rei _understood_ family, even if she didn't know it herself.

And doing right by family was a _lot_ more important to Shinji than figuring out shadowy science and metaphysics. "You don't need to tell me everything right this second, unless you want me to know."

He shot her a sidelong and honest grin. "Right now you're the most important person here. Knowing what Gendo's up to would be nice, but I can figure that out myself later."

There _was_ one thing though on his mind, an idle curiosity. "So all that talk about you being an Evangelion hybrid, and you having an expressive AT field, that's what you meant by 'made unfinished'?"

"More or less, Shinji-kun." Rei took a deep breath and closed her eyes, seeming to steel herself. "Half of my genetic material was adapted from progenitor strain, or Evangelion. The other half was reconstructed by Akagi Naoko using DNA from-"

"Don't worry about the details, but wait, Ritsuko's mother?" Shinji blinked and cocked his head to the side. The rest of it kind of washed over him, joining the dull roar of conspiracy and intrigue that was NERV.

The other pilot nodded at that, and she seemed to relax by inches. Shinji couldn't help the tiny frown that worked its way onto his face. The surge of concern built up into action, and he sat upright. Sliding around, he gently tugged Rei up and out of the water, towel and all, guiding her toward a bench so she could comfortably sit while he stood behind her.

When his hands sank into her shoulders and neck, Rei fidgeted, stuttering and a bit wide-eyed at the whirlwind of attention. "Shinji-kun, I am perfectly fine- this is not necessa-"

"Well, why not?" Shinji's fingers slowed but didn't _quite _stop as Rei's bare feet slid against the wet stonework, even as her shoulders unbunched themselves. "You've been carrying a lot of weight on these for a while."

"If Sorhyu-san heard you say that..." There was a long beat of silence. She had picked up _comedic timing._

The punchline-realization hit him like an Olympic heavyweight uppercut. Shinji glanced off to the side and coughed. "She would... probably light herself on fire, yeah. Never mind all that, you need to relax."

Having said that, Shinji made a short sound aiming to stifle any further protest and succeeded. "You're tying yourself in knots and I can _see that_. You're family, so you get a neck rub. Now hold still."

The girl let out a grunt that could have been words, or a complete sentence in some other time or place. Shinji actively channeled his skill and magic while he worked, humming thoughtfully. "Honestly you don't need to be so worried- You've told me more in two sentences than anyone else has over two years. You have _no idea_ how much a relief it is to _know something_."

"I understand..." Rei almost sang, smiling more and more while her shoulders dropped. "Then with regards to this matter, I suppose I should inform Saneda-san and Misato-san, so they get their rightful allotment of massage?"

Coughing, Shinji choked back a laugh and smiled. " speaking, Misato gets... Friendlier massages. She has that sort of effect on people. Ayumi gets the the best ones though- she definitely informed me of her full rights and privileges regarding me being her boyfriend."

"Fair enough." The girl drawled, and she let out a tiny snort of laughter before dropping to her near flawless deadpan. "Your dire and dastardly plan to loosen my tongue is working."

"Since when do I have dastardly plans?" Shinji smirked, realizing more and more that he _liked_ the sly and easy-going Rei. Both as friend and family.

The massage gradually ended, and Rei leaned back against Shinji's body and sighed. Her hair was still a bit damp, and it started to soak his shirt, but he didn't really mind.

Eventually, Rei spoke up once more. "Shinji-kun, how often do you think about possible futures?"

Shinji looked down at her and idly chewed the inside of his cheek. "It's kind of daunting, never sure what to think and always second guessing myself. Everyone at school wants you to have some kind of lifelong plan, but you never know what you need to plan for, right?"

He frowned at that, more to himself than anything before adding- "I'm starting to, though, why?"

"I have not had much reason to think ahead myself either." Rei let out a long breath, and her neck hung forward. "I suppose what I am saying is that we're never alone in thinking about the future, even if we're unaware. We're all part of each other's plans in some way or another. Yours, mine, his."

Shinji nodded, letting his hands lay on Rei's shoulders and his thumbs rub little circles at the base of her neck. He thought back to the MAGI blackout order, and the broken desk in that dark office. She was right- there was something going on, and always had been.

Now he just had to start looking for it.

* * *

><p>Rei considered the contents of her closet, before turning to Asuka. "There are clothes here I have never worn. I believe they wouldn't fit me now."<p>

The redhead just huffed. "Rub it in why don't you..."

"Factory-wove cotton does not have any particularly appealing tactile traits." Rei cocked her head to the side just so, and smiled faintly. "Rubbing it in would not be good for either of us."

At that, Asuka groaned and flopped back on her mattress. She threw an arm over her face and rolling into a nearby cushion, something Rei recognized as her friend's flair for the melodramatic. As for why there were two beds, Shinji had made a second bed and frame to fit into Rei's studio loft, allowing the other two pilots to double up and leave one bedroom space free for a guest.

Rei was happy that Ryoji-san had decided to take Asuka's old apartment for the past few weeks, for Misato's peace of mind if nothing else.

Tumbling off the bed and swinging upright, Asuka huffed again before joining Rei at the open closet door. The Second reached in and pulled out a handful of hangers and the clothes on them. "Fine, fine, let's just get this over with... And we need an outside opinion. Hey _Ikari!"_

The last Asuka directed out the open door, and Rei _knew_ the girl could make her voice carry. Shinji, to his credit, didn't immediately drop everything at her call. Rei watched as Asuka waited, tapping her toes and drumming fingers against her bare arms.

Finally, Shinji came up stairs and leaned around the door. "Yeah?"

Asuka held up a shirt to her front and shoved another hanger toward Rei. "Which one looks better- the blouse or the camisole?"

Rei blinked at that, and Shinji did too in the exact same manner. There was a long, dull silence before Shinji shook his head. "I... I don't know."

Sighing and shaking her head, Asuka scowled. "So boring- It's like you don't have _any _opinions at all."

Rei took a step back without thinking, and then wondered _why_ exactly. She nearly missed Shinji's reply. "I do too!"

Asuka crossed her arms over her chest and one eyebrow curved up into a high, incredulous arch. "Yeah? Name one. Name one thing you like!"

The smirk took the heat out of her words, but it was more than enough to put Shinji on the spot. "I-I, I like red!"

Asuka beamed. "Damn straight!"

* * *

><p>The next morning, Shinji headed to NERV with a head full of questions and only coming up with a few answers. Today though his primary concern was finishing the repairs on Unit 02 in time for the UN inspection, because he <em>knew<em> Asuka was going to be front and center for any given Evangelion demonstration.

To do that though, he needed a bit more information. He cut through the altered Geofront layout and hopped into the elevator that sent him surfaceward, toward the outer shell of the Geofront dome and the Eva Cages. He passed by the original three, with 00, 01 and the mostly-intact 02. Cages four and five had the new additions that had somehow snuck in when he wasn't looking, Units 03 and 04.

Unit 03 didn't have a pilot, as far as NERV was concerned or aware, and as Shinji walked over the gantry from one cage to another, he stared at the thing and let out a snort. _His_ Eva may have been ugly too, built like an oni wearing a samurai helmet, but Unit 01 grew on him after a fashion. 03 was black, pug-faced and proportioned all wrong, even for the normally alien Evangelions. He gladly passed it by.

The other new biomachine was from the United States- Nevada or so the report said. It still bemused him more and more that he had as much access to internal information as Ritsuko or Misato. Shinji was dead certain however that Misato maybe read one in ten of the reports that actually crossed her desk. She at least had the sense to read the _important ones_.

Silvery white with red accents, Unit 04 was meant for a pilot who was ostensibly supposed to arrive with the UN inspection team. It had the same jaw as Unit 01, but lacked the forward swept horn or the open cowling along the back of its skull. All told it looked awfully generic, and of the various NERV branches, Tokyo-3 was still the first and most funded. Compared to the quirky prototypes, and Unit 02 as the dedicated combat platform, 04 _looked_ budget conscious, even for something from the United States. They never even bothered to paint it.

As far as Shinji knew, the only thing remotely important about it short of _being a Evangelion_ was that it could have had a prototype S2 engine. The tests for that were aborted in the face of the budget cuts and lack of 'critical research materials'.

Shinji supposed he'd have to pull it apart if he wanted to know what they meant.

But _that_ could wait until after the inspection. For now he wanted to find Ritsuko, and find her he did in the sixth Evangelion cage. He dug out his ID card for the armed guards at the door. He regretted it the second they opened the door.

The cage _stank_, like the old refrigerator back at his aunt and uncle's home but a thousand times worse. They had to evacuate due to a storm and the power went down, leaving a week's worth of groceries to spoil for almost ten days. His eyes started to water and his breath fogged within seconds of coming inside, even as the door slid shut behind him. Unlike the other cages that had been empty save for the Evas themselves, this one was full of refrigerated LCL, chilling and preserving the pile of flesh pinned to one wall.

And it was definitely a pile. Shinji stared at the ruined corpse for a long moment, and was reminded once more that Evas were _wierd_. Stripped of armor, he could see things, structures that were both anatomically familiar and decidedly alien. A subclavian artery wound near the clavicle as expected, but then they were cut off abruptly by some cybernetic apparatus that he'd need a few minutes to name and an hour to understand.

Decay had already set in and wouldn't stop short of total cryogenic preservation and disinfection, followed by excising the necrotized tissue. The LCL was thick and turgid, and sickly orange ice floes built up in the unmoving corners and edges of the cage. Debris that had flaked away from the Evangelion filled the rest of the chamber, bits of icy flesh and the strips of plastic and metal that made up its skin. Shinji even saw razor-sharp flecks of the ceramic composite he'd made- what was left of Unit 02's extra armor modules.

Looking at the cyborg again, he mentally tagged it as Sorhyu's _spoils of war_, and was more than a little bemused that despite not intending it to reach a dissection table, there was something to be said for how incredibly _thorough_ she'd been about laying it open for display. Evangelions were still combat platforms, even if he'd been well insulated from that war for months now.

Down below, movement in the LCL caught his eye, and Shinji saw someone in scuba gear paddling through the muck alongside a floating raft of instruments and tools.

Glancing around, Shinji tapped that internal reserve and swung over the gantry, balancing neatly first on draping cables that hung in wide parabola. Sliding off those, he dropped down to land atop a buoyant bit of armor and flesh, no wider than his toe and supporting his weight against all logic. Hot-stepping easily from one bit of refuse to another, Shinji made his way over to where the familiar figure was taking samples.

For a moment the woman didn't seem to notice. Then she coughed into her rebreather and pitched back, losing balance and pitching into the LCL before bobbing back to the surface.

Scrambling back to the raft, Ritsuko bobbed in the fluid and sputtered. "Ikari Shinji _what are you doing here?!"_

Hunkering down on a slightly larger chunk of wreckage, Shinji smiled despite himself. He waved up at the ruined Eva. "I was hoping to take a look at this and see if I could learn something, maybe letting me repair Sorhyu's Evangelion more effectively."

Ritsuko hiked herself up higher on the raft and sighed. "That's all well and good but you don't have clearance to be here."

"Actually I do. Where do you need this?" He reached down to grab the ropes lashed to the raft and waited for Ritsuko to point the way before pointing at his nose. "Division head; I have clearance. I just usually forgot I had it."

The woman's dark eyebrows shot up toward the ring of her dive cap and she blinked. "It pains me to admit, I forgot too."

She just shot him a dry look. "I blame that cognitive failure on sudden surprise-Specialist."

After that, Shinji tugged the little raft around the cage and the Evangelion, stopping every so often to let Ritsuko replace her mask and dive down to take a sample or check some lower structure. The coolant LCL itself was denser than water, so diving was always more difficult than rising. When she broke the surface for the last time, the scientist peeled off her mask and slung the mouthpiece aside.

Looking up, Ritsuko wrinkled her nose and sighed. "Clearance or not, you should still be wearing hazard gear... And not walking on debris. You'll be smelling like a morgue sink for days."

Shinji laughed and nodded, more than conceding the point. He glanced at the Evangelion and hummed. "I do feel like taking a shower just looking at it."

From that he made a mental note to do something about effortless sanitation, in the future. Slipping absently into that project mindset, Shinji felt his mind turn to solving a handful of odd little problems. Even in the ultra-buoyant LCL, that oxygen tank and rebreather _had_ to be awfully heavy and hard to carry. If NERV had the money to burn on plugsuit iterations, they certainly could have afforded other things...

Glancing back up at Ritsuko's face, her eyes locked on his, and she went pale for one second before a bit of red crept up into her cheeks. Her tone was thick with morbid curiosity. "...Are you looking at my legs?"

Somewhere in the cage, condensation dripped.

"Well I _wasn't-_" Smirking, Shinji channeled every inch of Misato's lilting teasing tone, and watched as Ritsuko's little joke burned away in the face of impending doom. "I was thinking about how to make a better LCL dive suit."

Finally she swallowed her mortification and let out weak laugh, nodding and giving him the point well earned. The bit of fun seemed to take half a decade of Ritsuko's face, and Shinji wondered how often she had a chance to really _relax_. That strain reminded him again of why he even wanted to come down to the cages.

His little quip seemed to have done its job though, as the scientist's mood became markedly more casual. "... You're getting awfully good at that."

Shinji grinned faintly as he turned to walk backwards across the debris, facing her the whole time. Then Ritsuko breathed out a muted "Je_-sus_."

Shinji blinked once then stopped, barely aware he'd articulated a new technique. The coolant rippled beneath his shoes but he did not sink. Looking back up, he gave Ritsuko a helpless shrug and smiled. "If it helps, I haven't managed water to wine yet, no matter how much Misato begs."

Ritsuko slowly managed to close her mouth, nodding. "It does, somewhat."

Silence came more comfortably to the cages that time, as the pair mutually acknowledged that, all joking aside, that turn of events was undeniably plausible as far as the Major was concerned. Some questions still needed to be addressed, however.

"Akagi-sensei, can I ask you something?" Ritsuko turned from a bit of iced-over flesh and armor and cocked her head. Waving upwards, Shinji gave her something of an imploring look. "What's the point of messing with this- it's not like we can use it for spare parts."

The blonde bit her lip, and Shinji watched her mull it over. Bobbing gently on more bloody ice, he could afford to be patience. Finally she looked up and answered. "You were already informed of SEELE, which is the unofficial name of the Committee for Human Instrumentality. They're essentially the oversight board for NERV within the United Nations."

She waved off any of the immediate questions before Shinji could even make a sound. He let his mouth drift closed while Ritsuko continued, pointing at a bit of intact armor on the Evangelion's arm, and the letters stenciled across it. "The Committee created this Evangelion, using the salvaged core material from the third and fourth Angels.

Nodding, Shinji spread his hands gave the woman a helpless shrug. "But why? I don't understand what the Commander gets out of all of this- more cores? We have two more Evas right next door?"

"The S2 engine! And maybe I can answer some of that."

Shinji and Ritsuko looked up to spot UN Inspector Ryoji Kaji waving from the gantry.

* * *

><p>Walking and swimming to the dive platform would have taken too long, so Shinji took a shortcut by pulling Ritsuko out of the coolant and into his arms, then <em>jumping<em> more than a dozen meters up. He cleared the chain rails and landed on the gantry hard enough to make it shake, letting the scientist slide out of his arms and drip coolant through the grated platform.

Kaji seemed to have an _effect_ on Ritsuko, because she didn't let the sudden move slow her down. She stalked forward, shrugging off the rebreather harness and peeling herself halfway out of the dive suit while raking a hand through her hair, getting most of the thick ooze out in one go.

Flicking that same hand across the platform, she cast a beaded line of purple coolant across the floor just shy of Kaji's shoes and _huffed_. "While that may be the case regarding the Commander's motives, it's not relevant here Inspector Kaji. I _know _you don't have clearance."

Shinji watched the byplay with more than a little interest, smirking faintly when Kaji held up his hands, palms forward. A cigarette had been wedged between two fingers, and Ritsuko snatched it away with her driest hand. Kaji had the decency to offer her a lighter, pulling out his own cigarette. Left alone for that few seconds of familiarity, Shinji winced and felt his expression fall, knowing with _painful_ certainty exactly how bad the smoke was for their lungs. He kept himself busy by wringing out his own shirt, smeared with coolant from carrying Ritsuko.

The two adults must have noticed his sour look, and they both gave him a shrug and grin, as if to say 'take what you can get'.

Kaji finally conceded to Ritsuko earlier, smirking around his own nicotine supply. "Well I'm here now, and like I said, the S2 engine is something of a hot research topic."

"Which is also _extremely_ classified-" Ritsuko bristled

"And I _was_ going to Nevada for the scheduled S2 prototype test, but the budget cuts happened." Kaji had a way of wedging his own voice into a conversation. "Trust me, I _legitimately_ know about S2 engines."

"Which at this point is largely academic as Pilot Sorhyu destroyed _that_ S2 engine rather decisively, and she was tactically right to do so as far as Katsuragi and I are concerned." Ritsuko winced, nodding to Shinji. "Ikari-kun, forgive the way this self-centered fool swans around. There are _much better_ role models than him."

Smirking, Shinji nodded. "I'm getting that impression, and Kaji-san tends to shovel it on."

Kaji just put his free hand over his heart, struck through right where it hurt. It didn't take long to bring the older man into the conversation, though Ritsuko shot him more than a few dark looks when they referenced obviously classified things. It was becoming increasingly clear though that the kind of back channel discussion was _normal_ in NERV, and really governments in general. There's no trouble until someone gets caught.

It didn't seem like a _nice_ system, but it was a _working one_, which counted for something. Having it demonstrated so openly put another piece of understanding NERV into Shinji's hand. Still, he had two people with a lot more insight into Ikari Gendo's character than him right there, it would have been foolish not to _try_ to learn more.

Raising his hand, Shinji brought up the MAGI communications blackout. "There was a glitch in the interpretation of the Commander's orders, which I suppose is understandable seeing as the MAGI are programmed with psychology as much as code. The actual orders self-deleted though, so I don't know exactly what he instructed, just their effect. I'm wondering if what happened was intentional or not."

Kaji and Ritsuko looked at each other, then almost simultaneously uttered "The Commander doesn't make mistakes." Kaji then added that if a mistake _was_ made, Gendo would have either exploited it ruthlessly, or removed all evidence of it happening.

Shinji nodded, waving his hand toward the floor and the Central Dogma some kilometer below them, including with the three MAGI hardware towers. "All I know is that the MAGI took an order too far, leading to a snarl in UN communications. I asked General Kirishima about it the other day, and was saying that it'd be a _year_ before the UN Navy and Army catch all the way up."

"There are a few shortcuts the UN can instigate regarding that- threats of shattered communications were a big deal back in the eighties and nineties." Kaji puffed on his cigarette once before continuing. "There's a long legacy of the Cold War, even right here in Japan."

While he wasn't a history expert by any means, Shinji _had_ read almost every non-fiction book a good sized library. Looking around at the Evangelion cage, and thinking on the greater Geofront complex, he had to agree with that.

Turning back to Kaji, Shinji couldn't help but be curious. "Destroyed or not, what do you mean by S2 engine?"

The answer came from Ritsuko, part of it at least. "It's the Super Solenoid engine, or organ if you're taking it from an Angel. You'd have to ask Katsuragi about the name. Either way, it's a theoretical perfect energy apparatus, kind of like zero-point energy taps."

"Straight up speculative fiction, if you lived anywhere else but here." Kaji smirked and puffed around his cigarette. "In an ideal world, we would have gotten a working S2 engine out of our little scuffle in the Caribbean, but..."

He trailed off and shrugged, letting Shinji draw his own conclusion. Taking a closer look at the Evangelion corpse, the pilot had no idea if he could fix it, seeing as he'd never seen an S2 engine before or anything. If the Angels did it, then NERV could too. Regardless, there were still things Shinji wasn't _quite_ sure about.

"So... A limitless energy tap." Shinji felt one of his hands drift to his chest and stop right over his heart. "Wait, technically _I'm_ a limitless energy tap, I just don't have constant output- are S2 engines _Exaltations!?"_

Ritsuko paled at that and started frantically shaking her head, not even noticing the cigarette drop from her fingers and into the coolant pool below. "No! Nothing like them- completely different metaphysics as far as I can tell!"

Watching in a kind of shared, morbid fascination, Shinji and Kaji waited for Ritsuko to collect herself. The boy found himself glancing sidelong at the spy, who just shrugged and smirked. When she finally caught her breath, Ritsuko sighed. "As far as we can tell, your Exaltation has a lot to do with _souls_, and souls are closely related to AT field theory and application. Overlapping metaphysics, not convergent... Anything."

She shook her head again, mumbling about _Exalted Angels_. Shinji had to agree that was not a pleasant thought.

Forcing himself back on topic, Shinji huffed. "Well now I'm back to where I started. Why all this? What does the Commander get out of being the Commander? What am I missing? The Evangelions are awful tactical or strategic weapons- you cut their power cable and it's five minutes or nothing. An S2 engine would have solved that, but that doesn't _fit._"

He'd been raising his arms at that last bit, and let them fall while he waited for an answer. This time Kaji and Ritsuko shared a brief and unreadable glance. The UN inspector put out his cigarette against a nearby rail and grinned. "You're close, the question you want to ask is _which_ commander of NERV. There were six or so installations across the planet, and we're in zero-one. So what's special about NERV Japan?"

A few seconds thought was enough for Shinji to say that _lots_ of things were special about NERV Japan. The biggest two were 'Angels were attacking here' and 'The Geofront'. There were no other subterranean installations anywhere near as expensive. Rubbing his chin, Shinji looked inward and _reasoned_. The former point was at best tautological- the angels were attacking, and that was enough. The _Geofront_ though...

Shinji brought his head up and nodded. "There's something here that the Commander wants to be close to, or keep control over."

Kaji let out a sharp laugh and raised his arms, grinning widely. "And he figures it out in five minutes- something that took me _three years_. I love this kid, I really do."

Ritsuko meanwhile narrowed her eyes, tapping her lips and not quite frowning. When she spoke, it was wary, but not unkind. "You weren't using your powers at all were you. No corona."

Rolling his shoulders, Shinji just shrugged. "I don't look _that_ dependent on them... do I?"

The scientist just gave him a rueful shake of her head, this time mumbling about 'child of two geniuses'. She cleared her throat and offered Shinji a surprisingly warm look. "Well, I am happy to see you applying yourself and simply using your brain. It is one of your greater assets."

"I tend to bounce from project to project..." Shinji scratched the back of his head, laughing weakly. "Sorhyu said I should focus more."

"Perhaps." Ritsuko allowed. "However, specialization is for insects."

Kaji threw an arm around Ritsuko's shoulders, looking up at Shinji's face with laughing eyes. "Well now Ikari-kun, I suppose the obvious question now is 'what are we going to do'?"

"Do? I have no clue whatsoever!" Shinji let out a short laugh, leaning back toward a rail and bracing on it with both hands. "I'm not some crusader. Dense, sure, ignorant, but I don't ever feel very good charging head first at a problem."

Kaji just laughed again and tapped his temple. "Don't sell yourself so short, kid. You've certainly got a head for it!"

The unexpected compliment sailed through Shinji's thin composure and didn't quite make him gape, but he felt the red pick up in his cheeks regardless. Watching Ritsuko though, she shrugged out of the older man's half hug and rolled her eyes. Maybe more of teasing jab at his stature.

The other division leader was at least up to defend him. Ritsuko rounded on Kaji and poked him in the chest with one long finger. "Might I remind you that Ikari-kun has as much authority to toss you out as I do, but _he _gets to use elbow-locks."

Kaji just put up his hands and conceded to the fact that he was outnumbered, and outthought in all the ways that mattered.

Finally, Shinji rubbed his chin and nodded, more to himself than anything. Looking between Ritsuko and Kaji, he sketched out a quick bow. "Thanks, both of you, for answering my questions. It helped a lot."

The two adults waved it off as graciously as they could, and a part of Shinji saw it for what it was as the cultural shield of 'older and wiser' against the younger. It was reassuring in its own way, because he was fairly certain they wanted to _protect him_ more than anything. Turning back to the wrecked Evangelion, Shinji let his thoughts out freely.

"I can't care about Ikari Gendo that much anymore. I just don't feel anything... But I care about what he's doing, because he's done things I don't like." Things that he couldn't accept at face value anymore, either. "My father is invested in this Evangelion, in Evas in general... I should care too, but at the same time, I don't see how this impacts the things I care about, so for now, I'm willing to let it lie."

He turned and smiled at Kaji and Ritsuko. Both their eyes had gone wide, but were otherwise silent. Shinji bowed again and made for the exit. For now, he needed a _shower_.

* * *

><p>About ten minutes after Shinji left, Kaji pulled out another pair of cigarettes with trembling fingers. He lit one for Ritsuko, then himself, taking a long calming pull into his lungs. They stood on the gantry, painfully aware of the smell of decaying flesh and chemical taint. In the shadows cast by one of the cage walls, the cherry-red ends of their cigarettes stood out amidst the inky blacks and military greens.<p>

Eventually, Kaji worked up the nerve to say something. "So, I think you've seen the plug by now?"

Ritsuko rubbed her hands together and shivered, talking around her own cigarette. "What's left of it."

"Thoughts?" The inspector tried to keep the gravitas out of the word. He failed.

"My mother learned how to make Rei from _somewhere_."

* * *

><p>It just wasn't going to be her day. Wright had to cancel, and now it seemed like every door, door frame, corner, and random bit of furniture in the apartment seemed to have it in for her. To the point that Asuka had been forced to make long, overwrought mental lists to keep it all straight in her head. Counting to ten wasn't working.<p>

Nursing a new bruise along one shin, Asuka huffed and took a moment to catch her breath.

"Are you alright?" Misato rounded the corner, brows slanted down and visibly concerned. The older woman crossed her arms across her middle, waiting.

Asuka just waved her off, trying not to growl. "Fine, just a clumsy day or something."

Misato nodded slowly, before cocking her head to one side. She reached out to put two fingertips under Asuka's chin, tugging so she'd straighten up and stand tall. "Did you grow two inches and gain like eight great looking pounds overnight?"

The redhead blinked at that, and peeled off her eyepatch in order to shove it into Misato's hands. She took a step back while the dark-haired woman obligingly held the prosthetic up for her. Asuka spun in place, unsteadily, but she _needed to_ for the full effect. Asuka felt a quick and mischievous laugh bubble up inside her. The girl knit her fingers together and _posed _for the synchronized camera. One blue eye full of approval gazed out over her shoulder as she flexed with arms outstretched, such that both her knuckles and spine relented with a series of pops and crackles.

Misato winced, but smiled all the same. "Should you really be doing that so soon?"

Letting her arms fall to her side, she looked Misato right in the eye and grinned. "Why _not_? It's about goddamned time!"

* * *

><p>The sound of metal scraping against metal was loud in the apartment kitchen, and Shinji waited on hand with the vacuum. The operation had been planned out to the letter, with code-worded battle phrases and secured lines of communication. Misato had confirmed every phone was off the hook or had the batteries yanked- she couldn't afford any distractions.<p>

Rei sat in the hot seat, and the normally warm, inviting incandescent room light seemed to stifle. A bead of sweat dripped down the side of the girl's neck. "This level of preparation does not seem to have a calming effect."

Asuka swallowed thickly and nodded, before waving around at the array of tools and towels. "I'm with Rei- questioning the necessity of... All this."

Closing the shears with a muted click, Misato pouted. "It's not that bad, is it?"

"It kinda is!" Asuka shrugged helplessly, spreading her arms wide. The thin scars along her left arm had faded to pink lines. "How badly did you want to be a hair stylist, again?"

"I didn't want to _be_ anything back before the Impact, aside from maybe a race car driver." Misato shrugged and held the shears up again. "I dunno, I just like this, doing fun things with hair."

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Some kind of girly-girl release valve?"

Fussing with a comb, Misato shook her head. "I've never been that much of a girly girl though."

The redhead waved at the spread of beautician's tools that spilled out across the center kitchen island. "I see sufficient evidence to the contrary."

"Perhaps Shinji-kun's influence is having an unexpectedly... domesticating effect." Asuka and Misato both paused, turning to face the mirror and Rei's reflection. The First was as always, unreadable when she wanted to be.

Shinji found himself coughing, hard.

"Anyway" Misato smiled, waving the discussion away as she got back to work. She tugged Rei's hair out of it's long tail and started brushing with her fingers. The shampoo Shinji made was absolutely _heavenly_, all things told, and made the task amazingly easy. "So, want me to cut some of this back, or leave it long?"

Rei was quiet for a moment, and Misato had no problem waiting. She did hold off a yawn though- the days coming up to the inspection were still long, and the nights were getting rougher. Asuka stewed in her seat at the table, waiting her turn and boldly failing at staving off boredom. Finally, Rei decided to keep it long, and Misato grinned into a nearby mirror, just so Rei could see it. Cleaning up the hardly ragged ends took a few minutes, and made brushing even easier.

Pulling Rei's hair out of her face, Misato gave the girl a gentle nudge out of the chair before turning toward the kitchen table. "Okay Asuka, you're next- long or short?"

The redhead groaned and rolled her head back and forth while Misato waved for Shinji to dart in, vacuuming up the blue clippings. Switching places with Rei, Asuka settled into the hot seat and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. While that was happening, Rei took the opportunity presented to experiment. Misato watched out the corner of her eye while Rei tried her hair up at different angles, or with her bangs tucked away behind an ear or with her fingers, mimicking pins and barrettes. Drawing the rest of her hair over her shoulder, she tried a braid, but it was increasingly obvious she had _no idea_ what she was doing.

It was probably one of the most adorable things Misato had ever seen. She wished she had a camera handy.

Adorableness aside, it was time to get back to the task at hand. Sinking her fingers into the redhead's mane, Misato gently tugged the A-20 clips and band out. The vacuum clicked off, and Misato looked up, suddenly curious. Rei had let her hair fall out of her hands and turned as well.

Shinji was staring.

And like gravity, Asuka was the first to comment, crossing her arms over her chest. "What are you looking at, Golden Boy?"

"Sorry it's just-" The boy coughed lightly. "I don't think I've seen you with your hair down. Ever."

Misato smirked, but turned before she could give anything away. Even so that was an _interesting_ little comment- and the fact that Shinji _noticed_. He really was getting better, settling into his own. Asuka for her part didn't bluster _or_ sputter, for once seeming to take the boy at face value. Two miracles in the span of five seconds. Nudging Asuka, Misato asked her again about long or short.

"Long."

Nodding, the Major got to work. Still, she couldn't help but sneak glances up at the mirror, watching Asuka's face in the reflection, or Shinji out the corner of her eye.

Asuka couldn't cock her head to the side, what with the shears hovering near her cheek and jaw. Misato could still _hear_ the leading tone though. "What do you think then, Ikari? Girls with long hair, or short?"

Misato very nearly lopped off a six inch chunk, but caught herself at the last second. Even Rei had stopped tying her hair back. The whole apartment seemed to hang on Shinji's answer. The sole male in the apartment shifted, and Misato could watch the gears turning in his head. Misato knew Ayumi had been growing her hair out too, since she got the alchemic shampoo. His eyes flicked from Rei, to Misato, then Asuka in the chair.

Finally, he swallowed thickly and nodded once. "I... I uh like girls. With long hair."

* * *

><p>Later that night at dinner, Sorhyu threw down the gauntlet.<p>

Fortunately, Shinji could tell it was a foam gauntlet with an almost playful challenge inside. It started about ten minutes earlier when Sorhyu had started to list out some of the dishes she'd tried while traveling across Europe and then the Atlantic towards the Americas. Shinji already had an inkling of her culinary experience from the welcome home dinner, but for such a skinny girl, she seemed to eat _a lot_.

He had the good sense and self-preservation not to _say that out loud_, of course. Unfortunately, he couldn't help but twitch each time she went on about whatever dish or diner Kaji had taken her to. The agent had given Sorhyu one hell of a personal menu when it came to food, and she described it all with such _relish_, even the relish. Shinji shivered again. Eventually though, even Sorhyu noticed the twitch, like her eyepatch somehow had two-seventy degree vision or something- he wouldn't have been surprised. She rounded on him, and demanded to know what the problem was.

So, he told her. "E-everything you described, it was _wrong_. They did it wrong or something went wrong or there was a better way they didn't know."

Sorhyu stared at him, blinking owlishly. "Wrong what?"

"The food! Five degrees and thirty seconds can mean the difference between a meal you remember forever and cafeteria food. It's just..." He trailed off and let his hand drop onto the table. The plates rattled in response.

Sorhyu hiked herself closer to the table and sat more upright, scowling. "I get that you're savant-nutritionist and the like, but since when do you tell me what to think about what I eat?"

"That's not what I meant!" Shinji sighed. He snuck a quick glance at Misato and Rei, and they both had similar wide-eyed expressions. Not that he blamed them- he wasn't one to raise his voice. Turning back to Sorhyu, he shook his head and shrugged. "It's just, I can do it _better_ and I'm right here."

"Better, huh?" Sorhyu pulled off the metaphorical gauntlet from earlier and dropped it. She waved at her steakhouse burger and fries, grinning. "I don't doubt you're skilled. Victory dinner and the past week or so have been warm ups. Let's put you to the test."

Nodding, Shinji tucked one hand into the other and held it to his face, thinking. "As long as you give me an idea of what's in it, I can make it."

It was a point Sorhyu could easily conceed. She shot a fast and mischievous look over at Misato before focusing back on Shinji with a blue eye and black plastic. "Think you could make some Baked Alaska?"

Shinji was reaching for the phone even before he answered. "I'd need to call in some ingredients, but yeah... Fifteen minutes not counting preparation time."

Misato broken in then. "...you get pilot security to go on grocery runs? _My _Section Two?"

He considered explaining the exact deal and the logistics of having a few dozen pairs of agents camped out at specialty stores, waiting for just such a call. In the end, Shinji decided to go for the vague and mysterious answer. "I pay them in sandwiches, so... Yeah."

The dark-haired woman just mouthed the word 'sandwiches' at that while Shinji turned back to Sorhyu. The other pilot just swung her attention back toward her meal, smiling primly. It was a multi-course production like usual, split into fifths, as PenPen had his preferences too, especially since Shinji could interpret. Salmon only existed in climate-controlled hatcheries since Second Impact.

Finishing her own meal, Misato leaned back in her seat and laid an arm across her stomach while her other hand cradled a glass of red wine. "Well, I still don't believe you can call this a diet, Shinji."

"Wine has antioxidants, so in moderation..." He shrugged while eating the last helpings on his plate.

Sorhyu meanwhile ate half the amount he did, but that was still much, much more than the regular portions given out to the others. Maybe it was an American thing. Rei swooped in then, pulling the empty plates away as Shinji finished the last mouthfuls. It was her turn to rinse the dishes and load the washer- the machine would do all the scrubbing.

"Wait, wait" Sorhyu leaned away from the table while Rei reached around to grab the empties. "What's this about a diet- none of this stuff is _diet_."

Misato broke in to answer before Shinji could, smirking. "Shinji-kun's in like the top five percent of medical science, and he makes everything we eat; you don't think he tries to make it as healthy as possible?"

The older woman wore tank tops and shorts for a reason, and Shinji knew Asuka was staring at the no-effort figure of a woman who'd hit a modest jackpot on the genetic lottery. He knew because he'd looked too, for one reason or another.

Shooting a pair of chagrined looks at her nearly empty plate and the red-meat remains of a well-loved burger, then at Shinji, Sorhyu shook her head. "I think I'm surrounded by lies."

Then the doorbell rang. The bulk goods had arrived. Sorhyu hadn't just challenged him to make the desert, but to make it _better_. That meant going down to the raw ingredients and doing a bit of experimentation. He could afford to be a bit wasteful with his internal reserve too, seeing as they'd all be going to bed soon. After a few minutes, Shinji nodded to himself and started.

Misato, Rei and Sorhyu crowded around while the sunfire wreathed his arms and he pressed the ingredients together between his hands, flash-mixing and somehow juggling the hot and cold processes to make the complicated desert between the palms of his hands. Rei pushed three bowls into place on some unspoken signal, and he let the treats fall into place. A bit of choice liquor from Misato's collection and a match set the three confections alight.

He looked at Sorhyu, nodding. "These _will_ be better than any Baked Alaska you've ever had, and they were each made to your own particular body chemistry."

"Meaning...?" Sorhyu drawled, blowing the fire out and holding her bowl full of decadence up to her nose.

Shinji swung by the island sink and rinsed his hands off, smirking faintly. He opened his mouth to answer, but Rei cut him off with wide, shining eyes. "Meaning Shinji-kun can give us an infinite number of ways to enjoy _chocolate_."

* * *

><p>A thunderstorm rolled in later on that same night. Late September was hot and muggy, and Tokyo-3's unique geography funneled clouds into the Hakone depression along the path of Ashinoko. Asuka leaned out on the secondary balcony from the room she and Rei shared, watching the dark clouds over the hills rise higher into the sky.<p>

"The _last_ time we had thunderstorms was in the MAGI, right?" She turned in place, bracing her elbows against the rails and tossing her question back through the open sliding door.

Rei nodded. "I have much the same recollection, and we lacked a properly insulated shelter back then. We made a pillow fortress to compensate."

Rocking away from the wall, Asuka spun on one heel fast enough to send her hair fanning out. It settled back on her shoulders in a red wave while she replied. "That's a really shitty memory to attach to something like that, huh?"

"Agreed," Rei smiled faintly, cocking her head to the side. "I have had some practice in the meantime."

"Is that so?" Asuka grinned, somewhat surprised and more than a little impressed. Her eyepatch's display overlay told her the time. "I don't feel tired and we've got write-offs for school this week anyway. Want to make a better fort?"

The blue-haired teenager smiled back. "I will go get the ice cream."

* * *

><p>Perhaps splitting a full gallon carton between the two of them hadn't been the best of ideas, but Ikari <em>had<em> made it, and he'd proven his nutritionist credentials that night already. Shoving her bowl and spoon aside, Asuka flopped back onto her nest of cushions and blankets, sighing gustily. Between two beds, a closet and a half and the loft furniture, the two of them had managed a pillow _palace_, with three rooms and connecting hallways.

Meanwhile Rei stretched out on her stomach, moving so her chin laid flat against a pillow. She stared at something by Asuka's side, increasingly intent by the second.

"Rei." Asuka shifted and sat up on her elbows, looking over and trying to follow what the other girl doing. "Rei. Rei-chan what are you doing. Rei?"

Muffled and a little distracted, Rei managed to mumble past the pillow. "I am looking at your hand, Asuka-chan."

The redhead blinked, and wriggled her fingers without thinking. "Okay- why?"

Rei's voice was faint, almost wistful. "Because I wish to hold it."

There wasn't any obvious response to that, as far as Asuka could think. She didn't have any scars or damage there, so it was just a hand. "Iiii-i'm not sure what you're going for here."

The answer Asuka got wasn't anything like she expected. In hindsight though, Asuka understood that Rei always had to _deliberately _go for ambiguity. She was just really good at it too. Asuka watched Rei pull out one hand and laid it across Asuka's palm. The contact wasn't sudden, but Asuka still felt the sudden clash of hot and cold shoot through her body. Blinking rapidly, she tried to hold very still. Touching people she could handle, _being_ touched on the other hand...

Rei must have noticed, because she slowly pulled her hand back. Asuka for her part was stuck in in a short mental loop, running the whole action over in her head and staring at Rei the whole time. While Asuka tried to evaluate, Rei glanced at the redhead's hand, then tilted her head up to look Asuka in her uncovered eye. A second downward glance followed up by another, brief look at Asuka's face seemed to settle something in the girl's mind.

All Asuka felt right then was confusion, but Rei seemed to collapse in on herself.

Finally elaborating, Rei looked away, sitting up and hugging one knee to her chest. "I was too forward."

"Forward?" Asuka let the question came out high and piqued, like any reasonable attempt at figuring out if her friend was screwing with her. _Misato_ might have done something untoward for a laugh, but she _only _did it for a laugh. "Hand holding is like, barely forward at all! Forward is surprise hugs and unexpected kis-wait why are we talking about this?"

Rei didn't answer, and Asuka sat further upright with an impatient little huff. She got her knees under her and leaned over to prod Rei in the leg with the same hand she tried to hold. "It's fine, I'm not made of glass anymore."

The other pilot twitched, more out of surprise than anything. It was enough to get Rei to perk back up, but she still looked a little unsteady.

"That is true..." The girl trailed off, audibly uncertain. "When you were gone, I was... afraid I had forgotten too."

It looked like Rei needed a little more coaxing, and Asuka was confused and curious enough to see about getting to the bottom of it all. She pulled off her prosthetic and rubbed her eye, squinting. "You have hugged me before too, so this isn't a big deal."

Rei listened, peering past a gap in her bangs while Asuka carried on unabated, rambling. "Hugs are wierd though. Arms around or over the shoulders is friendly and quick. If you hug someone around the middle or the hips though that's more intimate."

That red eye was the brightest points under the fortress canopy."Shinji-kun hugs Misato-san and I like that, around the shoulders. She and I have to go lower though."

Asuka rolled her eyes and groaned. "Yeah you're fine, if you can pull a line out of thin air like that. Guys like Kaji and Ikari are exceptions. They're just so _tall_ you have to do it that way, unless you jump like Misato."

Licking her lips, Asuka cocked her head to the side. The realization was there on the tip of her tongue... 'Intimacy' was a word she knew the _definition_ of, but it wasn't something friends do. Better to say only certain _kinds_ of friends, and she was pretty sure Rei didn't quite mean that. What Asuka _did _know was that friends could hold hands and there was nothing wrong with that.

And proving her point, Asuka reached out and grabbed Rei's hand. Asuka let her fingers tangle up in Rei's and she held her hand up between them so Rei could see. It was a simple little thing, but Rei had _missed_ a lot of those simple things that Asuka had learned the old fashioned way. Asuka realized she might have been the battle-scarred of the pair, Rei had her own demons and needs. Asuka knew she was in a position to help, and did. She gave Rei's hand a light squeeze, and the moment of understanding passed between them. It wasn't weird at all.

Asuka was more than a bit relieved when Rei squeezed back. To that she smiled. "I'm not going anywhere."

And then Asuka smirked. Leverage and seven years of know-how was more than enough to tip Rei into and across her lap. The blue-haired girl let out a quick, muted squeak, and Asuka freed her hands before grinning widely down at her friend. "-And neither are you!"

With that, the pilot pressed her wriggling fingers against the Rei's ribs and stomach. Rei blinked, her cheeks purpled, and the faultless self-control she was known for collapsed like a soap bubble in a blast furnace. Moments later the fortress collapsed around them, Asuka had one thought bubble up alongside the honest laughter;

Rei wanted touching? Rei would _get touching_.

* * *

><p>A bead of sweat dripped down Misato's nose, hanging there. It waited patiently to join the handful similar drops on the mat she'd spread out beneath her. More than a few rough nights had pushed her past that point of exhaustion and into nervous energy. Rei had gotten to Asuka to, forming an alliance against using thaumaturgical cheats to take the edge off. That left Misato with time, a very large living room, and an exercise mat.<p>

It wasn't morning drills with then Gunnery Sergeant Bergentun on that beach in Rio, but Misato hadn't forgotten basic training.

Push ups weren't something she enjoyed, but even old routines were hard to break. Nearly a decade ago, Misato had excelled in her metaphorical weight class. She hadn't been a record breaker, but she'd definitely proved she had something other than a pretty face and good test scores. The whole 'sole survivor of the Katsuragi Expedition' had probably greased a few wheels, but Misato made a point not to think about that if she could help it.

Now, about ten-minutes in to her ad-hoc workout, she was suffering the consequences of never quite breaking free of the college bachelorette ideal. On the youngest side of thirty possible, Misato had to admit some of her edges had rounded out. Finishing her set of twenty-five, she shoved herself to the side and flopped on her back, avoiding the thin puddle of sweat along the way.

Lying there, Misato stared at the high ceiling and wondered if her arms were going to fall apart at the seams, unfurl like a banana peel of skin and muscle. A delightfully cool shadow crossed over the light from the living room window, and Misato craned her neck. Thin legs crisscrossed with thin scars gave way to athletic shorts, a bare stomach and a sports bra.

Sorhyu Asuka Langley looked down at Misato and smirked. "Diet, huh?"

"M'just jittery. Had to work some stuff out." Misato sat up and twisted to face the girl, giving her a tired, teasing grin. "I haven't seen you doing much, what with all that medical leave."

Asuka just shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. That set more than a few warning bells ringing in Misato's mind. The cold chill Misato got when she looked in Asuka's eye was equally ominous.

"Now seems like a good a time as any to get back to my routine." The redhead grinned and took a deliberate step forward.

Misato slid back by reflex, giving ground on the exercise mat. Planting her feet, Asuka pulled a bit of ribbon from her pocket and tied her hair back into a high tail. She cocked her head to the side, humming. "You're still big on pilot solidarity right?"

Licking her lips, Misato nodded slowly. Asuka reached down to give the woman a lift upright before planting both hands on her hips, standing proud. Behind her out on the balcony, Shinji's corona flared noonday bright, just as the Second Children grinned.

Cast in silhouette, Asuka's open blue eye gleamed. "Major Katsuragi, welcome to _pilot training."_

* * *

><p>There weren't many things that would embarrass Misato. Ritsuko had caught her in any number of sweaty situations over the years, except maybe the current one. Even then it didn't even make the top-fifty moments.<p>

Standing in a veritable puddle of sweat with both her tanktop and shorts shrink-wrapped to her body, Misato couldn't quite muster up the strength or coordination to wave to her friend. Asuka sprang to her feet with all the disgusting grace of a teenage athlete, completing her thirtieth clapping pushup while Ritsuko wandered around the living room couch.

Misato settled for a husky, shuddering breath and braced her hands against her knees. "I think... I need a beer."

"What you need is some _endurance_, woman. I don't care how sultry that sounded!" Even when dripping and flushed from head to toe, Asuka continued to be Asuka no matter what.

Everything else being equal though, Misato had to admit that the girl was an outright _machine_.

Dropping back onto the mat, Misato let herself all but fall apart, limbs splayed in every direction while Ritsuko was just stuck, gaping at both of them. Tentatively, Misato wriggled her fingers and toes- still there and working, sort of.

Shooting a final glance from Asuka before focusing back on Misato, Ritsuko pulled out a cigarette and hazarded a question, hoping for _some_ kind of explanation. From her place on the floor, Misato watched as Ritsuko hunted through pockets for her lighter, but Asuka immediately broke off her routine and stalked toward the scientist.

The older woman blinked and stopped mid-motion, with her thumb poised over the striker. "C-Can I help you, pilot Sorhyu?"

Asuka just planted her hands on hips and scowled. "You shouldn't smoke when people are exercising!"

Laughing _hurt_, and Misato found her arms curled around her sides even as she tried not to giggle helplessly. Still panting, the Major raised her metaphorical hands to the heavens- she'd been wanting to call Ritsuko on that for _years_.

Dusting her palms off, Asuka tugged the lighter and cigarette out of Ritsuko's limp hand. "Our _lungs_ aside, smoke would ruin how nice this place is now, you know? And Ikari would just mother hen at you for trying."

Misato sucked down a lungful of air and nodded. "He would too, he's got that 'disappointed doctor' tone down pat. What brings you here, Rits?"

The question knocked Ritsuko out of her funk, and she shot the pilot a frosty look. Seeing the rhythm broken, Asuka declared the interruption a five minute break and came back with some towels, tossing one at Misato and using the other to wipe down the mat. Ritsuko pulled out another cigarette but didn't bother going for her lighter, letting it dangle between her fingers. Instead she stuck her chin out toward Asuka, scowling faintly.

Asuka just flopped into a nearby chair in response. Ritsuko knew when to pick her battles and just turned to Misato, smirking faintly and being _just_ smug enough for her to notice. Misato just rolled her eyes, head and neck, shifting her shoulders in a way that conveyed so much more than any number of offensive gestures.

"I had some things I wanted to discuss, some new discoveries I'd made since you two have been gone..." Ritsuko waved her cigarette-holding hand at the living room workout space. "I ask again about this, though."

From her place in the chair, Asuka folded one leg over the other and let her foot bounce merrily. "Well, it looked _to me_ like like someone here was having some trouble keeping her head in the game, so I figure, why not some team-building exercises?"

Misato and Ritsuko half-ignored the redhead. Waving with her unlit cigarette, Ritsuko gave Misato an understanding look. "The inspection."

The Operations Director sighed and nodded. "...The inspection."

"-and besides, impeccable catering or not, I don't entirely trust our _amateur nutritionist_. I refuse to let chocolate cake breakfasts make me soft!"

There was a long, deafening silence Misato processed the tail end of Asuka's rant. Ritsuko turned to face her once more with the flattest stare imaginable. "Katsuragi, _really?"_.

Misato had the good grace to raise her hands in surrender, laughing weakly. 'Busted' seemed more than appropriate.

Shaking her head, Ritsuko sighed and crossed her arms. "Well, about the readings I found. We're seeing Pattern Green outside of Tokyo-3. Outside of _Japan._"

It took Misato a second to remember that was the interception system's classification for whatever Shinji did, all the extra 'radiation' or whatever he put out. Asuka had said something about soul-resonance and reflectivity a few months ago.

Running a hand through her matted hair, Misato frowned. "I'm thinking that falls somewhere between good and bad? It's mysterious, right?"

"Mysterious is close- unknown is more accurate." Ritsuko gave her friend an approving look. "You know how we scientists are and looking for the unknown-"

"Break's over!" Asuka clapped, smiling broadly with the most _disgusting_ of youthful enthusiasm. It should have been illegal, or bottled and sold on sheer _principle_.

The pilot rolled out of her chair and back on to the mat, near enough to Misato to reach down and tug at her wrist. Tradition dictated to Misato that she do _nothing_ to help the girl, but Asuka still got her upright without much trouble. It was tough to stay grouchy and sore in the face of the girl's cheer.

Then Asuka decided to play dirty. She glanced down at Misato and smirked. "We just got started on warmups- but if you can't keep up, maybe you're just too old for pilot conditioning."

"The hell I am!" Misato shot upright, pointedly ignoring how much her legs wanted to jiggle in the not-sexy way. "I am one hundred percent 'twenty-nine years old' and I can still kick _your_ tiny teenage ass!"

"K-Katsuragi..."

Misato could hear the blanched white expression through Ritsuko's voice. "It's honor now Ritsuko! It has to be this way, for the late-twenty-somethings across the nation- no the _world_!"

Taking her place on the mat, Misato was about to nod for Asuka to take the lead when she stopped. Slowly, the Major turned to her old college friend. Not at all emphasizing _old_. "Rits, you want to help me prove Asuka-chan wrong?"

Ritsuko tugged her wrist free, flustered and wide-eyed. "What? No-I don't have time for this, and I'm not dressed for it- Pilot Sorh-"

"Ah c'mon, it'll be an hour out of your day and you'll feel great tomorrow-" Asuka beamed, shrugging off her drill-sergeant persona for one closer to the 'real' her Misato had become intimately familiar with. The work hard play hard Asuka.

As for Ritsuko, Misato felt it justified to deploy the time-honored tactic of 'convince Ritsuko to do what I want just by staring at her'. The _scientist_ could do it to anyone but Misato, and only the Major could do it to _her_, as was the way it should be. After the thirty second battle of wills, Ritsuko's shoulders slumped, and she pushed the unlit cigarette back into the pack.

Stuffing it back into her bag, Ritsuko sighed. "Is there anywhere I can get changed?"

At that, Asuka darted off, cackling madly. Ritsuko followed, but not before miming a noose around her neck and making a fair attempt at looking as if she were off to the gallows. A few minutes later, Ritsuko came back dressed in one of Shinji's t-shirts and some other borrowed clothes.

Taking her place at the front of the mat, Asuka clapped her hands and _grinned like a maniac_. "Everybody ready? Two sets of fifty jumping jacks then we switch!"

Ritsuko just gaped, utterly disbelieving. Misato was already moving, sluggishly yes, but she was but a mere mortal and Asuka was a force of nature. Her friend would learn soon enough. When it was clear the scientist needed some help with her form, Asuka stepped out of line but kept count, nodding as Misato's rhythm smoothed out. Asuka had momentum on her side, keeping both women on their toes and getting their hearts pumping.

Around number thirty or so, Asuka caught a double breath and smiled, full on coach mode. "You two should keep talking, it'll help you breath a bit more. You were saying something about pattern Green results?"

Ritsuko coughed, sputtered and tried to shake her hair out of her eyes. The scientist never had _any_ conditioning, and it showed. "Sa-saturation increasing worldwide."

Lacking context, Misato didn't really understand what 'more green' meant other than more things like mag...ic... Any further thought on the matter was cut short when Ritsuko stumbled, hacking loudly. Asuka was there and moving even before Misato landed, helping the scientist upright and coaching her through the spasm and breathing.

"It's okay- just let yourself normalize a little and let's finish out the set." The redhead kept a steady hand on Ritsuko's arm and shoulder, even as she shot a look at Misato telling her to keep jumping. "Ikari's right outside and he can spot fix you if something really goes bad."

The most impressive part was Ritsuko _agreeing_ and picking up where she left off. Misato wondered if her little motivational manipulation had been _too_ effective...

A couple minutes later, Asuka switched things up, and Misato could tell the girl had come to a similar conclusion. "So you were saying- start on forward lunges- something about increased saturation?"

Moving to a lower impact exercise let Ritsuko catch her breath, nodding weakly while she shuffled through the motions. "We didn't have data before March twenty-fifteen. Didn't start recording till a few months later after I built the soul cameras."

Ritsuko lunged forward on unsteady feet and shot a slightly wild look at both pilot and soldier. "There's more thaumaturgy everywhere, every day. There's more pattern Green suggests a build up to something. It's building faster and I don't know why."

"We..." Ritsuko licked her lips. "We might be seeing another proper Pattern Green_ Event._ Another Shinji. Another _Exaltation_."

* * *

><p>The following afternoon after school, Shinji hummed to himself, assembling an anatomical dummy marked with thaumaturgical pressure points and body-flow lines. He heard the pleasant September breeze outside, and the various voices of his roommates filtering through the apartment. Not a lazy day, but definitely a low impact one.<p>

Sorhyu's energetic lilt echoed around the halls and stairwells."...It's just like I explained this back inside the MAGI, how it's important. Even if it is a little silly."

And Rei wasn't far behind her. "I see. It will be a worthy experiment, regardless."

Shinji turned to see Sorhyu smile at the other pilot before facing him with a bright and impish glint in her eye. "Totally worth it- he's a boy and they're built for this sort of thing- Ikari! Question for you."

Setting the dummy parts down, he gave the girl his full attention, and _tried_ not to dread what was coming."Y-yeah?

Sorhyu flapped her hand between Rei and herself, before swinging it high and grandly with a twist of her waist as Shinji blinked. "You did not mention poses." Rei quietly intoned, before being shushed.

The redhead put her hands on her hips and smirked before asking her question most terrible. "Who has the nicer chest, Rei or I?"

For one single moment, Shinji stopped entirely. In the next, he moved, toward the patio and _away_ from the unanswerable question. He leaped off the edge and toward freedom and safety.

He couldn't see it, but he heard Sorhyu's rapid footsteps as she dashed for the balcony and slammed her hands into the railing, shouting after him. "It's _not _honorable suicide when you survive the fall!"

* * *

><p>Today was going to be the last tutoring session before the weekend. In a way Asuka was happy for the break, but she was also happy to be teaching. Like clockwork, Wright rang the doorbell and Rei let the man in. Tucking some misbehaving hair back into place, Asuka tugged at her skirt hem and glanced down to make sure her socks hadn't slipped. Then the redhead turned to the low living room table, aiming to make sure everything was in order.<p>

Wright had relaxed more than a little over the week as well, gaining some kind of unnamed confidence. A familiar routine did a lot for people, it dropped heavily onto the far end of the couch with a smile and a casual wave.

Clapping, he rubbed his palms together, making the tattoos on his wrists shift and dance. "So, what are we doing today?"

"Today we're going to go over thought organization and literary analysis." Asuka smiled as she held up a blank lined notepad and thrust it at him, not unkindly. "It helps if you write what you learn in your own words, and eventually you'll get good enough to do it all in your head. Until then though..."

She trailed off and tapped the spine of his notepad with her pen, before glancing around. Drat, she must have forgotten to get an extra one... "Do you have a pen?"

Wright blinked once, but nodded before reaching into his pocket and pulling out an antique case. It looked more like something a man would keep on a desk- all handsome wood and lacquer. He pried it open and revealed a gorgeous looking fountain pen. A modern one at that, with a built in ink reservoir.

He must have noticed her look, because the sailor shrugged weakly. "My father gave it to me."

Asuka wasn't one to pry when it came to what parents left to their kids. "Works for me."

Reaching out across the table, she pulled up two copies of a particularly well-worn classic and handed one to her student. Opening her own, she shot the man a wry smirk. "Looks like we're going to start with _'two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene...'"_

Almost two hours later, Asuka had confirmed that Wright knew the bare minimums _at best_ of both popular and enlightened culture. Anyone with eyes, ears and half a brain could recognize the general flow of _Romeo and Juliet_. Even with something that had been so relentlessly criticised, analyzed and otherwise examined, people _still_ missed key points, characters and implications. Granted some of that was from changing productions, omissions in one version and additions in another, but still!

Tossing her copy down on the couch, Asuka crossed her arms and gave the play a decisive nod. "What we are looking at here is the foundational work of every bad rom-com, bodice-ripper, cheesy skin-flick, and boilerplate schlock for the past four centuries. It defined an era of people in love making dumb decisions about love, both in and outside of cultural media."

Wright just looked up at her, helpless and a little wide-eyed. He still smiled though when her eyes met his. "I think I get that, and I think I'm confusing myself. I have no idea who these people are or what they mean. "

He shook the pad, showing how it was barely a quarter full and that the thoughts were half-formed. All in all it was a pitiful attempt at note-taking, and Asuka wasn't going to just let him coast. Tossing her own pen and paper aside, she slid over and leaned in for a closer look.

"Okay-" She grabbed his pen and notepad, because hers was full of random doodles and observations on _her student_ while Wright read the book and listened to her. "Well as an example, there's Mercutio- Romeo's friend, and Rosaline. The point of Rosaline was to illustrate that Romeo was an _idiot_. Better to say that he was a shallow-minded fool about love."

Asuka started drawing boxes and labeling them with names and characters, gradually sketching out a relationship chart that slowly morphed into a character and metatextual analysis. Rosaline was the 'shallow, projected love interest'. "Romeo 'loved her' but she didn't love him back- depending on how you read it, she might not have even _known_ about it."

"Past that, it was a real surface level thing." Asuka pointed at the Rosaline box with the accompanying tags _beauty_ and _superficial_. "Like I said, people in love making dumb decisions. About love."

Wright nodded at that and frowned at the paper. His stare danced around the page, then back to her uncovered eye. "...Right. You got it."

Smiling, Asuka just wagged a finger and winked. "Don't let it get you down- you'll get the next one without my help. Any given culture's metaphors are hard to understand if you hadn't grown up with it- like 'the pen is mightier than the sword."

The sailor perked up at that. Suddenly animated, Wright's eyes seemed to catch fire, and Asuka felt her heart skip a beat. "I read that line- I know that line!

He snapped his fingers and trailed off, glancing past the table, out the window toward the hills in the distance. Asuka watched as the gears started to catch and turn over in his mind, and her heart clenched a second time. "Like... Like the fleet- someone in the UN- no, someone in _NERV_."

Wright snapped his fingers and looked up at Asuka, grinning. "Major Katsuragi got the A-17 order to pull us into the Atlantic, her _pen_ was mightier than the whole fleet. She was why Carter, Bolton and I were pulled up and out along for your Angel hunt."

Asuka sat up straight at that and gave the man the most gracious, proud bow she could. "Congratulations, you've taken a step in understanding most university students fail to grasp."

That Asuka's hair fell over her shoulders to mask her burning cheeks that was _completely incidental _to giving the praise her student deserved.

The older teenager turned back to his copy of the book, flipping through some passage before he landed on the one he wanted. "Okay so... this Mercutio guy. He's like the only one in the play who isn't some kinda asshole. The whole conflict here doesn't seem to matter that much to him, he's just in it so that Romeo doesn't be a sad sack all the time. He's the one I want to see more of, 'cause he's fun. Why does nobody ever talk about _this_ guy?"

"Don't go getting ahead of yourself, you haven't seen the whole story yet." Asuka beamed, more than a little pleased that her student had picked up on that. His question still needed an answer though. "We'll be seeing more of Mercutio later, when his subplot _really _starts to matter."

Wright leaned back against the couch seat and smiled. "Thank you, Miss Sorhyu."

She was _not_ blushing, Asuka refused to call the heat in her face anything but a sudden fault in the rock-steady air conditioning. She matched Wright's smile with a grin of her own. "You know how it works in Japan, right? That I can permit you to use my name- just call me Asuka-san."

He nodded once, and is smile slipped to something a bit more unsure. Wright looked off over her shoulder for a moment, before glancing back. "So uh... What does that make me, if we're putting aside the teacher-student respectfulness thing."

Asuka smirked and licked her lips, before dredging up the _thickest_ Japanese accent she could muster. "'_Raito-san_.'"

Wright groaned and let his face fall into his hands. He mumbled past his palms, smiling. "Just- just call me Wright. It's easier on everyone that way."

The doorbell rang, and Asuka glanced up at the clock, wondering who'd be coming by _now_ of all times. The second she saw the time though, she sighed. Lesson was over for the night. Over for the weekend. Misato was the one who'd finally come home. The older woman shuffled through the kitchen toward the glasses and the climate-controlled wine cabinet, completely ignoring Asuka and Wright on the living room couch.

Asuka sighed and twirled the pen in her fingers before she remembered that it wasn't _hers_. Wright had been giving Misato an odd look, so Asuka nudged him with one toe. "Hey-"

When he looked up, Asuka held the pen out. "You want this back, right?"

Wright looked at it once and shrugged, shaking his head as he stood up. "Eh, may as well leave it here- I'll be back on Monday, and less chance of losing it."

That made more than enough sense for Asuka, so she put it back in the case and set it aside with the rest of her literature. Wright bowed again, more in the gracious, if overblown American style and smiled. Turning on one heel with military precision, the sailor whistled a tune and ambled out.

It was the first time Asuka noticed how _white_ his teeth were.

Then Misato flopped onto the couch upside down, letting her hair spill past the seat and brush the floor, dressed down in her tanktop and shorts. With a glass of wine held upright against all sense, Misato shot Asuka a grin and waggled her eyebrows.

* * *

><p>As it turned out, taking a look at the salvaged Evangelion hadn't helped <em>that<em> much.

Better to say that it had been a productive talk with Akagi-san and Kaji-san. Tucked into the massive gap between the clavicle and trapezius of Sorhyu's Evangelion, Shinji settled in to finish the repairs that were long overdue. His hands moved deftly, weaving dry muscle tissue into place, barely paying attention to what was happening, but utterly certain in every motion. Tugging the connective tissue into place, Shinji stitched the flesh together with tendon and integument, bypassing the need for the three-inch wide surgical staples and stainless steel wire.

He let out a slow whistle before humming into the empty Evangelion cage.. "NERV Japan is the Geofront, the only Geofront in the world."

That was a fact, one he'd looked up before alerting everyone to his repair plans. There were other geofront _projects_, superscale construction efforts at creating useful subterranean infrastructure. The Geofront in Japan was the only successful one- the _only_ one. Russia for example had been crippled by permafrost melting and the nation-wide climate change.

But _successful_ was an odd thing to claim. Shinji ran his hands over another span of flesh and watched as the puckered skin surged back into proper alignment- the ragged edges mingling back together and leaving a faint scar behind. Moving down, he braced his feet against a ruined section of armor and _pushed_. The plate slid off its mounting bolts and tumbled down the front of the Eva and into the knee-high coolant below.

"Successful, but not publicized." Shinji watched the broken part disappear beneath the fading splash. "It's the only one in the world, and everybody else has been trying for fifteen years to make another."

Jumping down to the gantry, Shinji scooped up a nearby clipboard and made a note of what armor modules needed to be replaced as he rambled aloud. "Nobody _learned_ from this one... And they're still excavating it today."

That brought him up short, and he started tapping the board against the rail. The metal on metal sound echoed loudly throughout the cage. "Why _excavate_..."

The obvious answer to that question was the Geofront's location; it was at least a kilometer underground. There were a handful of deeper structures, mines and the like, and the only reason he knew that was a combination of those increasingly infrequent sleepless nights and his own bookish tendencies. Still, it helped Shinji now. The Geofront was the _largest_, with the most area, volume, any other number of meaningful traits. There were twenty two armor layers between the surface and the interior cavern, and the city itself... Well, it was a _city_, and the actual Geofront dome was many many times wider than it.

_But again, why excavate?_ This time Shinji just thought the question as he continued to work. As the hours passed, most of Unit 02 was restored, mending what could have been broken and removing what needed to be replaced outright. All in all he probably saved a few billion dollars in man hours and materials.

Scribbling out a work order for the replacement armor, Shinji headed over to the nearest office and fax machine. He punched in the numbers and let out a gusty sigh, waiting for the cutting edge scanner to digest the page. "They never declared it under construction, they're still digging it out, and my father _wants_ to be here..."

He'd spent enough time riding the trains in and out of the complex, and could tell by every rattle and clank how many miles of track he traveled each day. Opening the floodgates to his inner reserve, Shinji crunched the numbers. Not just of the train, tracks and distance, but the height, topology and diameter.

Frowning, he pulled the work order from the machine after it was done being copied and redid the math again long form.

"Six kilometers wide, nine hundred meters high..." Shinji nodded, everything _looked_ right. "Thirteen point seven-five kilometers... "

The math wasn't lying, and NERV suddenly felt a _whole_ lot bigger. Shinji scratched his head and blinked. "How the hell did the Geofront form as a perfect sphere?"

* * *

><p>"This is still the creepiest goddamn thing I have ever seen."<p>

Thankfully, the rolling eye trapped in bakelite didn't answer. A dark chill rolled through him, and Kaji sighed. He slammed the armored case shut before shoving it back into the crawlspace. Leaning back against the wall with shaky hands, he pulled out a bent cigarette and lit it. The armor and fortress layers of Tokyo-3 were dark, but relatively clean and mostly free of rust and grease. He wouldn't have to worry about explaining industrial dirt on his pant legs.

Something wet trickled down his lip, and he reached up to blot it away with his white shirt cuff. Nosebleed of some kind. A few minutes later he emerged into the daylight of downtown Tokyo-3, he glanced at that same damp spot. It was bright, citrine orange.

LCL orange.

* * *

><p>Technically speaking, Rei and the other pilots didn't <em>have<em> to go to school that day. Or that week, considering the UN inspection. Evangelion demonstrations weren't scheduled until later in the week though, so their utility as pilots was minimal. Asuka-chan had grumbled once or twice about maintaining her image while she was getting dressed, but Rei felt as though she drew a blank. It was a novel feeling.

Regardless, the pilots made it to school and slotted into their respective routines and cliques. Asuka-chan stormed off to the deeper interior towards the administrative sections, aiming to straighten out her uniform situation and grumbling about 'Mondays'. Meanwhile, Shinji-kun paired off with Saneda-san and vanished down the hall and around the corner. Glancing at her watch, Rei realized she had nearly fifteen minutes to spend before class. There was no pressing need though, as they'd have a substitute all week instead of Fuyutsuki-sensei.

Seizing on the odd feeling that followed that thought, Rei leaned against a white wall and hummed. After a few moments of contemplation, she realized it was _disappointment_. The sub-commander had proven to be an excellent and engaging teacher.

The professor would still be in Central Dogma though, so she could still very easily inspire a lesson, or perhaps work up the nerve to broach a discussion into Metaphysical Biology. She _did_ have something of a unique perspective on the matter, after all. Still, it probably wouldn't happen that week. Reviewing the inspection schedule in her head, Rei felt the time tick down on her wrist and across the clocks throughout the school. A security camera panned and fixed her in its field of view every twelve seconds, and she felt the prickling frisson of attention dance along her AT field.

A shadow played over her left side and sent gooseflesh up her arm. Blinking, Rei turned to see a dark-haired boy standing near her, smiling with a bit of red dusting his cheeks. Odd. She made a note to ask Shinji-kun or Akagi-sensei what the symptoms could have meant when she saw them next.

"Ayanami Rei-san?" The boy had a surprisingly deep and steady voice,and not one she recognized. An upperclassman perhaps. "I'm Kaneshiro Katsuo, and I've heard you hold the top scores on half the games at the mall..."

Rei blinked at that. A warm surge of pride built up at that, not unlike the feeling she got after completing a tricky repair. "Thank you, Kaneshiro-san."

Reaching into his pocket, Kaneshiro pulled out a pair of colorful, laminated cards. "I got two first-day passes to that new arcade opening on Friday, downtown. If you're interested, we could go?"

At that moment, several equally compelling thoughts competed for Rei's attention. One being _Is that a challenge? Are such things declared like that?_ Another thought was the prospect of _new games_, dueling with the impenetrable shadow of Evangelion tests that would inevitably go off-schedule. Well, perhaps she _did_ have some credit with Misato-san and others... Rei had not once pulled a string, but there were worse reasons to try, and maybe she could arrange Asuka to go as well.

To Kaneshiro, she nodded, smiling faintly. "That sounds pleasant."

The older teen grinned hugely and nodded, before giving one of the passes to her. "Then we'll see each other this weekend, after school."

Leaving with a wave and a smile, Kaneshiro ambled down the hall while Rei watched. The few students remaining nearby turned toward their friends, giggling or nudging each other with their elbows. Rei wondered then if her more recent achievements had started to eclipse her previous disconnect with the rest of the school. Her tongue felt suddenly dry, and thinking about it, she decided that being a few minutes late to class wouldn't hurt.

The cafeteria was empty aside from the one lunch lady just finishing up after the breakfast rush, and a couple of other students loitering along one wall. It didn't take long for her to scoop up a boxed juice and pay for it. Turning smartly on one heel, Rei took one step forward and ran into something tall and student-shaped.

They both rocked back a step from the impact, and the older teenager completed his unsteady turn to face her. Rei found herself looking up past the shirt collar toward his face. He was brown-haired with narrow glasses and thin eyes. The combined effect seemed to make it look like he was staring intently at everything. Rei wondered if glasses would have done the same thing for her.

Rubbing his chest with one hand, he coughed and smiled. "Ah, I'm sorry Ayanami-san. I'm sure these hallways are somewhat tougher to navigate than that Skyline of yours, aren't they?"

Another wave of pride flooded through her at that, and Rei found herself smiling. More surprisingly, she found herself smiling at him for the question. Maybe he was looking for advice, or assistance. On some unspoken cue they both started walking, Rei toward her class and Takegane falling in step alongside. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of car keys, and Rei felt her eyes light up as he spun the keychain in that hand.

Halfway back to her classroom, he stopped the spinning and glanced down at her. "So you restored your car, right?"

"That is correct." Rei couldn't help the grin that spread out across her face.

"You did a great job on it." The boy let his hand drop to the side before sketching out a theatrical, overplayed bow. "Takegane Shujumi."

Giving the upperclassman a little nod, Rei considered smiling fully to be an appropriate response. "Pleased to meet you, Takegane-san."

Nearing her classroom, Rei finished her juice just as Takegane started spinning his keys again. "There's a car show this week at the exposition center, if you weren't busy this weekend, I was wondering if you'd want to go check it out?"

Well, that week in September was proving to be busy. Rei smiled a bit wider and nodded, already evaluating how much she would have to wheedle to ensure her availability. Technically, she could get by with her reserve pilot status, but at the same time, all she was good for _was_ testing and demonstrations, if that freed Shinji-kun up for more important work...

All told, those thoughts took less than two seconds to run through, hardly enough time to delay the conversation. She stopped at the door to her classroom just as Hokari-san finished the attendance ritual. "I would like that, Takegane-san."

"Excellent!" The boy tossed his keys up and snatched them out of the air as they fell, beaming. "I'll see you this weekend then!"

With that, he left, and Rei headed into class. Hokari-san shot her something of a dark look for being late, but at it lacked heat. Class 2-A had one rule regarding tardiness under the representative's dominion; only _Rei_ was absent. Not that it was a particularly bad case, what with the disinterested substitute teacher. Students had already gathered into their cliques and such, eager to while away the free time they had.

Seizing on that thought, Rei wondered. Free time was at a premium for her, and she had just set up two engagements on top of the brutal UN inspection schedule. Milling around the seats and lost in thought, something _nagged_ at her. It had Asuka-chan's voice for a moment, then Misato-san's. Something about those two, their insights and lilting conversations. Rei felt like she was missing something. Something about _weekends_.

Then her eyes fell on Horaki Hikari, verbally haranguing her boyfriend for some slight, then instantly shifting to a look of misty-eyed romance. Rei felt her stare drift one seat over to Aida Kensuke, and if memory served, had 'gone out with' more than _half_ the of the female student body. Moving like a ghost over to them, she took a seat and cleared her throat.

"Hypothetically," Rei licked her lips, glancing sidelong between Horaki-san and Aida-kun. "If one were to be approached by another and asked to meet in a social setting, this could be considered a date?"

"Hypothetically, yes." Aida-kun agreed. The way he nodded his head made his glasses shine opaque. Hokari-san had released Suzuhara-kun for the moment and fully turned to face Rei and the question with both hands clamped over her mouth and visibly suppressing a squeal. Her eyes were sparkling, too.

"Then, also hypothetically, if one were to be approached by two or more people and asked to meet at two mutually exclusive places and times, and that aforementioned one agreed without realizing this, that would be a..." Rei trailed off, unsure of the proper phrasing. "...Social misstep?

This time Aida-kun didn't say anything, he only cringed, while the class representative paled and mirrored his expression. Rei felt her own face fall in dismay. Sitting down in her seat by the window, she let out a short, almost inaudible sigh.

Perhaps this is what Asuka-chan meant by 'having a case of the Mondays'.

* * *

><p>For Saneda Ayumi, there was something special about having her boyfriend carry her around the school for a few minutes. Probably something to do with her having the only outright super-powered boyfriend on the planet. Or the saccharine looks the other students gave her. Blithely ignoring her admittedly delighted shrieks and ineffectual fists pounding against his back, Shinji stepped through the halls completely unperturbed by the way his girlfriend hung over his shoulder.<p>

Depositing her in front of her classroom, Ayumi looked up and huffed, hands on her hips and school bag dangling from her fingers. "Warn a girl next time!"

Shinji felt like answering that with a quick kiss and a hug, before vanishing down the hall.

Red-faced and a little giggly, Ayumi smiled, swaying in place while her friends mobbed her. The gossip spun up in earnest, and the seventeen year-old let it wash over her, like a song she'd heard on repeat for her whole live. A flash of red and gold in the distance caught her eye, and bit by bit, the hallway fell silent. So did her friends, when they watched Sorhyu _Asuka Langley_ pass by. Every boy hung on her every move, dip and subconscious strut, and more than a few girls bemoaned the fates that let a tenth grader silence a hall better than most upperclassmen.

"I hear the pilots all live together..." Ayumi heard one of her friends mumble, and she felt the air pressure change. The sharp gasp and glances they sent Ayumi's way were... sorrowful, and unexpectedly sympathetic.

Haruna reached out to put a hand on Ayumi's arm. "Ikari-kun is just too nice to be, y'know. Tempted. Right?" She directed that last question at the rest of the girls.

Ayumi blinked once. What followed was inexorable and irrefutable as the law of gravity. She burst out _laughing_.

* * *

><p>Monday had been engineered by some nefarious force and enemy to all mankind for the express purpose of making one's life hell. This was the truth of Asuka's existence that morning. Hyperbole aside, the routine was well and truly disrupted, and only a few ragged threads stayed intact. Ikari had provided a banquet's worth of boxed lunches for a handful of people, and breakfast was at a disgustingly early five thirty in the morning.<p>

It was a good breakfast though, with some obscene mix of navy style coffee and Ikari's thaumaturgical cold-filter turkish blend. That plus right kind of food to keep her fresh and active had done a lot to take the edge out of Asuka's mood. The pilots wouldn't be needed as _pilots _for at least a few days, so they were still expected to attend school. Misato had thankfully stuffed 'get out of class early' slips into their bags before dashing off right after breakfast, heading for the Geofront and the impending UN inspection.

The other admittedly bittersweet note for Asuka that she had well and truly hit a growth spurt over those months at sea. So much so that she realized she didn't fit in any of her school uniforms, nor Rei's, noting the latter with a hint of almost nostalgic smugness. History, as they said, was written by the victors. That particular thought had brought a crease to her forehead, when had she started thinking in so many _cliches_? Having spent a week as a tutor, the return to thinking like a student was going to be a bumpy one.

So that just left Asuka with figuring out what to wear for the day. She settled on her favorite yellow sundress, and grabbed a set of dark stockings that matched it well enough. The scars on her legs would have invited too many questions, but she couldn't do much about her arms except wear her jacket. As for however _inappropriate_ her dress was, the school could just deal, and Fuyutsuki-Sensei would understand, assuming he even showed up for class.

Fortunately, getting to school was easy thanks to Rei and her car. Ikari nearly took up the entire back seat, but he didn't seem to mind and the drive was quick. They ran into Ayumi in the parking lot and split up from there- Ikari picked up his girlfriend and outright carried her to class, laughing. Rei fell into step with Asuka and they both strode through the halls, on the older side of fifteen and fourteen years old respectively.

Splitting apart in the hallway leading to the classroom, Asuka gave Rei a distant wave and set off at a steady grumble. She heard leering eyeballs roll and click as she stalked through the school, and some part of her relished the attention, but mostly she was just annoyed. It didn't take long to sort out a new order of uniforms, listing out her new sizes to the vaguely condescending secretary and waiting for the older woman to dutifully punch them into the computer. A tedious walk later, Asuka arrived late to class.

The substitute teacher just waved her aside, otherwise disinterested. Cutting through the center aisle toward her seat, she saw more than heard Rei finish an awkward conversation with Aida and Hikari-chan. Dropping back into her seat, Asuka sighed and felt nearly every pair of eyes in Class 2-A fall upon her. Shucking her jacket, Asuka just kicked back in her seat and crossed one leg over the other. All things considered, the scowl she attempted probably just made her look even cuter.

Such was her fate to add a bold stroke of color to her peers' dull, grey little lives.

Twisting in his seat, one of Shinji's other friends faced her and grinned. The jock- Suzuhara. "You gotta tell me your secret."

"Secret?" Asuka blinked and turned her uncovered eye on him.

The big-eared fool just smiled wider and waved at her bare arms, before running a finger along the thin horizontal scar along his cheek. "It's like every time you and Shinji go away for a few weeks, you come back looking even _more_ badass."

The redhead cocked her head to the side at the unexpected compliment and equally unexpected source. For the first time in a long time, Asuka felt a sense of wonder.

No one minded or mentioned how her full, honest smile lit up the room.

* * *

><p>The sun was rising steadily that morning, and throughout Tokyo-3, solar panels and fiber optic collection dishes turned to face the light. September in the city was cool, but the skies were clear and warm. Counting Evangelion rails, there were over a thousand ways into the Geofront and NERV, but at that moment, all eyes were focused on just one.<p>

Instead of the normal miles of descending tunnel or car-carrying trains, the large and public face of the Geofront was akin to Tokyo-3's city hall and municipal center. An elevator waited to carry people into the subterranean space, more than a kilometer below. To most, the city office was a relentlessly utilitarian structure, made of concrete rectangles and thin windows that seemed more fitting on a prison. The civil employees were superfluous and they knew it, merely acting out the instructions the MAGI system generated. Those men and women in that government hall lived for the arrival of tourist or dignitary.

The guards outside took their jobs more seriously in some ways and less than others. One elbowed his snoozing partner while jerking his chin at the approaching black limousine. Their hands hovered near the slung submachine guns, but all fingers stayed well away from triggers. More guards and Section 2 agents were around as well. A checklist with entries numbering in the tens of thousands had been running as the limo meandered through Tokyo-3, guided along with the traffic to shake tails and mark for deviance from the plan.

Makoto Hyuuga glanced at his mobile terminal and nodded- a two percent variance and within tolerance. Closing the device with a click, he waited just inside the main entrance while the guards outside handled the initial meet and greet. One by one, twelve men and women piled out of the vehicle in matching black suits and ties, all of them much taller than the native Japanese guards surrounding them. The UN inspection team was a knot of blondes, brunettes and at least one redhead.

Sweeping through the main automatic doors, Hyuuga watched as the inspectors approached. From a distance they looked normal, but this close, their suits looked ill-fit, like they were baggier than normal. Off to one side, a guard at another console flashed okay and thumbs up symbols from facial recognition. The final test such as it was proved to be the metal detectors. The inspectors handed off their attache cases and equipment- cameras and audio recorders- to a technician for scanning. Another NERV aide was busy handing out temporary Geofront ID cards.

The first man through the gate set the machine off with a record-breaking response.

Immediately, four men shouldered past Hyuuga with their weapons at the ready, and the UN inspector raised his hands slowly, completely unconcerned. Squinting, Hyuuga blinked and pushed his glasses back into place, not entirely sure what he was seeing. He put a hand on one of the response team's shoulders, urging the man to stand down.

Moving forward, Hyuuga bowed but made a point to speak English. "Apologies for this upset, but I'm going to have to ask the obvious question..."

The inspector's hands were not human, not flesh and blood.

"It's quite alright, might I reach into my coat?." The blonde man grinned faintly and Hyuuga gave his permission, mentally noting the man had a French name and accent. He produced a wallet and revealed a medical information card. "My name is Mister Moreau..."

The card confirmed that, but Hyuuga was more curious about what else it said. Moreau was a full conversion cyborg. His hands were unlined and each finger was perfectly symmetrical, and that same unnerving quality extended to his fingernails. Moreau's face had the touch of an artist, which was why Hyuuga hadn't noticed its lack of pores and the like. Hyuuga stood up straighter at that, more than a little impressed. The card was embossed with the logos of both the leading Canadian and Kenyan cybernetics research facilities. They were very much NERV's greatest competitors in those fields...

Hyuuga handed the card back with a nod. "You'll have to forgive us then, Mister Moreau, as your prosthetics make certain security precautions necessary."

"Oh, but of course. Forgive my oversight." Moreau rolled up his sleeve and pulled a small data device from a port at the base of his elbow. "Standard UN data storage- in dangerous times like these, we can't simply outfit only our planes and submarines with black boxes anymore, can we?"

"I suppose not." Hyuuga nodded, waving off the armed response team and urging the rest of the inspection team to carry on with their security checks. "All your recording devices- even implanted ones, will be audited before you leave."

Moreau had no problem with that, and said as much. "We all have the appropriate papers, but I should warn you that we are all... Similar."

The lead inspector waved to his compatriots, who all obligingly pulled back their sleeves to reveal thin, cylindrical wrists with only the most simplified of human articulation. One man made a point of spinning his wrist a full three hundred and sixty degrees. Hyuuga wondered if it was the cybernetic version of being double jointed. Thinking further on it, and the 'standard UN data-storage, Hyuuga suddenly realized what it _meant_ living in Tokyo-3. It really was a _fortress-_city. The EU had been pushing towards a wide scale militarization for some time in light of Second Impact and the collapse of so many independent European nations, but he just now _understood_ how far along they really were.

Not long after the initial security checks were completed, another aide appeared laden with folders, handing out the inspection schedule. It had been worked out ahead of time between the UN oversight branch and NERV's own internal security, which basically boiled down to Hyuuga himself, and Major Katsuragi's last week of preparation before the actual event.

Moreau took a moment to leaf through his copy, humming. "Might I ask why the senior command staff is absent? I expected Gendo Ikari to be more..."

The Commander's manipulative reputation as a control freak was well known outside of NERV as inside, it seemed. The man was a means to an end as much as everyone else in the Geofront.

Hyuuga put on an apologetic face and shook his head. "Commander Ikari and Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki are both dealing with the final stages of an important project. Today is the general tour of Central Dogma, and you'll be spending most of it with Doctor Akagi."

That almost seemed to surprise the man, and Hyuuga had to compliment the engineers behind that kind of facial articulation- the wide eyed look was incredibly authentic. "Truly? Then I think none of us will be bored this week. Fear not Lieutenant Hyuuga, we will be out of your hair before you know it."

"One can hope!" Hyuuga gave the man a restrained, but honest grin. Cyborg or not, Europeans were _boisterous_.

A long elevator ride and a short walk later, Hyuuga handed the team off to a waiting Doctor Akagi. Security had radioed ahead about their cybernetic state, so the project head was only slightly surprised. Hyuuga heard her strike up a conversation regarding their conversion process as she lead them down the hall and toward her labs.

Left on his own, he started to mentally compose his report for the day on the team's activities. So far it was positive, and everything had checked out, from code-word clearance to DNA and cerebrospinal fluid identification- at their insistence. Scratching the back of his head and making his way back to the command center, Hyuuga couldn't help but wonder... and then resolved to keep an eye on things, just in case.

* * *

><p>AN: And that's Chapter 38!<p> 


End file.
